Time to Turn the Page

The days are flying by quickly.  We've been doing the rounds of the traditional spots, including the linear park along the Peace River yesterday afternoon.

They wanted to spend some time near the ocean, they said.  Boca Grande has some nice gulf beaches, so we had a late lunch yesterday at South Beach.  As you can tell from the photos, the weather was warm but mostly cloudy.

Today we visited the local attractions on the other side of the river.  We did a little shopping for pink flamingos and such at Fishermen's Village.

The Wildlife Center at Ponce de Leon Park is a favorite of theirs,  and it never seems to get boring for them.  They insisted on leaving some of their own money in the "feed the birds" pot.

Supper was at Tijuana Flats, and there's a plan to take in a movie later.  We have no party hats or noisemakers for later -- but there will be fireworks over the water at midnight, if previous years are any guide.  I wish everyone a safe and happy New Years.

A Day with the Grands

Overnight rain had moved on by the time we were ready to try, once again, to find Best Buy. Third time was the charm, and we spent some time looking for things that the kids could spend their Christmas gift cards on. Unfortunately, the local Best Buy is geared towards the average age of the citizens of this county -- about 65, I think. The items they were looking for were not available here.  Our next stop was the mall, since the girl arrived in Florida without a swim suit. She rejected one whole store's offerings as "too old lady-ish" but eventually found something she liked.  (She's wearing it in the last photo.)

The visitors were feeling underexercised, so we stopped off at Ollie's Pond on our way back to the house. It's a nice walk, and once again, we had the place mostly to ourselves except for a few photographers stalking the birds.

Supper was at Fisherman's Market in Punta Gorda tonight.  They both had gulf shrimp, and wondered if it was the same as the shrimp they get at home.  They both thought it tasted a little different -- I really had no idea.  I've always assumed that shrimp was shrimp, but the young ones likely have more sensitive taste buds than I do.

We've been struggling with the heater on the spa (and by "we" I mean JB) for the last three days, and today the water was finally warm enough to be comfortable.  There are a few traditional Florida things still on their wish list, most notably a visit to Boca Grande.  If so, there will likely be photos.

Some Fun Now

All of these concourses look pretty much the same -- though the poinsettia tree did brighten this one up. The visitors from the land of ice and snow arrived shortly after sunset last night, and immediately started to remove layers of clothing. The teenagers came to visit their grandparents, their supervisors headed off for a few days of R&R on their own.

The Grands were well prepared for a visit to an old folks home. The girl brought books to read, the boy has no fewer than 4 electronic devices with him.

Shopping broke out today, with a visit to the food court in the mall  for lunch.  They're now settled in for a session of competitive Sims.  It's good to have them here.

A Christmas Eve Walk around Ollie's Pond, and a trip to the grocery store.

Before I went to the grocery store today, I treated myself to my first visit to Ollie's Pond since we began our stay here this year. I only saw two other people while I was there, both of them near the parking lot, so I had the place mostly to myself. Just me and the birds. Egrets and herons and other birds whose names I do not recall right at this moment.

When I rode my bike around Ollie's Pond a few years ago, its computer registered almost exactly 1 mile, so it must be about .32 miles across.  (Divide by Pi.)  Sometimes the path winds through trees and brush, and on other sections the brush had been cleared down to the waters edge.

There seems to be more brush lined path (cabbage palm is pretty common) this year than in previous years.  It also seems to have more water in it than usual, and the grass and the foliage are fairly green, especially for this time of year.  More signs that the drought in Florida is over, at least for now.

There are a couple of these, of course.  I think the other one says "alligator habitat."  Today the only wildlife I saw had wings.  I left Ollie's Pond reluctantly and headed for Publix to pick up a few last minute items.  It'll just be the two of us tomorrow, so I'm downsizing Christmas dinner.  (Downsizing is turning into a theme this year.)  There were no shopping carts available -- they were all in use -- so I joined a few other determined shoppers and scoured the parking lot for a cart.  At least two people tried to take it off my hands before I got it back inside the store. But I am not yet so decrepit that I will make reservations at Olympia or Jimmy's for Christmas dinner -- though I did consider it.  Our neighbors from across the street just stopped in with a tin of homemade cookies and date nut bread.  I hope they make it a tradition.  Merry Christmas to all.

Water in its liquid form.

We Skyped with OSLO and the Grands last night, and it was too dark here for me to be able to show them the liquid water out behind the house.  They're living with ice and snow, with a side dish of cold thrown in.  Typical for Michigan for this time of year.  This first photo was taken on a walk to Sunrise Park yesterday, if I have my days straight.

This one needs no explanation. Sunset. With birds. I like to think that these are Swan Lake loons, visiting Florida for the winter.

Probably not, though.

Christmas in the Sunshine State

The winter holidays look a little strange to me here.  The lack of snow explains a lot of it, but there are other differences.  I took a short bike ride today, primarily to look at yard decorations in the neighborhood and close by, and shot a few photos.

