Fantastic Cedar Key Weekend

Talk about a fun-filled weekend! We started with an adventuresome paddle at Shell Mound. If the Gulf looks flat between the Shell Mound launch ramp and Hog Island, and the wind is blowing about 10 miles an hour, what will the waves be like on the outside of Hog Island?  Adventure! Ride those little waves in your tiny little kayak! Splash on through! Of course I didn't get the camera out until I was back to the calm side, so you'll just have to trust that it was pretty darn fun.

Russ blogged about it on Random Ferments.

Off we go

Pretty little waves

Looks calm enough on this side if the island

Russ and our friend Mark

I love floating up next to the sea grass, but it is still hard to see how it is attached to the bottom.

Slow Food Gainesville came to Cedar Key to learn about the clamming industry and to share a pot luck dinner. Check the Slow Food description HERE.

to the Clam Shack

Learning from Leslie Sturmer

Clam types

Leslie answers our questions

Look at the tiny seed clams

Almost too pretty to eat

The Small Boat Meet was this weekend too. Sometimes Cedar Key looks quiet and boring. Cedar Key deceives.

Party for the Small Boat Lovers at Jeri and Bob's

More partying

Good Training Hike Today

After the cold front came through last night...luckily for us, with no tornadoes or bad storms, just pleasant rains...the temperature was in the high 50s this morning. Yahoo! We grabbed our backpacks and headed to San Felasco Hammock for a long training hike. Russ posted photos on Random Ferments.

Daylillies

These are our first big ones of the year. Others are on the way. 

We are hoping for rain, but surely don't want anything like they got in Alabama and Georgia.

Sheriff's Office Building Dedicated to Neighbor Joe Crevasse

Our good neighbors Peggy Ellison and her father Joe Crevasse had an unusually interesting afternoon. Alachua County dedicated the Sheriff's Office administrative building to Joe, who served in the elected office of sheriff longer than any one before or since..21 years! The dedication was packed with politicians, law enforcement officers, family, and friends all of whom were eager to be part of this appropriate honor for Sheriff Joe.

A few of those in attendance

Sheriff Joe Crevasse and current Sheriff Sadie Darnell

Peggy Ellison and her brother Buddy Crevasse

Peggy and friend Marion

Sheriff Joe Crevasse and Gainesville Chief of Police Tony Jones

 

University of Florida President Bernie Machen and Sheriff Joe Crevasse

Countdown to El Camino

We have been training fairly regularly for our third experience with El Camino de Santiago de Compostela, the 1,000-year long pilgrim trail in France and Spain.  We leave in three weeks and hope to hike 300 miles, from Pamplona to Leon and a bit beyond to revisit some of our favorite places from the last time we went. If we cover the planned segment of the trail, we will have hiked the whole 500 miles, from the French side of the Pyrenees to Santiago...in three sections.

A big wind storm blew this tree onto the trail the day before we hiked here.

 We did the first 50 miles of Spain in 2008, as well as about 100 in France. In 2009, we covered about 200. It is such a wonderful personal challenge. Each day is different. Each segment of the trail is different.

 This year we know three other couples who will be hiking more-or-less at the same time...college friends of mine, Maureen and David; Russ's sister Phyllis and her husband Otis; and another college friend of mine Blanche with her husband Ben and daughter Colleen. We won't hike together; our schedules and routes are not identical. But it is nice to know they will be out there when we are.

We are down to the wire and ordered our last little bits of equipment...more sock liners and a new belt. We adapted my backpack to my increasingly old back by shortening it an inch so the hip belt hits my back right where I like it to massage away the achiness, and we keep thinking of things we don't really need to carry so the packs can be lots lighter this time.

Sunday we gave a talk about the Camino and our earlier experiences there for the Unitarian Universalist Fellowship Discussion Group. That got us all the more motivated. We are ready! And...best yet...Pam and James got tickets to fly down and see us off! What a great surprise.

We'll be posting regularly (we hope) to Facebook this time, instead of this blog. We'll post to the blog more occasionally when we get access to a relatively fast and convenient computer where we can upload photos.

Can't wait to get started.

The Summer of a Thousand Cheeses continues

 This week we will give a presentation based on the research from our book for the Newcomers Club at Temple Shir Shalom. It will be our third cheese talk since we taught the Amazing American Cheese class at Santa Fe College in January and February. We did two presentations in Cedar Key. "What Ever Happened to the Cedar Key Cheese Factory" was really about how people adapt their businesses to the resources of their locales, and how such adaptations have created the phenomenal recent growth of artisan cheese in America. "What Makes Blue Cheese Blue and Stinky Cheese Mild?" was a huge cheese tasting, with 14 artisanal American cheeses...three local to our Florida region.

