April 13-19, 2014

Little Manatee River State Park

 Wimauma, FL

Sunday

 After the exhausting past week getting ready for the Spring Fling it was great to sleep in and be lazy the entire day.

Monte did venture out in the afternoon to smooze with a couple of the guys.

 Monday

Monte and I, along with a two of the other volunteers, took the mule and club car out to explore some of the 15 miles of equestrian trails in the park.  

 

 

 Dude Lake

 

 

 

 Some of the trails were a little too muddy so we turned around

 

 

 

After lunch we explored more trials.   

 Monte cleared some of the branches off the trail.

Monte brought along one of the kayaks to put in at Dude Lake.

 

 

 

 

 

 The lake is very small. 

 It took him less than 10 minutes to paddle around the entire lake.

We drove over to one of the other canoe and kayak launches.  

 

 

 

 

 Monte thought it would only take him 15-20 minutes to paddle to the Youth Camp launch. 

I drove to the area to wait for him.

It ended up taking him 40 minutes.  He said it was awesome.

 

Tuesday

We had requested to have the day off to visit with my nephew and his wife who were visiting from Spokane.  

 We were delayed due to an accident scene-

 Every time we come across an accident it reminds me how fragile life can be.....

My nephew, Adam and his wife Danielle.  Adam just finished an 8 year tour in the Air Force.  Before starting a new career, the couple are going to spend 6 weeks in Europe touring France and visiting family in Germany and Italy.

 Adam showing my dad how to program his newly purchased GPS.

 My brother cutting up one of the six Sam's Club chickens.

What a lovely place to have a dinner party.

 Monte and Danielle

 My pretty Mom

Dad playing with his new toy

 Home made carrot cake--yum

Back home

Wednesday

Monte worked several hours doing some chores for the park. 

I didn’t have anything assigned to me so I took advantage and took a long bike ride and then sat outside enjoying the beautiful day.

Thursday

 

I was assigned to work with another volunteer, Sharon.  We were tasked with emptying out the back room of the maintenance garage.  

        After filling up the entire work table we opened up two folding tables and managed to fit the rest of the items piled high on the table.

The space is going to be eventually used as an office.  The park manager is going to go through all the items marking them for either disposal or to be returned to the storage room.  Sometime over the summer, a new storage shed is going to be built for the boxes that are being retained and then the storage area can be painted and become an office.

Monte and Joe worked on one of the club cars.  

 

 

Friday

I didn’t have any chores assigned to me today so I was pretty much a couch potato.

Monte took the tractor out to the dirt road leading to the primitive youth camp.  When we had taken out the 4 x 4 mule earlier in the week he had noticed the road needed to be smoothed out.

 When I finally decided to take a walk in the late afternoon, the heavens opened up.  Along with the rain came strong winds.    

Monte made it home just in time to help me get the awning untied and retracted.

Saturday

 On our way out to do some errands we noticed the driver in the car in the next lane was TEXTING!  Seriously!  With all the statistics about fatalities directly related to driving while texting how can anyone believe they are the exception to the rule?   What message is so important that they are willing to risk not only their own life but mine or my loved ones????

The driver was either finished with his messaging or he was embarrassed when Monte beeped at him because he did put the phone down.  

On the spur of the moment we decided to treat ourselves to dinner at Applebee’s.

 Mountain Dewwwwwwwwwww

 Gotta love Applebee's 2 for 1 drinks.

 French onion soup--I'm in heaven!