 Santa and Frosty on a teeter-totter?  That's not a Christmas story that I'm familiar with.  There was a sign on this same lawn that said "North Pole."

 Santa got paired with snowmen and some penguins in this one.  I have trouble buying into the pink flamingos in Santa hats.  Strangely, the palm trees don't bother me.

Santa scenes outnumber nativity scenes by a large margin here, just as they do at home.  I don't remember that bird with a long neck in any stories I've ever heard about the birth of Christ.

I have several boxes of Christmas decorations at home, but this little tree is all I have here.  (I recently donated an old artificial full sized Christmas tree to Goodwill while cleaning out our former house.) Well, I do have some nice Christmas place-mats.  This tree features a single pine cone, left over from a trip around Ollie's Pond a couple of years ago.  I bought a box of candy canes today to liven up the tree a little, but I'm afraid that they'll attract ants, in spite of being wrapped in cellophane.  Strawberry and green apple flavors, I think.

Cold Beach, Warm Beach.

Last Thursday I posted a video of the lake and said "I do believe that I am done walking the beach for this year."  I was wrong.  The next day my walking group chose the beach for our morning exercise.  The neighborhood streets were icy, and we all wanted to see what the cold snap and howling winds had done to the beach.  We headed towards Big Red (the lighthouse, not the dog), until we ran out of walkable surface near Spyglass -- the lake had eroded the beach back to a secondary dune, and we were post-holing through snow.  So we turned around, and walked back as far as the north end of Idlewood.

It was wild and beautiful again.  And dramatic and strange.  Here are a few more photos to give you an idea of what cold weather and lots of wind can do down there.

Today I took my first bike ride to the beach here.  It's odd, but (except for the temperature), I like the Michigan beach better.

We've been busy with projects of all sorts since we've been here.  I'll try to do a post later that covers some of those things -- it always seems to take a few weeks to get everything running smoothly again.  Also, there have been a couple of Christmas tree posts by family members, and I want to do one of those.

F.Y.I.

Just so you know.  I'll post something as soon as I do something interesting.  So far it's all been cleaning,  grocery shopping and miscellaneous errands.  Travelling is tiring, but the grass is green and the water is liquid here.

We may have stayed too long at the fair.

We don't usually stay here until late enough in the year to watch the lake form the big ice ridges that can, in some years, extend hundreds of feet off shore.  It is a view of the lake that most of you haven't seen.  Last year the lake was mostly ice free all winter long, and although I've been told that Lake Michigan has never frozen completely over, it looks like it might make a run at it this winter.  This video clip was taken around noon.  This is 37 seconds that I spent freezing, standing at the top of our stairs, just for your entertainment.


I do believe that I am done walking the beach for this year.

Outdoor Showering Season is Over

That round silver thing on the left, near the top, is where the shower head hangs in the summer time.  The cords are for the screen that pulls down to provide a small bit of privacy for outdoor showering.  The shower head has been indoors for a while now, but until snow showed up on the walk-way, anything was possible.  It isn't a lot of snow -- we had more earlier this season -- but it's the first time that it has drifted onto our covered walk.

Our morning walk today was a trudge through snow -- not much had been plowed, except for individual driveways, up here on the dune.  Lakeshore drive wasn't much better, with just one lane clear.  We opted for a walk through the woods in order to stay out of the wind as much as possible.  The small trees that still have leaves are immature beech trees, I believe.

Saturday's walk was both longer and colder, but the streets were clear.  We walked as far as the New Party Store on Lake Macatawa and stopped in for some hot chocolate before returning home.  It was a bit of a stretch -- at almost 3.5 miles, it is the furthest I've walked in a while.  I spent the afternoon Christmas shopping with the Grands, followed up by dinner with OSLO and the crew.  It was a nice day, but a fair amount of activity for this old woman.  I slept well that night.

One of our walking group has recently moved here from a state where it never snows.  She pointed out this tree to us this morning --  she sees beauty in this kind of thing.  It's interesting to see winter from the perspective of someone who has been looking forward to its arrival.

Sunset Bluff

The morning group continues to walk nearly every day, and most times I walk with them.  Twice this week we walked through Sunset Bluff, an upscale neighborhood just south of our little community.  It's dunes, so it's a lot of uphill/downhill.  A few of you have biked to the top of that dune, and know what I mean.  Monday we walked nearly to the top then went down the stairs to the beach and walked back along the water's edge.  That's where the idea was hatched to rent some fat tired bikes and ride them from the State Park to Tunnel Park and back.  It wasn't on anybody's bucket list, but maybe it should have been.

Today we walked all of the streets and cul-de-sacs in Sunset Bluff, then returned to our neighborhood via the secret route, down a common driveway for a number of homes, then along a path that goes next to those tennis courts in the back corner of our neighborhood.  Fun.

No words, just a photo that LH took this afternoon.