Alligators, Ants and Beach Bunny's, Oh My!

We are enjoying as much of the sunshine as we can. The weather has been just perfect.

Lisa's sister Heidi and her two son's Nyle and Orion came for a visit and to escape the never ending snowfall in Colorado. Lisa's dad has a house here in central Florida so she stayed at his place. He has a pool so who wouldn't? Besides we were only 20 minutes away. They flew in Sunday and got settled in. So we went for a visit on Monday.

Lisa, Heidi, Orion(in the pool) and Lisa's dad LaRay

After a couple hours of the girls chit chatting, we decided to go for an air boat ride to see some alligators. There is a lake north of Orlando called Lake Jessup. According to our boat captain, he said that they used to take all the nuisance alligators that animal control caught and dump them in Lake Jessup. So the population of alligators in this lake is around 9500. I don't think it would be a good lake to go skinny dipping in, if you know what I mean.

Air boats are the bees knees!

We were up front enjoying the swamp spray in our faces.

A couple of small ones by the boats.

Heidi and Orian looking for Sasquatch.

This was the only picture of Nyle I got.

Here's a fun fact. To figure out the size of a gator with just his head showing in the water you do this. The distance in inches from the nostrils to the eyes will tell you how big he is. Say the distance is 10 inches from snout to eyes. That means that that is a 10 foot gator. 1 inch = 1 foot. Also of the 10 foot length, 5 feet would be body and 5 feet would be tail. I think it helps to have a tape measure with you to get an accurate reading.

We left the Orlando area on Thursday. Moving over to the Tampa side.

Our house under the trees.

A big problem I have with Florida is the ants. They are everywhere. They have tiny ants that you can barely see and of course the biting red ants. Some campgrounds do a pretty good job of keeping them under control at the sites. This one, not so much. So when we set up, I spray everything that touches the ground with bug killer. I do this once a week. I also have a can of raid that I will attack every ant hill I see. This is done daily. I set out Terro ant traps around the rig. Those are eaten in a day so I keep putting more out. And finally I was up on the roof to install vent covers and noticed ants up there. See all that Spanish Moss over our rig? Some of it was touching, so I cut and pulled everything touching the rig. As of right now the score is: Dino-1000's, Ants- 1. They scored one because we were sitting outside having cocktails and I felt something crawling on my neck. I swatted it and it turned out to be a red ant which bit me in his final moment of life.

We met up with Heidi and her boys one more time before they had to fly back to Colorado. She was staying in St. Petersburg so we drove that way for a beach day.

St. Pete Beach

My favorite beach bunny.

It was a super nice day. The water was cool. We all got too much sun but that didn't hit us until later.

I don't know what they talk about all day. Must be recipes.

I even did a little metal detecting. I did not strike it rich. All I found was 2 batteries, a bottle cap and a gum wrapper. Someday I will be able to retire on my findings, I hope.

The Strawberry Festival starts in a couple of days so we will be quite busy with that. I hate strawberries. We will have to find a corndog festival or something yummy. 

Stay cool or warm, wherever you may be.

Inspired by Greatness

After reading a friends blog about how he McGyvered his old camp chairs to fix them, it inspired me to take matters into my own hands to fix ours. That McGyver wanna-be was Jim from JimandBarbsrvadventure. Ours have been looking pretty bad. Being left in the rain many nights after Margarita contests and from just pure neglect. I look at it this way. If they did not like the treatment we gave them, they could walk away. They have legs right?

This is the way his chairs looked before his rebuild.

And this is his final result. Nice Job Jim!

Our chairs really needed a big overhaul.

This is Lisa's chair. The table is starting to rot away. The hardware is rusting. The fabric how ever is still in pretty good shape.

My chair on the other hand is in tougher shape. The table is in good shape though but the fabric is almost worn out and so sun faded. Mine is steel and very heavy for a camp chair, while Lisa's is aluminum. So I found a website, campchairsRus.com and found a place where I could get new fabric, table and an aluminum frame to replace my steel frame. Armed with nothing but time and money, I got to work rebuilding our chairs. I drilled out all the rivets because they would have to be replaced anyways. Removed all the fabric.

I found some great paint at Home Depot and I sanded Lisa's frame down. I then primed and painted the frame and hardware. Our fabric arrived along with the new aluminum frame for my chair so I quickly painted that to match. I slid the new fabric on the frames. Put on the table and added a table to the other side that can hold a six pack of beer. That was my best idea ever.

All said and done I think I have 50-60 dollars  of supplies and labor in each chair. I think they came out great and best of all they are matching now.

See the six pack cooler on the right chair?

In the words of Redd Green, "If the women don't find you sexy, at least let them find you handy".

If you believe all that horse crap, sorry. We went to BJ's wholesale club and bought two chairs for $40.00 a piece.

Soaking and Other Stuff

I would like to say that we have been so busy here in Florida that I just don't have the time to blog. But that is not entirely true. The reasons for not blogging  are many and I stand behind every one of them.

First off is the fact that we have both been sick for the last 10 days. That really sucks. I got sick on Sunday the 29th of January. Not the puking, pooping flu but more of the chills/hot flash, body ache type of flu. I coughed so hard and for so long that my entire stomach muscles hurt every time I did it. Then as I slowly got over it Lisa caught it. We knew it was going to happen because of our small living environment. But we are both feeling better now.

Second reason for not blogging is the fact that it so damn nice here. We will have our coffee outside in the morning. Then go for our morning walk and then enjoy the day outside. Soaking up the sun or just lounging under the awning. Happy hour arrives early when it is so nice out.

Lisa has turned into the "Cat Whisperer". Stray cats are all over in the park and Florida in general. Most shy away from human contact but there is one that has finally warmed up to us. She is so sweet and friendly for a stray cat. We call her Peanut. Whenever we are outside she will come over and visit us. Our cats no longer hiss at her. Moose will just sniff her and then he doesn't care anymore. Journey is just indifferent.

Things we like and don't like about central Florida. There is a lot of crime here. So much of it is just random violence. The traffic is horrific, especially on I-4. I-4 is also under construction and will be for several years. We just purchased a Sunpass to avoid it as much as possible. A Sunpass is a transponder for your vehicle so that you can go on the toll roads without stopping to pay the tolls. It is linked to a credit card so it pays automatically.

Things we like are obviously the warm weather. More beach days are in store for us now that we are feeling better. So that is our life in a nutshell.

"Happy Hour!"