Living Our Dream

Webster Flea Market

Bushnell, FL

Here we go again - another flea market. We've said it before, and we'll say it again - we usually don't buy much, but we do like to look. We were still on a quest for a nice eggplant so when we had a beautiful morning on Monday, we headed over to the Webster Flea Market. The Webster Flea Market, which is only about 15 minutes away from Blueberry Hill, is only open on Mondays.

The market is a conglomeration of several markets, but the main areas are the Sumter County Farmers Market and the Webster Westside Market. The Webster Flea Market is said to be the oldest and largest flea market in Florida. Although the farmers market also has other merchandise, it is where the bulk of the produce is located, so we parked on the eastern end near the farmers market. The photo below shows some of the covered stalls of the farmers market.

The morning started out a little cool, but the sun was warm, and there was only a gentle breeze. We have gone to the Webster Flea Market several times in the past, but we have never seen this many vendors and potential customers.

We walked up and down a couple of rows of vendors in the farmers market, then we walked over to the Westside Market. Since the Westside Market is almost all outdoors with no cover, our experience during our previous visits was quite a few vendors began packing up before noon. That wasn't the case this time. The weather was so nice and the turnout was so good no one was leaving.

The Westside Market is a mixture of new and used items. Paul checked out tools at one booth...

...and Margery bought several used books.

We only walked a couple of rows over at the Westside Market, then we headed back over the farmers market side to resume our search for eggplant. We remember seeing more produce vendors in previous years, but the produce that was there was very nice. We were finally successful in locating some good-looking eggplant.

Back at the motor home, we fell back into our relaxation mode. As we were sitting in the rig one day, a pair of sandhill cranes walked down the road. There are quite a few sandhill cranes here in central Florida. We frequently hear them calling as they fly overhead, and occasionally we see them in the campground. One of the pair walking down the road took a detour into our site to check out our bird feeder. Unfortunately, Paul couldn't get the camera out fast enough to get a shot of the bird standing there pecking at the feeder and only caught it as it was walking away.

Our friends Barb and Dick from North Carolina are headed to Florida, and they're going to stop by Blueberry Hill for a couple of days on their way farther south. Their visit will certainly get us out for some sightseeing, so stay tuned.

Lake Okahumpka Park

Bushnell, FL

After the Tampa RV show, we fell back into our lazy pattern of sitting around the motor home playing on the computer, relaxing and napping. The weather was a little too cool to do much anyway. The weather finally warmed up, but then we had almost a full day of rain. Our weather station said we got 1.43 inches.

When the sun came out the following day, we were inspired to plan a short outing to Lake Okahumpka Park a few miles north of Bushnell. We drive past the park every Sunday on our way to church, and the palmettos growing under all the Spanish moss-draped live oaks along the road by the park look very inviting.

Lake Okahumpka Park is operated by Sumter County, and it is located on the northern shore of Lake Okahumpka. Lake Okahumpka is a little over a mile across at its widest point with a surface area of about 670 acres.

The park has a boat launch, picnic facilities, a playground, sand volleyball courts, and a paved hiking/biking trail. The web site says the trail is only a little over a mile. It seemed like a lot of trouble to pack up the bikes for only a one-mile trail, so we decided we would just walk.

We parked near the trail map, and we found out there are actually three partially overlapping trails. The largest loop is a little over 1¼ mile around, and the shortest is a little over a third of a mile.

We picked the longest loop and started out in the direction of the boat launch.

Although you can catch glimpses of the lake through the trees here and there, this is the only place you can get close to the lake. As we got to the boat launch, a couple of anglers were heading out into the lake.

We hung out around the dock for a little while, then headed off down the trail. The Spanish moss-draped branches of the live oaks created an arch over the trail.

The hiking trail has lots of plaques identifying many of the trees and plants along the way. One of the more striking plants was a Carolina holly. Also called the sand holly, the Carolina holly grows from North Carolina to Florida and west to the eastern part of Texas.

The large hiking loop also has a series of fitness stations located every hundred yards or so. There are plaques with instructions for 2 or 3 different exercises for each piece of equipment. Some were moderately easy, some were pretty strenuous. We tried some of the easier ones like the arm/leg raise...

