The Meandering Vacation: Chapter 9

After spending a wonderful day at the mermaid farm we drove to our good friends' house on Pine Island, which is just "inside" of Sanabel Island and isn't nearly to crowded. We both love Pine Island and spending time with Pete and Judy.

Soon after we arrived Judy fed us a fresh dinner of crab cakes and fresh veggies. Yummie!

The next day was Friday and I actually put on a slacks suit and drove to Napels to visit a couple of business customers. Yeah, I worked a day during vacation, but I didn't have to consider that day a vacation day. I got home late in the afternoon, showered and changed into nice, cool shorts and tank top, twisted up my hair, put on some lipstick and we all went to Octoberfest.

Yup, a German, a Irishman, and a couple of dutch women at a local Octoberfest. A giant tent with Oompa bands, polka bands, and lots of men in green shorts. It was 90 degrees, which is WAY too hot for us northerners, with carnival rides, at least 5 kinds of sausages, kraut, potatoes, and lots and lots of good strong beer. Wonderfully cool beer.

Judy, Ron, and Pete in the heat.

Look at thoses rosy red cheeks, which had nothing to with the 90+ degree heat and massive quantities of beer.

These were tastey little bottles of fig flavored schnapps, which were served by scantily clad young girls on trays of ice to keep the liquor cold. Sooooooo nice.

This woman was from Germany and was visiting with her husband and two kids. We got along great.

The Meandering Vacation: Chapter 7.5

I forgot! I forgot!

After leaving the nice little hotel in Inverness on our way to the incomparable Weeki Wachee Springs we did make one stop to refule... our stomachs.

We drove around and it didn't take Ron very long to sniff out this place:

Ron had bacon, hash browns, and eggs over medium. I had bacon, eggs, and (yummy!) grits. Real, honest, southern grits. And not the instant type. Not only were our stomachs refuled, but you could taste the love in the food and our spirits were refuled too.

The Meandering Vacation: Chapter 8

I know, I know. It’s been a couple of weeks since my last chapter, but there’s no more waiting! Here are photos from the highlight of our trip: Weeki Wachee Springs!

They performed a very accurate version of Hans Christian Andersen’s “The Little Mermaid”. I told Ron that I wanted to retire down there and audition for the role of the wicked witch. I can cackle with the best of them.

The Meandering Vacation: Chapter 7

After lunch and a few beverages we decided to drive a few hours and stayed just into Georgia. That night we got online and searched long and hard for touristy things to do in Georgia the next day. There was nothing. Well, there was plenty of things to do for kids, and for people who liked specific historical things like trains of the locomotive type as well as trains of the underground type, Ron voted against going to the relatively new Atlanta Aquarium. We did find an amusement park along the way but their rides were too small for Ron who is a roller coaster fiend and snob. So we kept driving.

We spent the night in the small town of Inverness, Florida. I was surprised at Inverness, which looked like a good sized town on the map, and when we got there we found lots of churches, restaurants, housing developments, bars, grocery stores, and plenty of things to do for those people who lived there. There were almost no hotels. Well, there were exactly 2 hotels. We couldn’t find one and we drove by the 2nd one which had an old MOTEL sign that made me have flashbacks of the Bates Family Motel. But the buildings (I think there were 4 total) were not as old as the sign, and were comfortable.

Ron had the presence of mind to fill the growler with beer at a brewery earlier that day and we sat outside our room with bare feet and enjoyed the warm damp night breeze. I was mesmerized by a sticky toed tree toad that clung to a post outside of our hotel door. Ahhhhhhh. Florida.

The Meandering Vacation: Chapter 6

We spent the night in Bowling Green Kentucky, not far from the Corvette Museum and only about 90 minutes from our next scheduled stop: Nashville Baby! And we didn’t have to be there until noon, when we were scheduled to have lunch with our most infamous friends: Pete Huttlinger and his adorable wife Erin Morris.

Now Erin is the publicist for some pretty famous country music stars including Vince Gill, LeAnn Rimes, and John Michael Montgomery. And of course the uber talented Pete Huttlinger, who is arguable (I’ve argued about it) the most talented guitarist in North America.

So we’re sittin’ there eatin’ some great organic, fresh, and tasty Mexican with these guys and getting’ caught up. Did you know? Did you? Pete’s going to be on The Tonight Show with Jay Leno TOMORROW NIGHT! It’s too cool for words. We are just SO proud to know you Pete. So set your TiVo’s to record Jay Leno Thursday night, November 1st. Even better, he’s playing with LeAnn Rimes. Just the two of them making beautiful music together for us. All is right in the world.

