March 1 - 9

March 1^st

 

We visited the site of the largest Mysore fig tree in the U.S. Planted in 1896, it has grown to a height of over 93 feet, a crown spread of over 130’ and a circumference of about 40’. This tree has withstood many storms and severe weather over the years.

 

 

 

 

Even though the figs are not real good for eating, a lengthy process has been developed for making jelly which has a very nice color, texture and a taste which many people find very good. If I find this jelly available for purchase, I will bring a jar home.

 

 

March 2^nd

 

Today, we drove to Sarasota to attend the home opening game for the Baltimore Orioles spring training season. The Atlanta Braves were the visiting team.

 

 

 

There is always a big cheer from the crowd when the public address announcer gives the air temperatures for the three cities. Today in Baltimore: 40°; Atlanta: 45°; and Sarasota: 74°. I was on the big screen during one of the inning changes when they were searching for the fan of the game.

 

 

My granddaughters and I especially like to see Manny Machado and Chris Davis play.

 

 

 

We realize that it is training, but we would have like to have seen a more successful game for the O’s. Chris Davis did hit a home run which provided just about the only excitement for the game.

 

 

March 5^th

 

Our friends, Barb and Jim, left yesterday to spend a week on Marco Island. Today, Cordell and I returned to a site for a special challenge geocache. In order to qualify, a cacher must have logged at least 3,000 finds. We had not reached that number last year, but we this year we had 3,341 finds. We were anxious to meet this challenge. On February 6^th,   we were disappointed when we were there and could not access the area due to a lot of water that had not drained from the record rain fall the occurred in January. Today, we could walk on the terrain without getting our shoes covered in water. As often happens, the paper log inside the geocache was soaking wet. Sometimes, we will put a wet log on the hood of our car and dry it. But, the car was only warm today. So, I found an alternate way to dry a wet log when I attached it to the end of my hiking stick and held it very close to the tail pipe while the engine was idling.

 

 

 

March 6^th—Sue’s Birthday

 

I decided to celebrate my birthday by spending a restful day reading and finished with a rainbow trout dinner at the Cracker Barrel.

 

 

There was a geocache placed on the porch at the restaurant. We looked the area over briefly before we went in to be served and did not find the cache. As we were leaving, Cordell gave it a more thorough search and finally found the container. There are similar caches placed at other Cracker Barrels across the U.S. and they are called “Off Your Rocker”.

 

 

 

March 7th

 

 

We were thankful when we woke up and saw beautiful Florida weather today. The resident alligator made another appearance.

 

 

We were very excited because our son, Andy, daughter-in-law, Corinne and granddaughter, Janelle arrived this afternoon to spend a week with us. Their previous flight in February was cancelled when the D.C. area received record snow fall.

 

 

I certainly had missed seeing Janelle.

 

 

 

 

It did not take them long to get acclimated to this region and weather.

 

 

 

March 8^th

 

We made our first trip to the nearby tomato field where we selected some large tomatoes.

 

 

And we had another nice sunset to end the day.

 

 

March 9^th

 

The alligator greeted us early this morning before we ate our breakfast.

 

 

We made a trip to the Naples Zoo which is always a nice and enjoyable thing to do and we usually visit there at least one time each year.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

We like the style of this zoo because the animals are housed outside.

 

 

 

Each time Janelle goes there, she is able to get the ibises to eat from her hand.

 

 

 

 

 

Leap Day

February 29, 2016

 

What better way to spend this extra day of the year than to go geocaching! Our local friend and renowned geocache owner, Brian, met us at our condo and we all took off for Lehigh Acres.

 

 

We found a total of 20 geocaches—some of which were puzzles that we had to solve before we could get the final coordinates to put into our GPS devices.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Cordell and I completed a challenge that required us to find a geocache every day of the calendar year. We had every day except February 29^th filled in for the past three months. We were glad that this was a Leap Year because we had one shot to do it, or wait another 4 years for the opportunity. We were just one of the 5,698 geocachers who needed just ONE find on Leap Day to fill their 366 Days-of-the-Year grid.

We earned a special virtual souvenir for finding a cache on Leap Day.

 

Leap Day 2016

 

 

With the 5 of us searching, each of us found at least one cache before the others had spotted it.
 

 
 

Jim was on a roll and he saw some that the rest of us missed.

 

Jim and Barb reached a milestone when they found their 200^th geocache.

