Feb. 16, 2014-Port St. Joe, FL-K-

Has been pretty quiet since the last post.  We have been getting projects done here in the campground.  We put 3 new roofs on various buildings.  Our next project is the entrance station.  This one will be a little harder as we will be working around traffic and is more in the public eye!  It isn't a big building, just has a lot of different angles and valleys that we haven't had to deal with in the other buildings.   Keep your fingers crossed.

So, I am going to show a my nerdy side.  Tom had given me a portable weather station for Christmas as I couldn't bring the one we had at the house.  I am going to torture all with the monthly statistics for January. Tom is used to this.

High temp:72
Low temp:22
High Wind:18
Wind Chill:18
Avg. High Temp:57.35
Avg. Low Temp:41.70
Avg. Temp:50
Precipitation for the month:5.09

(Thank God she left out sunrise, moonrise, sunset, moonset, and high and low tides....:>)

When we had the cold snap with the sleet in January, they had to rescue turtles again from the bay.  A couple weeks ago we were told they were going to release them out on the beach.  A group of us went down to watch.  They had about 130 to be let go.  It was really neat.  They were pretty happy to get back out in the water.

Here is a couple of videos I took, one of one of the larger ones getting released

.   They put all the big ones in kiddie pools!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pFHdjdI0rgk

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GtiiJ7cyfm8

Last Sunday on the 9th, we headed north of Port St. Joe, to Wewahitchka (Wewa for short) and kayaked the Dead Lakes Recreation Area.  Very interesting place.  All Cypress trees.  There were a few fisherman out. The water was like glass.  The lighting was really neat.  Big puffy clouds, a little blue sky against the grey of the trees and dark water.  I hope one of my pictures captured it.

We were anticipating seeing a lot of birds.  But it was dead quiet.  We came upon a bunch of ravens squawking in the trees and I saw a large nest on top of a dead tree, a couple turtles sunning themselves, but that was it.  Not sure if that is normal or just the time of year.

Here's a link to a 30 sec. video of the paddle:

http://youtu.be/ckcod9Wm0jw

January 29, 2014-Thurs-P.St. Joe, FL-K-

They said it would happen and it did.  The ground is covered with sleet!!  They were predicting snow, but I think that was for the northern panhandle.  It has been between 30 and 32 degrees all day.  Yesterday most of the counties here closed their schools.  Some major bridges were closed due to ice on the roads.  Who woulda thunk!

It wouldn't be too much of a problem, but my good cold weather gear is home and we had to work in the bad weather today.  Granted we were undercover, but it was a 3 sided building so it was cold.  But it worked out fine.  

We worked on a dump truck that the bed is all rusted as a result of the salt air.  It is unreal how much havoc it does to vehicles down here.  In the north we have salted roads, down here the salt air.  Tom cut the rusted floor off of it while I sanded the body with a power sander.  

There are a few tenters here and I don't know how they are getting through this cold weather.  I would be looking for the nearest hotel with a hot, hot, shower!

The Campground host Ken, has been giving me all sorts of extra clothes to wear!  I have my Bean boots, but they are just rubber and no insulation, and being on a cement floor all morning, I couldn't feel my toes. Just like having plastic ski boots on!  He dropped of a pair of warmer looking boots for me this afternoon as we will be working outside tomorrow  along with a pair of heavier socks.  I feel like such a wuss. (not sure how to spell that word!)

The pictures should tell a better story.

This post is LONG over due as our internet has been almost worse than dial-up and getting anything to happen is like watching paint dry.

Here are some pictures.

We are surprised our screen house survived!

They closed the ramps to the beach it was so icy.

I never thought I would see ice on the sea oats!

2010 Crestone Needle Hike

Since we are now hunkered down for two months as volunteers at St. Joseph Peninsula State Park, and also hunkered down with the weather, we thought we'd put up some posts from past trips & past hikes. In late August of 2010, we were at our land in Colorado. We hiked up to South Colony Lake, which is at the base of Crestone Needle, one of Colorado's 53, 14,000 foot high peaks-this one is 14,203 feet to be exact, and the lake is at 12,000 feet. We hadn't done this climb in years, and it's kind of rugged, the trail starting at 9000 feet in elevation, and climbing steadily for about 4 miles to the lake at 12,000 feet. Crestone Needle itself is a technical climb, and some say the most difficult of the 14,000 footers. On average, 2 to 4 people are killed up there each year, and we always know when there's trouble, as a rescue helicopter from Fort Carson Army Base will come thundering over our property when we're there, and we can often watch it all the way to the peak.

