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1 to 15 January 2015 16 to 31 January 2015

Saturday January 16, 2016

We had a good pancake breakfast this morning.
The cook's face is blurry because he does not want people to know he can cook!

On our way to the flea market, we saw this crooked tree.

This flea market is part of the Shell Factory and it is located in North Fort Myers.
We had to take this photo!!!

My new friend and me.

The Flintstones?
Patrice looks a little scared!

Another "got to have" photo.

Here I am with the African-Polar bear!

We are looking for sunglasses for Patrice and a magnet with a light in it for Manon.
We are now at the second flea market for today.

We finally found the sunglasses and the magnet at the third flea market!
We were not supposed to go to 3 flea markets today!

On our way back home, we stopped at this roadside farmer market.

After we got back home, we had a beer and fixed Patrice's walking stick.

Manon invited us for a very good beef stew supper.

We had a very good day.

Sunday January 17, 2016

WOW!
We are up by 5 am and watching lightning and heavy rain.
We were under a tornado warning all morning.

When the rain finally stopped, I opened our awning to dry it out.
Can you see the little frog in the awning arm?

Here she is!
I made it jump out of there because I did not want to close the awning and squish the frog.

During my morning bike ride, I saw this "doll".

We were still wearing our jackets because it is still on the cool side.
The boys were the winners again!

Tonight I was cooking chicken and I needed light to see what I was doing. I clipped a flashlight to my baseball cap and I was good to go.

After a good meal, it was time to do the dishes.

Let us go back in time.
About a week ago, Benoit, our son, cut himself while drying a glass. He cuts himself on the knuckle. He did not need stitches. Our family has a competition on who get the most stitches!

Back to today.
I was drying a glass and BAM!
The glass broke and I cut myself on the knuckle!

I did not need stitches, but I will ask Benoit to be extra careful because it seems that what happens to him happens to me too!

Monday January 18, 2016

We had a quiet morning.

After some discussion, it was decided to do some biking/geocaching. The area we were in was about 25 km from here.
The temperature was +16 all afternoon and the wind had a bite to it.
One of the caches we have found, this one had "swag" in it. Swag is the term used by geocachers to describe the content of a cache.

The road was pretty quiet from car traffic.

We really like this type of palm tree.

We have biked 12 km and found 13 caches.
This was a good day geocaching.

Michele prepared a nice quiche for the first time.

This was a great supper.
We had a very good day.

Tuesday January 19, 2016

This afternoon we were at the "Corkscrew Regional Ecosystem Watershed Land & Water Trust".
We were hiking and geocaching.

The temperature was a little warmer than we expected, I returned our jackets to the truck.
Here, I am on my way back and the "crew" were waiting.

This park is a big wetland and slough area. Because of the heavy rain from the last few weeks, we were not able to finish on some of the trails. A view from the top of the observation tower. This park is very popular with bird watchers.

Did not see any, it must be too cold to be out of the water.

One of the caches was in one of those snail shells. Which one hides the cache?

I got lucky and found the cache on the first try.

Today, we have walked 7 km and found 15 caches.

Tuesday is Bingo night!
Michele was lucky again tonight, she won $15 US.

We had another great day.

Wednesday January 20, 2016

Today was a rest day.
Patrice and I went for a bike ride in the RV Park just to get the legs going.

The car needed a good wash.

We spent about an hour at the pool. The water was cooler this time, 88°F or 31°C!

We still had many ingredients left from our first quiche, so why not make another one.

We checked out the weather for the next few days and decided to go to the Fort Myers RV Show tomorrow instead of Friday.
Friday it is supposed to be rainy and Saturday should be quite a bit cooler.

Thursday January 21, 2016

We were fast this morning, we got to the RV Show before the door opened.

The latest RV model!

We have visited many RVs, from the expensive to the not so expensive. We have dreamed, but our budget keeps them as dreams.

We were at the RV Show mostly to look for some campground deals for when we leave LaBelle on March 1st.
We did find one. It is located in the town of Mayo, yes, I did say Mayo! It is in northern Florida. The RV Park is the Suwannee River Rendezvous Resort & Campground. You may be wondering why a RV Park so far from everything. First, there is a lot to do in that area and second, the most important, is the price. Remember the exchange rates? For the whole month of March, it will cost us only $266.43 US or about $378.00 CDN, plus electricity.