The owner of a local restaurant, Edie from Kona Joe's, was there and invited us over to make mozzarella with her. Such a thing being news in Cedar Key, we had a full page story in the Cedar Key Beacon. Nice!

Friends of the Refuges

The Friends of the Lower Suwannee & Cedar Keys National Wildlife Refuges, El Camino de Santiago, and the Summer of a Thousand Cheeses are keeping us with lots of new challenges, and even retirement-style deadlines.

Russ is working on a Paddling Guide to 12 trails in the Lower Suwannee Refuge. His focus is the biology of what you see along each trail, while his partner on the project maps out the trails themselves. They're planning to come up with multi-media, maybe even interactive materials...print, laminated carry-alongs, downloadable voice descriptions, blogs where paddlers can input information about their observations along the trails...maybe more. The Refuge just received some additional funding to support material production. So, activity is about to gear up even more.

We didn't even own kayaks until this project captured us. It gave us a great excuse, and we are becoming almost skilled enough at using them to get in and out without falling in the drink.

I developed an electronic newsletter (this link will take you to the issue that went out yesterday)  and set up a website (here it is.) And, it has actually been sort of fun to run the Board Meetings since taking them on in last month. We worked the Friends Booth at the Cedar Key Arts Festival and will work it next Saturday at the Suwannee Stone Crab Festival.

We've had jam sessions and Friends Lectures on Fish, Ticks, Archaeology, and Geology.

 But Russ's project gets the gold star for getting us out into the Refuge itself.

Happy Easter

Our favorite decorations have appeared on the mantle.

 
We told the bunny story here. The Easter Retriever was a 2010 gift from our friends Donna and Larry.

In Training Again

 El Camino de Santiago de Campostela here we come! We walked with our packs today and realized that we're in a zero sum game; the more extra pounds we can shed from our bodies, the more things we can bring along in our packs.

My Birthday

I had a great 68th birthday today. We finally got our kayaks wet on a lovely paddle on a quiet backwater in the Gulf of Mexico. Good thing I wasn't born a day later because storms are expected tomorrow.

A Fragrant Spring

Three of our four grapefruit trees are blossoming--more profusely than in any of the past 14 years. As can be seen in this photo, many of the blossoms have already set fruit. The yard smells great, and if all goes well we should have a bumper crop of grapefruit come December.

Jake and Varmints

Our golden retriever Jake is conscientious about keeping varmints away from our house. He drives away rabbits, some of the legions of squirrels nearby and, presumably, the many raccoons and opossums that would course through our yard. He hates black vultures also and keeps them barely at bey, but they are persistent and are a challenge because they don't cower readily. Like them, some varmints bear continued attention. He apparently doesn't deal with snakes, but that has been an important contributor to his longevity.

Armadillos present a problem. They burrow under our back deck and, clunky and clumsy as they may be, should Jake catch one, they are hard to get one's teeth into, and they flee under the fence. Their armored integument makes them resistant to Jake, whose teeth rarely come into play; he's a big impressive dog and intimidation is his game, and why don't they get it?


Some instruction book we read how to avoid screwing up your dog's life cautioned that one must keep his dog mentally stimulated. Thank you, armadillos; whatever else you may have accomplished, you have kept Jake meaningfully employed.

Southern Blue Flag

Southern Blue Flag irises (Iris virginica) are at their peak now. We photographed this one last Monday on the Lower Suwannee National Wildlife Refuge, where roadside ditches are often choked with hundreds of blossoming plants.

Another Great Day of Hiking

Here is a view as we were beginning today's six-mile hike in San Felasco Hammock State Preserve. It was a beautiful day in a beautiful place, but don't take my word for it. Just try to put yourself in the photo. As followers probably know, we are planning to do the Camino again this year, but we have come to enjoy the dreaded "training" almost as much as the main event.

Ready to Go

We took one step closer to the allure of Lower Suwannee waterways this week. Here you will see our kayaks prepared to depart for the launch site. Our attachment seemed to work very well. Stay tuned for reports delivered from the superhighways.

The Amazing Cheese Story, Preparing for Day 4

Tuesday, February 8 is the final night of our mini-course, The Amazing Cheese Story. Follow the link for photos and thoughts about preparing for the big finale!