We would like to wish everyone the best 2016, but mostly, good health!
Friday January 1st, 2016
WOW!
Already 2016!!!
We are in the middle of our 6th year of full timing and we are not
ready to stop yet.
Let's get back to today.
We are doing some last preparation before leaving Zephyrhills.
We have some uninvited guest with us.
I do not know what kind of frog it is, but I am sure it will jump
eventually.
Manon and Patrice ready to roll.
Some of the vehicles we saw today.
Bears???
Manon and Patrice behind us.
We are getting closer...
Our new home for the next 2 months.
Manon and Patrice are just two sites down from us.
Manon and Patrice's site.
We had a good Shepherd's Pie for supper.
We took it easy for the rest of the day. Michele and Manon did
some grocery shopping.
Saturday January 2, 2016
Getting installed a little more. This time it is the antenna for
the repeater unit.
Patrice cleaning up his truck.
Here I am helping with the installation of the Bell dish. It
turns out it will not work in the US.
While we were at Walmart today, we saw that the 14" pizza was on sale
at $2.50 and it was cooked!
We could not resist!!!
January Second is our youngest son's birthday.
As per the tradition with Benoit, we had a tequila shooter for him.
We had a good day with Manon and Patrice.
Sunday January 3, 2016
We are out for a bike ride in town this morning.
This is the road to get in and out of the RV Park. The live oaks
are almost in the middle of the road. The city of LaBelle has an
ordinance that prevents cutting live oaks.
While we are out biking, why not look for a cache!
We found it without difficulty.
To get back on the main road, we came across this road sign.
This is the first time we see one like this one.
The weather forecast for the rest of the day is rain.
Patrice proposes to use this day to go around Lake Okeechobee.
Patrice is a truck driver and he has driven enough this year. I
am the designated driver now!
We saw some sugar cane fields.
We are at the north end of the everglades and we can see lots of water.
We were surprised to see many sod farms here.
We are disappointed because we could only see the lake when we were on
the embankment.
We saw many canals along the road.
Manon and Patrice have a nice "tourtière du Lac-Saint-Jean", or "6
pailles", or "6 pâtes" for supper.
This is a traditional meal for the holidays in Québec.
This food reminds me of me of when I was a young kid with all my family.
We had a great meal with people we love dearly, it was just plain
happiness!!!
Monday January 4, 2016
A quiet day for all of us.
We took a bike ride in the little town of LaBelle just to see what is
around.
It looks like it is the funny faces day!
Manon and Patrice had a problem with their fridge.
I looked around and found that the little pipe used to drain the
water has a flow limiter.
This flow limiter is limiting too much. I took it out and all is
good now.
When I said it was a funny faces day!!!
It was a good day.
Tuesday January 5, 2016
Patrice and I went for a bike ride this morning.
We had to go over the Caloosahatchee River.
As we got near, it started to open to let a few sailboats go by.
A view for the top of the bridge.
We visited an RV Park near by. It was very nice, but much more
expensive than ours is.
We did talk to the owner of the GMC 1947 truck.
The engine is not in the front, but in the middle.
A nice bike ride of 12 km.
The weather was still on the cool side, so we decided to do some
geocaching.
This cache took us to one of the oldest live oak in the county.
On our way to another cache, but we did not go in the woods as it was
so thick, we could not even see two feet in the woods.
A cow was checking us out!
One cache was located in those four sabal palmetto.
Most of the caches were close to the road.
Another good day.
Wednesday January 6, 2016
A nice and relaxed morning.
We went to the pool during the afternoon.
As you can see, the pool is indoor, but you can open the patio doors.
The pool was at 89°F.
My pretty Michèle.
Ahhhhh!
Patrice and Manon joined us a few minutes later.
The boys were waiting for dinner.
Manon cooking up something good!
We are having fajitas.
We had to do our part.
Thursday January 7, 2016
Another bike ride with Manon, Patrice and me. Michele stayed home.
It was another ride of 10 km.
Later on, we stopped at the chamber of commerce to get information
about the town of LaBelle and the area.
The lady gave us a lot of information.
We played shuffleboard later in the afternoon.
The boys won 3 out of 4 games.
Friday January 8, 2016
We woke up to rain.
Manon and Patrice were in cooking mode this morning.
They were making Manon spaghetti sauce.
Manon telling me to be careful of??? I cannot remember what it
was about.
The face of this man is hidden to protect his reputation.
The man told me that he does not want to be seen cooking...
Hummm! Looking good and smelling good.
The weather is still undecided so we decided to go to Clewiston.
It is about 52 km east of LaBelle.
After some shopping at the local Walmart, we went looking for the only
two caches located in Clewiston.
One of the caches was located inside the information center. We
took this opportunity to ask about the "Sugarland" tour.