Then set your TiVo’s for next week Tuesday (November 6th) and sit down to enjoy them again on the “Dancing with the Stars” show. Again: so proud to be able to tell all my friends that we “did lunch” with you. And you too Erin! Love you!

Since Pete and Erin had just returned home from a long 3-nights-sold-out-performances in Aspen weekend, where Pete reunited with the rest of John Denver’s old band for the 10th annual John Denver memorial concerts. Whew! Three nights in Aspen with three completely sold out shows. And Pete and the band keep saying they’ll never do it again because nobody would be interested… Right! We wanna go next year!

Click on this link for Pete’s website and click the “Schedule” button on the right to look up his upcoming events. http://www.petehuttlinger.com/schedule.cfm You can purchase his C.D.'s there too.

We said our goodbyes in the parking lot after they suggested we go just a block or two down the road to Blackstone Brewery so that we could sample some of the local micro brews. It was there that we realized that we completely forgot to take any photos of our lunch with Pete and Erin. Well, I do have photos that I took during a concert he performed near Ludington Michigan a year and a half ago. I’ll give you a couple of shots of that performance here:

Now if you want a real thrill go to You Tube and watch Pete’s performance of “Superstition”. It’s the bomb!

And here are some photos of Blackstone Brewery, which had excellent beer; well above the average micro brew. And we’re beer snobs! I’m just sayin’ is all.

This photo of the pick up truck with a trailer full of spent grains, or grains that were used to make the beer here, belongs to a farmer who is going to give the grains to his cows and/or pigs. I am just amazed how cool it is that not only are the grains used for making beer, but instead of throwing them out they GIVE them to animal farmers to feed their livestock. I’ll drink to that.

The Meandering Vacation: Chapter 5

And where did we go right after Mammoth cave? We drove an entire 15 or so miles to the National Corvette Museum.

Here are loads of gratuitus photos. Enjoy!

The Meandering Vacation: Chapter 4

Monday morning I awoke early, grabbed the laptop and headed to the free breakfast offered by the hotel. I checked my Emails and surfed the web for about an hour, sipping my tea, before checking out breakfast. It was the usual hotel breakfast, with tons of pastries, cereals, and breads, and little in the way of “real food”. I found that all of the free hotel breakfasts on our trip offered hard boiled eggs, which I usually ate.

Now I’m a little bit torn about checking my Emails while on vacation. On one side I just love modern technology, and it makes me able to go on vacation without worrying about problems at work. On the other hand I sure miss the days when going on vacation was forced relaxation, and you honestly didn’t even think about work for the entire time you were gone. I vividly remember the first time we went on vacation after Ron got his first cell phone. We left on vacation and one of his sub contractors called with a question. If we hadn’t had the cell phone nothing would have got done on that part of the job for the whole week we were gone. Ron was delighted, elated, and was able to relax the whole time we were gone just because people called him with questions that got answered, and he was making money while we vacationed.

Where were we? Oh yeah, Mammoth Cave. We left the hotel at the crack of 10:30 and got to Mammoth Cave about an hour later. When you get off the exit to Mammoth Cave they say to drive west for a few miles. Trust me, it’s more like 10 miles, and not all of the signs are clear telling you how to get there: it reminded me of a road rally. You might be tempted to stop at any one of the dozen or so trinket shops along the way, or Dinosaur World, or camp sites, etc.

Once we found the headquarters nestled on top of a densely wooded mountain, which was honestly a beautiful place, we parked and went inside. There were more than a half dozen different cave tours you could take and we decided on the “snowball tour” which started in about a half hour and included a box lunch inside the cave (for an extra $5). It was a 3 hour tour, and now you’ll have the theme to Gilligan’s Island in your head for the rest of the day. This particular cave wasn’t pretty like some you might think of, but it was large, which I loved because of my slight claustrophobia, and it had over 150 years of history. I’ll give you some pictures here of 100+ year old graffiti and of our lunch.



These are the "Snowballs" made of either lime or gypsum (I forget which).









Here is my Ronnie standing in the "lunch room" where we had turkey sandwiches, chips, and an apple. I actually drank coffee to get warm.
Hello! It's me!

This is he ladie's bathroom at the bottom of the cave. I honestly thought it was one of the coolest parts of the tour. How did they get plumbing down there, and can you imagine the lift pumps needed to get the "stuff" back up? Yikes!

This is some 100 year + grafitti. I reads "Cofland's Tonic" which I'm guessing was a few medicinal herbs soaked in cheap vodka. They wrote the grafitti using the soot from the flames of their candles.

We left the caves and headed just a few miles down the highway to the National Corvette Museum. Almost all of the cars there are on loan from private individuals, and other than that I think the photos will tell the rest of the story... tomorrow.