This hike is sort of near our land in Westcliffe, Colorado, the trailhead being about 8 miles south of the town of Westcliffe, and about an hours drive from "camp". You can see the peak in the picture below, taken from the deck on our property:

If you go straight up and slightly right from "Long Pants Bob's" telephone pole, out thar in the trees, you'll see a big flat topped mountain, Humboldt Peak. The next peak to the right of it is Crestone Needle, with the distinctly pointed top and South Colony Lake is at at the base of Crestone Needle. (Don't forget you can click on any picture and it will bring up all of them in an enlarged slideshow-much better way to see them. Keep clicking each pic to move to the next one, and click anywhere off the pictures to return to the story).

When you turn off Rt. 69 south of town, you start out on a good county road, which turns kind of gnarly when you cross the line into the National Forest and county road maintenance stops. The road stops at a parking area in thick woods, and the trail starts at a foot bridge crossing a creek there, and actually continues on in the bed of the discontinued part of the road (You used to be able to drive further on a good part of the way, in a high centered 4wd, but the Forest Service banned motorized travel years back when the entire top of the Sangre range was designated a wilderness area-above a certain elevation is the delineator, I believe.) 

You hike about a mile to a mile and a half in the old roadbed, where you come to a choice-continue on the road and a longer but less steep climb, or go right and up a trail that is a more direct route that is a workout! We went thataway. To be honest, it had been SO long-about 10 years maybe?, and my knee had gotten trashed in a rafting trip about a month & a half before, I wasn't sure if I would be able to finish it or not! Not too far along this trail, you start hiking in and out of the treeline, and the views start to open up.

Along the way, we ran into some four legged company, who, as you can see,  were not real concerned about us showing up in their territory. (The first pic is the Needle).

At this point, we were completely above treeline, and it is probably the most spectacular place we've ever hiked to in the mountains. Humboldt is towering over you on your right, straight ahead is a very high wall that connects Crestone Needle with Crestone Peak, and slightly left and the end of that wall is Crestone Needle itself, rising straight up out of South Colony Lake for 2200', almost a half mile.

For you skeptics, that is an altimeter on the watch! We were lucky that day, as it was dead calm and warm. Often you get there just in time for a thunderstorm to blow up over the ridge, so it cold, windy and wet, and has you scurrying for cover. The weather there is treacherous, where you are at 12,000' and the storm is directly over your head, and often times still growing in size. The Sangre De Cristo's are a narrow range, and on the backside of that wall connecting the peaks is a 60 mile wide valley, the San Luis Valley, that's at 5000' and very hot in summer. The winds blow across it and get hoisted up and over the 12 to 14,000' elevations, causing afternoon storms almost daily, that soak the Wet Mountain Valley where Westcliffe & Silvercliff are located, and our property is, 11 miles further away on the east side of that same valley. 

This last pic above is an aerial, looking north at Crestone Needle's peak, and down to South Colony Lake. The hike out goes fast, and you certainly have earned a cold one or two, when you get back to camp and collapse in a chair!

January 11, 2014-Sat.-K-We are back!  Sorry for the lack of posting again.  We have actually been quite busy.  We ended up getting volunteer positions here at Port St. Joe St. Park.  Some other volunteers didn't show up so we filled their slots.  We have the positions until the end of February, but it could extend into March, but we don't know about that at this time.   Also our internet has not been good so  it is really now Jan. 18th, not the 11th!!!

Our duties consist of filling in for the CG hosts on Monday and Tuesday so they have 2 days off.  We have 2 bathhouses to clean and about 60 campsites to make sure are tidy for the next campers and general maintenance of the campground.  On Wed., Thurs., Fri., we are out in the field doing whatever needs doing around the whole park.

This has been an interesting week to start volunteering.  On Monday our first day filling in for the hosts, the high temp. was in the mid 30's and a wind chill of 27!  It was howling a gale here.  We were FREEZING! We got those bathrooms cleaned in record time.   There aren't too many people here this time of year so it there wasn't too much to do.  I headed into town and went to the Goodwill store and found some winter gloves and hats for us to wear!!  The store had  some new hats they were selling for $3.00 and they are not the most attractive, but fashion was not a priority!