...and the leg stretch.

The exercise Paul is supposed to be doing in the photo below was a little tougher. You were instructed to hold onto the bar with both hands and swing your legs over the bar horizontally to the side. The only way Paul was going to get over the bar was one leg at a time.

Toward the end of the trail, we found an exercise he could do. He is standing on a small pedestal with one foot and raising himself up and down while holding the center pole for balance.

We had hoped to see some wildlife, but all we saw were a couple of ducks on the lake and several squirrels. However, we still enjoyed our walk.

We felt so good after all that exercise we decided to stop at Catfish Johnny's on our way back to the motor home for a late lunch.

Margery had catfish fingers (strips of fried catfish) and Paul had a new menu item - beer-batter shrimp. Both were delish.

We seem to be in a repeating weather pattern. We have several cool, windy, sunny days then one or two warmer days. By the end of the second warm day, the next cold front is starting to move in bringing in rain. We then have one or two cloudy/rainy days before the cycle starts to repeat. In our next post, we'll let you know what we activity we came up with for the upcoming warm spell.

Tampa RV Show 2011

Bushnell, FL

Since we were just at the Tiffin plant in October, we saw most of the changes to the 2011 Tiffin motor homes. Therefore, we were planning to skip the big Tampa RV show this year because Tiffin is just about all we we look at when we go. However, we got free tickets from another full-time couple whose blog we follow, so we decided to go after all.

As usual, we went on Wednesday, which is the first day of the show, because that is probably the least crowded day. We arrived about 10:00 AM, which is a little later than we usually arrive, and there were already much larger numbers of people than we remembered seeing in the past in spite of the fact it was a very cool, windy morning.

We headed for the Tiffin display where the new Tiffin Breeze motor home had drawn a small crowd of it's own. The Breeze is a small, fairly reasonably-priced, diesel pusher that was first introduced at the RVIA Show in Louisville, KY, in December, 2009. Some of the first production models were rolling off the line when we were at the Tiffin plant last October. Click here to read about our stop at the Tiffin plant and to see photos of an almost-completed Tiffin Breeze. The Breeze is too small for us for now while we're full-timing, but it might fit our needs some day when may want to stay in one location for 8 months a year and take shorter trips in a smaller RV.

We spent most of our time looking at the Tiffin Phaetons and Allegro rear engine diesels. Although the Allegro Bus is waaaay out of our price range, we did stop for a photo in front of one.

After we left the Tiffin display, we headed over to the RV accessories. By this time the crowd had grown even more.

On our way to the arena where the accessories were located we stopped by to take a look at an unusual travel trailer by Galileo RV. These 22' trailers have an aerodynamic, all-fiberglass body.

The accessories are in separate two areas. The second area is near the entrance/exit and is always crowded. This year it was more crowded than ever.

Click here to see last year's post about the Tampa RV show to compare photos of the crowds.

On our way back to the motor home, we stopped north of Tampa for some other errands and a late lunch Qdoba Mexican Grill.

We're planning some additional relaxation time back at the motor home as well as some outings as soon as the weather warms up. Stay tuned.

Market of Marion

Bushnell, FL

We just can't seem to help ourselves. Even though we don't have room to store things, we seem to always be drawn to flea markets. Actually, this time we were in search of produce. We heard from our neighbors at Blueberry Hill that the Market of Marion was supposed to have good produce. The Market of Marion is located in Belleview, FL, just north of The Villages in Marion County. The market is open Saturdays and Sundays with Fridays added in the winter.

When we arrived a little before 10:00 AM it wasn't very crowded yet, and we were able to get a parking spot right near the main entrance.

It was a cool morning, but the web site for the market said it was indoors so we only wore light jackets. In reality, the market is covered, but the walls are largely open, so it was quite chilly inside.

The market is laid out with one central aisle and with numerous side aisles branching off from the central aisle. The next photo shows one of the side branches.

We stopped at a vendor who was selling knock-off sunglasses. It was one of the largest collections of sunglasses we have seen at any flea market. As you can see in the photo below, the display extended for quite a way behind Margery, and it went almost as far in the opposite direction.

We didn't buy any sunglasses, but we both had fun trying them on.

