Wanderung 28

A Warm Winter Break

December 2013 - January 2014


 

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Friday December 27, 2013:

When I unpacked at the Sanctuary, I found I had left my dress black pants at home! While that was not a problem as long as I was visiting with relatives and didn't have to go to any formal celebrations (a Christmas Eve service in the animal sanctuary doesn't count!), the next part of our Winter Break was a cruise that would include formal nights for which I would need black pants. So off we drove out to a Marshalls near the next major city where I bought a new pair of black pants. We found the butterfly museum on the way back, but it was closed although the sign indicated it should be open. That was disappointing, but later in Key West, Florida, we did find an open butterfly museum that turned out to be a lot of fun.

Instead of the butterfly museum, we decided to try to see a printing museum located across the street from the Yulee sugar mill ruins near Homosassa, and that turned out to be very interesting indeed. Although we had not scheduled an appointment, which was apparently the normal procedure, we were given a detailed tour and demonstration of some of the old printing machines by Jim, the proprietor and printer, who was a really engaging and enthusiastic specialist in printing. It is always nice to meet someone who truly loves his work, so if you are ever in the Homosassa area be sure to call Jim to make an appointment and have him describe the printing machines to you in loving detail. Make sure also to ask about his connection to Bela Bartok and be prepared for a surprise!


 

That afternoon, Ondina had recovered enough to go canoeing with Tanya for a while, and they even saw a river otter swim alongside them! Since the water level was once again rather high, Monika and I took a canoe upstream into the nature preserve area out in back of our house right before sunset. We were hoping to see that river otter, but instead we saw a Great Blue Heron and that was nice, too. I was happy that we were getting more into the swing of paddling a canoe together. Martin, who was finally feeling better, made nicely spiced chicken plus sauce over linguine.

Bart and his daughter Parker visited in the evening during dinner, and it was nice to meet them. The pool had gotten too cold for swimming, so we had to turn to other amusements. Bart was curious about the electric helicopter Martin had received on his birthday, so we all went outside to try it out. The helicopter flew beautifully, but learning to control the flight path turned out to be rather difficult. Fortunately it was resistant to crashing, and even when we flew it into the top of a palm tree and then had to lash together poles to make a huge rake and claw it back out of the palm fronds, it was still flyable!


 

By then it was really dark, so we retreated inside and played Pictionary, with hilarious pictures and rather far-out guesses about what the pictures were supposed to convey, and then played a rousing game of Timeline, where you have to insert cards at the proper date in historical order. That gets a LOT more difficult as more cards are added to the time line and the intervals are consequently smaller, and poor Parker, being just 13, was having trouble with all that stuff from Ancient History. Conversely, Monika and I, being Older Than Dirt, were both doing pretty well and were down to 1 card when Martin played out his last card correctly and won the game.

Mostly, however, we just took the opportunity to talk with Bart and Parker and get to know them a bit. We were all sad that they could not stay the night, but in terms of not getting them sick with the flu it was probably a wise choice for them to return to Tampa for the evening before they drove on to Key West.



Copyright 2014 by R. W. Holt and E. M. Holt


 

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Map of Homosassa, Florida Map of Western Caribbean Cruise Map of Panama Canal Cruise

December 2013
Sun Mon Tue Wed Thu Fri Sat
1 2 3 4 5 6 7
8 9 10 11 12 13 14
15 16 17 18 19 20 21
22 23 24 25 26 27 28
29 30 31
January 2014
Sun Mon Tue Wed Thu Fri Sat
1 2 3 4
5 6 7 8 9 10 11
12 13 14 15 16 17 18
19 20 21 22 23 24 25
26 27 28 29 30 31

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