Tonight we were supposed to go to the circus with our free tickets. When we got there, we realize it was a circus for kids and the tickets were free for kids only and $15 per adults. (Remember to read the fine print next time) Therefore, we came back home and watched TV.

Friday January 22, 2016

The rain started around 8 or 9 o'clock in the morning. We heard some thunder in the distance, but nothing close by.
We had some downpour and some light rain all morning.

This morning, I received my last parcels from Amazon.
Some small items and my washroom fan upgrade.

This is part of the small fan removed. It sounded like a 747 taking off when it was on.

Everything is done from the inside, this way I do not have to break the roof sealant.

All the parts from the old fan are now removed.

This is the new fan upgrade going up in the bathroom.

I am almost done with the installation.

All done! This fan really move air out and make a lot less noise doing so.
It is not as quiet as a "Fan-tastique" fan, but it also cost much less.

I am pretty happy with the results.

It rained all afternoon.
Our awning is almost horizontal. To help evacuate water from the top of my awning, I use my wash brush to help keep one end of the awning lower.
Of course, if it is windy, this does not help and I just close the awning.

The rain stopped around 4 pm, but we still stay inside.
Michele was watching a girly movie and I worked on my blog update.

I also received my flying insect screens from Amazon. As you can see, nothing is stopping insects and even frogs from going inside our furnaces.

It took 5 minutes to install both sets.

Another day spent indoor.

Saturday January 23, 2016

No rain today, but a lot of wind.
We had wind gust up to 70 km/h.

Another day spent indoor.
Patrice and Manon called us and invited us to play cribbage and dice.
They look very interested by what I was saying!

The two love birds.

We had a very good supper, two different pork roasts with potatoes and carrots.

It was a good day and we spent the evening watching the hockey game on TV.

Sunday January 24, 2016

WOW!
When Patrice and I went outside to go for breakfast, we found the car covered with ice!!!
What is going on? Are we in Florida?
Darn El Niño.

After breakfast, we stopped by the Caloosahatchee River for a few minutes.

Environmental and electrical codes are not the same in the US as in Canada. Let me explain, in Canada we would never allow an electrical conduit going up a tree and this conduit is even held on by nails and screws to the tree!

After lunch, we decided to go and visit the W.P. Franklin lock & dam.

This is the visitor center where the first part of the tour took place.
It was about the history of the area and the lock & dam.

This was a very good information center. It had many very well done information display and most were interactive display.

Michele doing the fish with the fishes!

On our way to the second part of the tour.

The view downriver from the lock. This is salt water here.

A view of the lock.

Our guide for the outside part of the tour.

Now a view upriver. This is fresh water here.

We were lucky and saw a manatee swimming along the lock.
This is the first manatee that Manon and Patrice saw.

Lucky again, a boat was using the lock while we were here.
This boat arrived from Lake Okeechobee.

The red line indicates where the water was when the boat got in the lock.
Now the water level is at its lowest and the boat can leave the lock.

Our guide was very good.

On the other side of the Caloosahatchee River, they have a campground.

This lock and dam is used for the control of the water and preventing floods, but it also prevents the salt water from going up river during storm surges and high tides.

The three amigos!

We really enjoyed this visit and on top of that, it was free!

It is supposed to get warmer tomorrow!
We sure hope so!
Darn El Niño.

Monday January 25, 2016

Patrice was washing his truck again this morning!
I tease him about me not driving his truck if it is dirty.

This time we use my bike rack to transport the bikes. It makes it a lot easier.

The white ibis were thinking we would give them food!

Looking for a cache.

This part of our geocaching ride was on the sidewalks.

Seven out of fifteen caches were on the bike path and we did the other eight with the truck.
Here is a little incident that happened today. On our way to a cache, we saw a couple looking for the same cache. We still went for the cache and talk to them. It turned out she is a very nice person, but the gentleman gets on our nerves in a few minutes. They stayed with us looking for more caches. Luckily we had found a cache and they had not. While they were looking for the cache we continue on the next cache.

One of the cache was on a bridge crossing the Caloosahatchee River. The cache was under a reflector on the guard.