We made it almost all the way to the back of the flea market before we hit the row where the produce was. Margery was specifically looking for small eggplant, but we didn't find any. Two vendors had larger ones, but they were a little soft and looked like they had been there a while, so we passed.

There wasn't much produce to pick from the day we were there. There was citrus, which is in season now, and there were a few cool-season vegetables like cauliflower, broccoli and cabbage; but most other local produce doesn't start coming in until a little later in the season. Although strawberries from nearby Plant City, FL, have already been hit by early freezes, there were a few strawberries available. However, most weren't real ripe, and some were misshapen because of the cold. The strawberry season doesn't start in earnest until mid February.

In spite of not finding any eggplant, we still had a good time visiting the Market of Marion, so maybe we'll go back later in the season to see if they have more produce.

This week we're headed to the Tampa RV Supershow. We'll let you know what we find.

Brand New Year and Brand New Tires

Bushnell, FL

We're not big party people. We used to be in our younger days, but not anymore. We're usually content to just spend New Year's Eve at home watching a few movies and snacking. Blueberry Hill had free entertainment in the clubhouse for New Year's Eve, but we had already decided to pass on that. Then our neighbors from across the street at the campground mentioned a number of couples around us were getting together at the pavilion for a campfire and snacks, so we decided to join them for a while.

One of our other neighbors is into karaoke, and he brought his setup to the party. It took a little while for the karaoke to get going, but once the "lubrication" started to flow, the group of singers grew. Watching them was a lot of fun. They seemed to like the oldies from the 50s and 60s.

We had a good time watching the singers and getting to know some of the other people at the campground. About 12 to 15 couples showed up. Of course, campers can't get together without food, and there were some delicious snacks on the table in the foreground of the photo below.

We had already rented a movie on DVD from Red Box, so we left about 9:00 and headed back to the rig. After the movie, we watched the ball drop in Times Square on TV, then headed off to bed shortly after midnight.

After Christmas, there is usually a steady stream of snowbirds arriving at the campground. That's not the case this year, and there are still a lot of empty sites at Blueberry Hill and at most of the area campgrounds. We ran some errands down toward Tampa on the Monday after New Years, and there were plenty of RVs heading south on I-95. However, with only a couple of exceptions, most of the campgrounds we have driven past are nowhere near filled yet. It may be a lean year for many campgrounds and nearby businesses.

We replaced the front tires of the motor home at Tire Centers, Inc. (TCI) in Charlotte a couple of years ago. They were replaced under warranty because of premature sidewall cracking. Now, the tread on the rear tires was getting a little low (they have over 57,000 miles on them), and the outer duals showed a little cracking from exposure to the sun. We probably could have driven them safely for a while longer, but we decided our winter down time would be a good opportunity to replace the rear tires rather than trying to do it while we're on the road next summer.

When we replaced our front tires, TCI in Charlotte didn't have any our size in stock, and it took almost 6 weeks for the tires to come in. Motor home tires aren't big sellers, so Michelin only makes certain sizes at certain times of the year.

On Tuesday after New Years, Paul called TCI in Tampa to see about getting the tires on order to make sure they had plenty of time to come in. To his surprise, they had four of our size in stock, so we packed up the motor home on Wednesday and drove back down to Tampa to get the tires installed.

We got to TCI before 10:00 AM, and they weren't busy at all. We pulled right into the service area, and they got started.

The service area at TCI is outdoors under a big canopy. We see this a lot in the south, but usually at smaller auto repair shops rather than at big, commercial shops like TCI.

One of the things that amazes Paul is how these guys pop such large tires off and on the rims by hand with such apparent ease. After letting the air out, they whack the side of the tire with a sledge hammer to break the bead away from the rim, then they just work their way around the tire with large tire irons. They make it look easy, but those tires are really heavy.

We were out of there in a little over an hour. On our way back to Blueberry Hill, we stopped to get the oil changed in the motor home, so we're now set to hit the road in the spring. We got back to our site and set up again in time for our afternoon snack.

Following our trek back to Pittsburgh, our errands on Monday, and major motor home maintenance on Wednesday, we are ready for some serious relaxation time. During our relaxation time, we'll be planning for some sightseeing, so stay tuned.