On our way to Lake Kissimmee State Park, we stopped to visit Norma, Molly and Ramble, whom we met at Tomoka State Park about a month ago. They live in Melbourne Beach, just south of Cape Canaveral. They have travelled all over the country, and their home was filled with interesting antiques, including an enormous (maybe eight-foot-long) mirror they inherited, and a Parisian alabaster chandelier that was one of the first to be electrified. It was fun seeing them and chatting about what we've done in the last month, and they served a really wonderful lunch and gave Katie her new favorite toy: a flamingo purse filled with little plastic dinosaurs. Here are a couple pictures:

They have made their backyard into a beautiful garden, and it looks like it was totally spared by the hurricanes.

As we drove away, here is Katie with her new friend (the pink fluffy thing). The next day, she had dinosaur races on our kitchen floor.

Also on our way out of Melbourne, we saw this car. It was covered on all sides with messages about Jesus. I bet he has caused at least one accident from folks trying to read his car. Even his brake lights had messages written (painted in black) on them; they said "turn to Jesus" on them. Clever!

Here is our spot at Lake Kissimmee State Park. It's a very wooded park bordering the lake. There are lots of beautiful twisty oak trees and some wildlife. Here's our spot:

There were two pairs of sandhill cranes that wandered into everyone's camps. Here they are at our doorway. They stayed outside it for about an hour. I think some of the campers might be feeding them (we didn't).


Katie and I drove around on Friday while Mark worked, and we found a street doing garage sales. She picked out the above green toy golf set, and I found a couple puzzles and antique books (one has a charming, long Christmas poem written into it). One lady had a case of costume jewelry, but a real-looking pearl necklace was in there, and she saw me pick it up and said, "That's 25 cents." I said, I thought it might be real, and she should charge more than that. She was really sweet, was clearing out a lot of stuff and just wanted to see it gone. I bought it from her and gave her our website address. She and her husband had just recently bought a trailer, after she retired from teaching, and she hoped to make it out to the west some day. I hope you do, if you are reading this.

There were some easy-to-climb blown-down trees in nearby campsites, and Katie really enjoyed trying them.

This morning we looked out our windows, getting ready to leave, and we saw a little girl riding a bike. A family had come in across from us, late last night. Katie got to meet their youngest girl, Winter, and play for an hour or so before we left. Winter is 6, and played really well with Katie. And it turns out that her mom, Laurie, teaches website design. I wish I'd had more time to chat with her and have Katie and Winter play. Hopefully there will be more kids at this next spot, since it's still a weekend (saturday). So far I've really enjoyed the folks we have met on this trip. As folks told us before we left, the people you meet camping are often very friendly and helpful.

We're off toward Gainesville today, to Paynes Prairie State Preserve. I think it's supposed to be a nice one, from the description. Tomorrow is the Super Bowl, so I'm glad we'll be set up someplace so Mark can relax and enjoy it. Also it's the three-month anniversary of our starting this trip.