Manon and Patrice invited us for supper for some homemade hamburgers.

The cook's face is becoming clearer and clearer!

The chef at work.

We had a good day.

Tuesday January 26, 2016

One of the bike path in Fort Myers has a lot of caches. The weather forecast is calling for rain on Wednesday and Thursday, so we decided to go for the bike ride today.

Patrice was fixing his collapsible magnet/light stick before we leave.

We left our bikes in the truck last night. We were on the road by 9:15 am.

Last week, Manon had stepped on a fire ants hill and had to remove her shoes and socks to remove all of the fire ants.
Today was Patrice's turn to step on a fire ants hill. He only had to remove his shoes and socks and found only one fire ant.

This is what the bike path looks like.

A small cache like this one is very hard to find.

Can you see it?

Here it is!

Surprise, one of the caches was located on the other side of the boulevard.

Some of the caches are cute.

Some relaxing time after a good lunch.

We biked 13 km and found 22 caches today.

Once we were back home, we all went for a nice dip in the pool. I only took a photo of Michele!

This was another good day with Manon and Patrice.

Wednesday January 27, 2016

As it was forecasted, it was raining on Wednesday.
By 7:00 am the rain had stopped. I was invited by Patrice for breakfast at McDonald. After breakfast, we drove around town and were being nosy, looking at house, yards, and everything else.

After I got back home, I went to do some laundry. I used 3 washing machine, suddenly POOF, 2 of them stop working before they had a chance to rinse! There was water everywhere. I do some de-snagging and found which machine is bad and taking the other with it.
I was now using 2 washing machine and had to wait and redo the third wash. I was not a happy camper!
Michele came to help me fold the laundry, she is much better than me.

The rain started again after lunch.

Do you want water?

It was mostly an indoor day.

Thursday January 28, 2016

It is still raining and sometimes coming down hard too!

I had to reboot my repeater unit to get back on the internet. I open the basement door where the repeater unit located and came face to face with hundreds of fire ants in the door and in the compartment.
I went on attack mode and used some poison for ants.

It will probably take a day or two to get rid of the ants.

In the afternoon we were back in the pool and it was still raining.
The water was good, the people were good and even the beers were good. It rained pretty hard and we had to wait for half an hour for the rain to slow down so we could make it home.

This is how hard it was coming out of the gutters.

Update on the war on ants. The poison is working very good and by the end of the day we were down to half the ants we had before.
We will win!

Friday January 29, 2016

The sun was out! WOW!
We hang the wet stuff to dry. I spend the morning doing little things that needs to be done around the MH.
We won! No more ants. We will have to be more alert in the future.

In the afternoon, me, Manon and Patrice went to a bike ride in town. "The following is only about telling you what we saw and I am not judging anything". The first part of our bike ride turns out to be in a poor black neighborhood. The houses are in disrepair, junk everywhere, but the people were well dressed. We did not feel in danger at all, but at one time a pitbull came towards us while the owner was trying to call him back. It was a little tense for a while. The rest of our bike ride was good. We rode 10 km.

Tonight we have Manon and Patrice over to supper. I made apricot chicken.

/

As you can see, all the plates are empty, but one. This is because one person had a second helping...

After supper, we went over to Manon and Patrice to play crib.

A good day!

Saturday January 30, 2016

Yes, I am cutting what is growing through the lattice from the house next door.
He cannot see them, but I can!

This morning we went to the flea market in LaBelle. We bought some fresh oranges.

We played some shuffleboard games in the afternoon.

We looked at boats go by.

We had to wait for Patrice because he went to do some laundry. I sat on the swing and looked at the boats go by.

Back at the games.

We went to Winn-Dixie to pick up some chicken at $0.25 per pounds.
We cooked half of them.

Even the ham was cheap.

Our freezers are full now.

Sunday January 31, 2016

We are on our way to the beach to have a look around.

As we drove in Fort Myers, we made a quick stop at the flea market to pick up some items.

Fort Myers Beach.

We drove on the road next to the beach and hotels. You also have tacky shops and restaurants.

We stopped and talked to some local fishermen.

They were fishing for fish we do not know.

Until next time.

Life is good...