Author: rvingwithapurpose

Monday, January 4, 2021

Sunday was a beautiful day.  We of course began by watching the Lester Memorial worship service and were so glad Pastor Harvey was feeling better and was able to preach.  Afterwards we did some more hiking around the camp and some cooking for the week.  We had our team meeting in the afternoon.  We have one new NOMAD on our team, Janet and it will be fun getting to know her.  We have not worked with Ken and Vi so we will get to know them better over the three weeks too.  We also have Kevin and Suzan who worked with us in Hattiesburg, Wanda, and Gregg and Karen our leaders, we have worked with previously.  This will be a good team and a fun three weeks.  After the meeting we all walked around the campground and did some more exploring.  We keep finding additional areas.

Today we went to ECHO (Educational Concerns for Hunger Organization) for the first time.  ECHO is about 20 minutes from the campground and is a 55 acre global farm and research center.  After devotion with the ECHO staff, we spent the remainder of the morning touring the farm.  This is an amazing place and we would encourage you to visit their website and read and learn.  They are working to relieve hunger by teaching people to grow their own food using sustainable resources.  We look forward to working to help the ECHO team reach their ministry goals.

We began that work this afternoon by moving a lot of bamboo out of a lean-to and then removing the machine to pressure treat bamboo.  We will be rebuilding this area over the next several days.  Hard work but very rewarding.

Saturday, January 2, 2021

Friday morning we were on the road at 7:00 am as planned.  Of course we did not stay up to welcome the new year’s arrival Thursday night.  We were fast asleep and since we were in a state park there were no fireworks to wake us either.  It rained most of Thursday night and unfortunately was still raining at when we started out.  We had intermittent hard rain until we turned south on I-75 from I-10.  After that turn to the south the weather improved each mile.  By the time we made it to Ocala, where we called it a day, it was 81 and sunny.  Hopefully the great weather will continue.

We continued our trek south this morning, arriving in north Fort Myers shortly before lunch.  We will be staying at the Riverside Camp and Retreat Center while working a mission project nearby. We spent the afternoon setting up FRED, cleaning and settling in and visiting the local produce stand and Publix.  Then we took a walk around the camp.  We found a great pier in the camp on the Okeechobee Waterway where we will be able to watch great sunsets.  Looking forward to more exploring.  Hope you all have a great weekend.  Stay safe!!

Thursday, December 31, 2020

Wednesday it was wonderful to see our pastor Harvey looking much improved when he led the midweek devotion. He and Lana have both been ill and we are so thankful they are both much better and he is planning to preach Sunday.  Anne began Wednesday with a NOMADS membership interview and did the same again this morning.  It’s encouraging to see our number of applicants finally increasing again.  The remainder of the morning we rode our bikes on some new-to-us trails.  There are so many great trails to ride in Gulf State Park.  We really enjoy being able to just get on our bikes at our site and ride on safe trails.  You can ride or hike different trails every day and never get bored and spot wildlife along the way. We, however, did not see the eagles when we stopped by the nest before lunch.  After we cooked another great seafood lunch, this time flounder, we went back to the nest. We hit the jackpot with both eagles on the limbs above the nest.  Such beautiful birds! A great ending to a really great day.

The forecast for today was iffy with rain predicated.  We loaded the bikes into the truck last night to protect them from the possible severe weather and heavy rain.  This morning was actually beautiful, so after another NOMADS interview we hiked out to the beach.  The water was much rougher today with rip currents and waves 5-8 feet due to the storm coming in, but it was a great day for a walk in the beach and then one last hike.

Sadly, we will be leaving in the morning, but have already made plans to return next year.  We spent the afternoon preparing FRED for the two day trip further south.  The storms have now arrived and we are hopeful that the weather will clear before our 7:00 am departure time tomorrow.  It’s been a great two weeks of R&R and now it’s time to get back to work.

Tuesday, December 29, 2020

Monday was moving day.  When we made our reservations, our site was not available for the last four days of our visit so we reserved another site.  When leaving you are supposed to vacate your site by 11:00 am.  Monday morning, several times we either walked over or rode our bikes to our new site to see if it was vacant.  It was not.  After one pass by our new site, Max said, “You know it would be funny if that other RV is waiting for us to leave to go to our site.”  Anne did not think it was that funny.    At 11:00 Anne went to the office to pay the balance on the reservation and they asked if we were on the site yet and she told them no, we were waiting for the previous RV to leave.  The computer system couldn’t let us pay the balance and get our new car pass until the site was vacant.  Ok, we would just wait and return to the office later.  The next time we checked the couple was pulling out of the site.  We quickly went back to our site and moved the truck, bikes and FRED to our new site for the next 4 days.  As soon as FRED was parked, Anne returned to the office to pay our balance.  Another lady entered the office at the same time.  She was there to pay her balance – for our old site!  They had been waiting all morning for us to vacate our site.  They finally left the park to refill their propane tank, hoping we would be off their “new” site when they returned.  We just switched sites with another couple and both had been waiting for the other to move all morning.  The office said they just realized it a few minutes before we both arrived and they figured it was too late to tell us just to stay where we were. Oh well, we got our exercise, walking and biking between the sites all morning.   After setting everything up again, Max checked on the eagles again – not on the nest.  The rest of the day was spent relaxing.

Today was another Volunteer Tuesday and we returned to the primitive campsites to continue installing a wooden fence to keep the alligators out of the camp sites and to keep campers out of the alligators’ creek.  We made great progress today.  The fence is looking good.  There were 17 volunteers today, some from the community and some from the campground.  After spending the morning working, we hiked out to Lake Shelby and spotted one of the alligators in a canal.  It was a small one, about four feet long.   Nothing like those huge ones in the Everglades.  However, Anne is still thanking Santa for not giving us a tent this year.  A new GPS was the perfect gift. Two more days to enjoy Gulf State Park.

Praying for all of you who read our ramblings, that you stay safe, warm and healthy.