 

 

My personal favorite find of the day was for a cache named Outback Cache which had a 4 out of a 5 difficulty rating. Caches rated like this usually take a good amount of time to find and often result in a DNF (Did Not Find). After reading the hint, I knew exactly want I was going to be looking for. I really like the clever way some cache owners tie names and hints together and this one was: “What is most popular type of entree item at the restaurant that shares this cache's name?” As soon as we arrived at the site, I saw two wooden surveyors type stakes with yellow ribbons tied to them. When I pulled up one of the stakes, there was a small geocache attached to the bottom part that went into the ground.

 

 

We were glad to avenge a Do Not Find on a cache that we missed when we were caching with Brian earlier in the month.

 

 

We had a difficult time finding one cache that had a decoy placed at the site. After a long and thorough search, Brian finally saw what the rest of us had passed by more than once.

 

 

We packed lunches so that we could have more time caching rather than taking time to eat in a restaurant. Besides, it was such a warm sunny day that we were loathe to go inside. And so, we stopped at the same 7-11 where we had eaten with Brian the last time we were in the area.

 

 

We often see interesting things while out geocaching and today I spied this pretty red wild flower that I was not able to identify. Barb and I guessed that it must be in the poinsettia family.

 

 

Late afternoon, we went to the library where a geocaching event was held. We enjoyed meeting and conversing with other geocachers and were able to put faces to some of the names we have been seeing in geocache logs.

 

 

There is a very interesting geocache inside the library that we found last year. Since Barb has had a lot of experience shelving library books, she was able to find it very quickly. The name of the cache was ‘Due East, Ref. 349.73’ and she immediately knew where to go to look for it.

 

 

None of us wanted to give up this day, but we quit before we completely ran out of energy. Brian was able to stay and eat a rather late dinner with us at the condo. It was a very, very enjoyable day and we made hay while the sun shined!

 

 

Back in Commission

February 28, 2016

 

We have experienced cooler temps for the past month, but today we were delighted that it finally warmed up more to our expectations.

 

We have been joined by our good Maryland friends, Jim and Barb Hauser. After worshipping together at Hope Lutheran Church this morning, we made a quick stop at the grocery store before returning to the condo. Well, Cordell did make another stop so that the Hausers could find a certain geocache to qualify them to look for another one we have on our To Find list.

 

 

 

 

We enjoyed eating our lunch on the lanai.

 

 

Late afternoon, we all went to the swimming pool.

 

 

Each of us has various aches and sore spots that felt much better after soaking in the hot tub.

 

 

I especially liked the view of the blue sky, white clouds and the palm leaves.

 

 

We celebrated Cordell’s birthday with a spaghetti dinner on the lanai.

 

 

 

 

This past month was quite challenging for us as I was plagued by some health issues which involved a few doctor visits, an E/R visit, CT scans, an ultra sound, blood tests and 3 courses of antibiotics. Unfortunately the antibiotics caused stomach and intestinal problems and the cure was almost worse than the illness. So, I was sidelined for almost a month. I didn’t miss out on much of anything because the temperatures were on the cool side. And as Cordell remarked to me, “Everything to do in Florida is outdoors.” But I at least had some beautiful views while recuperating.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Last year, we were intrigued by people who we saw pushing their pet dogs around in doggie strollers. This year, we have seen people with their dogs in their shopping carts and these are not service dogs.

 

 

 

When we went to Bass Pro Shop to look for a geocache, we discovered that they were conducting a fishing clinic for children. We watched a young boy reel in a very nice bass.

 

 

 

On February 12^th, we went to 5 Guys Restaurant for lunch and were happy that it was warm enough to eat outside.

 

 

Cordell has been keeping Jim and Barb busy solving geocache puzzles. We have solved over 30 Puzzles.

 

 

 

On the 26^th, we had a pretty full day of fun which started out looking for geocaches at Cape Coral.

 

 

 

 

 

 

We ate lunch at a very well managed Bob Evans Restaurant.

 

 

On the 27^th, we made our first trip to Sanibel Island this season. We took a driving tour through the J. N. Ding Darling National Wildlife Refuge. We stopped at several locations along the trail where we scanned QR barcodes that were on posts. That opened YouTube videos where a park ranger gave us information.

 

 

 

 

We did see an alligator there today.

 

 

 

 

There is a very nice visitor/education center and gift shop. During this time, there were exhibits posted for a children’s contest. One I though was very cute depicted depleted beaver habitat.