That afternoon, we went around and turned on all the taps to drip so they wouldn't freeze overnight.  It got down to 22 that night.  They rent cabins on St. Joe Bay and they had some minor freeze ups that Tom helped them fix on Tuesday. (All the plumbing runs outside underneath the cabins, which are up on stilts because of hurricanes). No big problems, but things they seldom see down here.

One of the park employees has hooked onto Tom for vehicle maintenance so he has changed the oil in all of the vehicles.  I have, with some other volunteers, taken trucks out to pick up the never ending palm fronds that are continuously coming down off the Palmetto trees with all the wind we have been having.

With all of this cold weather they have been having problems with the turtles that live in the bay.  They can go into shock and they can drown.  On Wednesday local volunteers had pulled about 60 turtles out of the water.  The turtles then get sent to Panama City to a facility there where they get rehabbed  and then released back near where they were found.

Thursday was a rainy and drizzly day and there wasn't much for us to do except for Tom who was working on the vehicles.  Just down the beach a few miles we were told that a Beaked whale had beached itself and they needed help.  So I went down along with 2 other volunteers, Bill and Diane, to see how we could help.
They had plenty of help but the woman that was heading things up there said they needed help with locating distressed turtles. I found out later, they had to put the whale down.  It was in very bad shape.  They think he/she was quite old and probably would not have lived if they got it back out in the ocean.

We found the woman who was in charge of it and to make a long story short, the 3 of us ended up going out and rescuing some turtles.  Bill and Diane were in a canoe and I was in a borrowed kayak.  We ended up with 6 turtles!  I had one on my lap and thank goodness they had a canoe because one of the turtles we pulled out was probably 80 pounds!  There was one that we were all worried about.  It just lay there with it's head down and never moved.  The other ones were perking up a bit the longer the they were out of the water.

Diane got some video on her phone and a news crew was at the docks when we got back.  I posted links to both videos below. Our internet the last week has not been good so getting some of this stuff downloaded has been a bit tough.

We were all pretty elated when all was said and done!

Here is the link to the TV story:

http://www.wmbb.com/story/24411452/experts-help-sea-turtles-during-cold-stun-event


And the link to the video:

http://youtu.be/aUY7JBdRHo0


Hope all is well with everyone and they are surviving the tough weather up north.

Jan.3, 2014-Friday-K- Happy belated New Year!!!!!  We hope everyone had a wonderful New Years.

Sorry for the lack of reporting but we haven't had much to report.  It has been cool (mid 50's) and still windy.  We had a typical quiet New Years and in bed at our normal times, although I did end up staying up until midnight reading stuff on the computer!!

Tom and I are avid cribbage players and before dinner (now that we can't play pool anymore!) we play a couple of hands.   Most of our playing is either on vacation or on our porch in the summer.  We have been keeping track of our wins since 1988.  So the grand total up through 2013 is Tom with 753 wins and myself with 751.  At the start of 2013 I was 15 games behind and I still couldn't catch up!

Yesterday while all you people up north were getting hit with a major snowstorm, we had 3/4" of rain and a cold front blew through with major winds and we woke up to 32 degrees with a wind chill of 24!

There could be a chance that we may end up volunteering here.  We had put in applications when we got here.  The volunteer co-ordinator said they were full as this is the prime time for volunteers.  We had told him we would be at the campground until the 3rd and in the area until April, so if they do need anything we would be around.  They stopped in yesterday and gave us more paperwork to fill out, so we will know today what is going on.  It would be nice to stay here.  If we get a position, we get free camping in exchange, we work 20 hours a week. It is hard to get your foot in the door, but is seems like once you are in it is good.

That is all for now. Tom may be posting some things later on.

Port St Joe Peninsula

12/25/13-Wed,.-K-MERRY CHRISTMAS AND HAPPY HOLIDAYS TO ALL!
We finally made it to one of our favorite campgrounds,  St. Joseph Peninsula State Park in Florida right near Port St. Joe. We arrived on Friday the 20th and will  be here until Jan. 2, our Christmas present to each other.  We are in a great site #13 (I always keep track of that for future reference!).  It is very private and has a wonderful view of an estuary that has lots of egrets and some sort of very small duck like bird, along with herons and kingfishers.