We were surprised to learn it is a 3 and half hour long, but the price
is very steep at $38 US, or $54 CDN. I will have to think about
it if I really want to do it.
Michele loves Patrice's GPS, but not me! It shows my current
speed in red if I go over the speed limit.
We had a very good spaghetti diner.
We ended this great day with a nice campfire.
Saturday January 9, 2016
Last evening, we talked about going to the flea market in Fort Myers,
but it depends on the weather Saturday or Sunday. It is only 50
km away.
The weather was nice this morning, so we went to the flea market.
This flea market is the second biggest attraction after the casino in
south-western Florida.
More than 1.3 million people visit this flea market every year.
It was not the type of flea market that we like. It is all new
stuff and we prefer more old and junky stuff.
We also noticed that the prices were much higher than in Zephyrhills.
One of the food courts.
We got some coupons for Burger King, so we had lunch at the local
Burger King.
We could not go wrong with two whopper meals for only $8.75.
We loved the door handle of this Burger King.
With our bellies full, we headed to the beach on Pine Island.
We had to go through the small village of Matlacha. With an area
of only 0.4 km² and a population of 735, it is mostly small shops and
restaurants.
We were not even close to any beaches!
We used our time to look for some caches.
While we were looking for this cache, Patrice came to help us find it.
We took our car this time.
Comparing our GPS.
It turned out Manon was too short to get to the cache.
I am putting the cache back in place and here is what the cache looks
like. It is homemade and very efficient.
We had to look for a while for this one before we found it.
We found 7 caches today.
We were rained on all evening with some thunderstorms around us.
There was even a tornado warning a few counties to the west of here.
It turned out we only got rain.
Sunday January 10, 2016
Another morning with rain and some thunder.
We were intrigued when this ambulance stopped in front of our MH.
It turned out it was for the lady next door, but it was nothing serious.
We went to the pool for a little dip. Our girls were having fun!
We sure had a good week.
Monday January 11, 2016
The bikes are in the truck, the GPS have all the caches loaded, we are
ready to go to Fort Myers and start looking for geocaches.
In Fort Myers, the first half of our "circuit" takes us near a very
busy road, but we are traveling on the sidewalks.
One of the caches was under the "skirt" of the light post.
A group photo serious and one not so serious!
This cache was located under the reflector!
The second half of our circuit took us along the John Yarbrough trail
and
it was away from all traffic.
We did not find this cache.
We have to be careful of snakes and other creatures that are dangerous.
We looked for a while before we found this cache under a small log.
Under a snail shell.
We taught the cache was in the bird in the tree, but it was not there,
it was just a decoy!
We did not find this cache!
Some caches were under the cap of the fence post. One was
tied to the underside of the cap while another was glued under the cap.
This half of the circuit was on a nice paved trail. Some of the
caches we found.
We rode 20 km and found 18 caches today.
We had a great time with Manon and Patrice.
Tuesday January 12, 2016
This morning I was installing the outside TV when I noticed that I
forgot to make the hole for the electric extensions.
I corrected the problem.
After that, we went bike riding in town.
After our bike ride, I showed Manon and Patrice how to flush the hot
water tank.
Even if we only had the MH for 6 months, the hot water tank was very
dirty.
Tuesday is Bingo night!
Manon was with us and I forgot to take a photo of her.
She won $5 on tickets and $15 on a bingo.
Michele was luckier and won $35 on a bingo.
Another good day!
Wednesday January 13, 2016
It was still cool today, but we still went out to do some "driving"
geocaching.
Our first cache took us near a pasture with cows on it. They sure
watched us and were afraid of us.
Look at the trees behind us, they have long needles?
We all have a job to do when we go geocaching.
I take photos, but most of the time it is Michele's job, Manon is
filling the log, Michele is changing the plastic bag for the cache and
Patrice is?
Supervising!
Michele giving us orders???
They do not look very impressed!
Looking for a cache inside this palm tree.
After such hard work, we found 15 caches, we enjoy a cold beer.
Manon had a very small beer!
Thursday January 14, 2016
As you can tell, it is still on the cool side today.
We are back in LaBelle and this time we stop at the Harold
P. Curtis honey Company store to buy some local honey.
This honey tastes very different from our honey up north.
The different flavours are Orange Blossom, Wild Flower, Mangrove,
Seagrape and Palmetto.
We like the Palmetto honey.
In the local store window, we saw this poster.
The tickets are $15 each, but Patrice and I found some free one in the
store.
We will spoil the girls!!!
We were back at the shuffleboard again today.
The boys won 2 out of 3 games.
Friday January 15, 2016
The rain started in the middle of the night and lasted until 3 pm.
By 5 o'clock, we were watching TV outside.
It was a weird weather day today. First rain, then
tornado warning and heavy rain and then sun shine!!!
