Camphost Life

It was the busiest weekend we've had so far this winter here at Otter Springs. We had several check-ins, a few in the primitive area and a group of boy scouts. It was also the busiest weekend for use of the bath houses :-). We actually had to clean bath houses that looked they were being used, not already clean ones. Nothing major, but definitely used.

We're also acquiring a new skill set....splitting wood. There's a huge pile of wood out at the maintenance garage, from dead trees and limbs across the property. One of our tasks is to split and bundle firewood for the office to sell. So we've set as one of our missions to split the whole pile and have it neatly corded, and to have the woodshed by the office filled with bundled firewood before we leave in April. Hey, everyone needs a mission, right?

I don't know if I mentioned it, but the campground is pretty far away from any shopping. I know far away is a relative thing, especially when you get out west, but it's about a 15 minute drive from here to get a pizza...not a necessity for most folks, but we all have our vices. In these high fuel price times ($3.95 for diesel last week) it's not feasible to drive a half hour round-trip for pizza. So, we've been experimenting with making our own. Now, I've had a terrible time with baking in my rv oven...roasting is ok, but baking hasn't been going so well. I've been told that a pizza stone placed  on the shelf in the oven would help even out the heat for baking, so I've been looking for one that would fit. Finally, today, I think it happened....we received a phone call from Patti and Ginny, who were at the flea market in Homosassa, that they found a 13" stone that will fit. Great! Now we can try a pizza next week and hopefully not have a burned crust :-). If that works, on to cookies :-).

We're having quite a bit of rain today. It's needed very badly, but it's not so good for the Daytona 500 today. We'll see if it gets going, but things are not looking very promising.

I took a couple of pictures down at the springs yesterday. The bird is a limpkin, found only in Florida in the United States. They are known as the "wailing" or "crying" bird because of their loud, mournful call, usually issued at night by territorial males. Florida has placed them on their list of "special concern" due to loss of habitat.

Don't forget, you can click on a picture to make it larger for viewing :-).

Also saw some turtles sunning themselves. Which reminds me, when we were cleaning around 

the campsites today, we found a complete, empty turtle shell...like the inhabitant had just crawled out and left the shell behind. It was very strange, but I don't know much about turtles...how would that have happened?

Well, it's time to go make some pizza :-), and get ready to watch "The Amazing Race" tonight...love that show!