The weather up until Monday has been pretty warm  but quite windy. Kayaking has been out of the question because of that.  Pretty good whitecaps on the bay where we would be going.   We have been able to walk the beach in shorts and bare feet.  The water was not nearly as cool as I thought it would be.  I wouldn't want to swim in it, but it's not bone chillin'!  Gus saw the ocean for the first time on Saturday and she was so scared of it all. She continually acts like she is the big (little) tough dog, but when push comes to shove, she is a bit of a chicken.  Every time a wave came to her she would run in the other direction. We got a pretty funny video of it.  Yoda, the old seasoned wise one, was pretty excited to see the ocean once again.

Link to "Girls on the Beach"

 http://youtu.be/U2_GR_BIIGg

Sunday night and most of Monday was quite rainy. We had to go to Panama City (30 miles west of  here) to get a part for the camper and we decided we should do a little holiday shopping for each other.  Well not the brightest thing on our part, as we weren't paying attention to the fact it was 2 days before Christmas (duh) and how do you shop together in the same stores and hide stuff in the car, when where you shopped (Sam's club) doesn't give you shopping bags to put your purchases in??   But anyway, it was pretty comical and we got it done.  Have never seen traffic like they have there.  Tyndall Air Force Base abuts the town so that adds to the population.  The city is about the size of Albany/Troy, NY.

Things have cooled off significantly and still windy.  This morning it was probably in the high 30's (oh my!)   However the wind has died down a lot and we got a nice walk in.  Hopefully the wind will stay calm and tomorrow we can take the boats out.

We opened a few presents last night and still have some to do.  

My friend Betsey whom I skied with at NEHSA gave me a gumbo recipe and that is what we are going to do for dinner tonight.  The fresh caught seafood down here is great.  Got some really nice shrimp, scallops, oysters, white fish and some bbq'd chicken and andouille sausage to put in the gumbo.

Tom and I hope everyone has had a great holiday and we miss all you very much.

12/12/13-Thurs.-K-It's hard to believe that Christmas is a little less than 2 weeks away.  Where does the time go.  It seems like we just did Thanksgiving, but I say this every year.

Today we leave Paynes Prairie and head over to Sopchoppy, Fl.  It is due south and a little west of Tallahassee.  We had stayed there for a couple nights a few years ago.  It is a campground run by the town on creek that looks like the kayaking could be really good.

It is very different camping this time of year.  We are so used to camping in the spring and summer and it being lighter later into evening. Now it is just the opposite.  Once we hit the winter solstice, it will get better! But what is more interesting  is because of how far south we are it isn't getting dark until a little after 5pm. What a bonus!

We ended up with a change of plans.  The place that can fix the awning can fix it tomorrow and it is in Midway, right next to Tallahassee.  We found a campground a few minutes away from the camper place. So we will go to Sopchoppy tomorrow.

Well this campground is a  interesting.  It is full of bow hunters and they all have their generators going full tilt (no hook-ups here), so a bit noisy and smelly!  Oh well-it is just for one night.  It is on Lake Tallquin. Real pretty spot.

What neither of us were paying attention to is hunters get up early to go out.  So at 4 a.m. the generators all start up again (we had one right next to us!) and at 5 a.m. they were all out of the campground and the place was quiet again!

Awning is fixed and we are in Sopchoppy in the town park that has a campground along the Sopchoppy River.  People have asked how the town got it's name so this was Wikepedia's answer.  The town's name is a corruption of "Lockchoppe." Derived from the Muskogee lokchapi (lokcha (acorn) / api (stem)), this was the old name of the nearby river.^[5]

The population of the town is around 500.  Just a sleepy little town with some interesting old architecture.
Lots of bungalow style houses.

^{From what we have  heard, manatees have come up here.  The gentleman that runs the place said he had seen them about 8 months ago.  He saw two hanging out for awhile.}  

Today (Saturday) we are having our first rainy day.  The town was doing an outdoor craft market, but it got rained out.  There were a few people, but who were left were packing it in by the time we got there.

Apparently you Northerners are going to get a lot of snow tonight.  Can't believe how cold it is up there at this time of year.  Like January temps.

Nothing more going on.  The dogs are having a sleepy day.  hmmmm that sounds kinda nice!!!