Brighter Days Horse Refuge

Today, Thursday the 30th of December started out overcast, gray and in the low 60's. But that was good, because we have had rain off and on for the past 2 days. We haven't minded because they are low on water and dry in this area of Texas. Also we have been following the Pa weather on Channel 16 out of Scranton/Wilkes Barre and know that it has been below freezing temperatures for almost 2 weeks. So despite the gray skies we decided to go to the horse refuge we heard about. First stop, was the local grocery for a bag of apples and 2 bags of baby carrots......  the price of admission for visitors. The first thing we learned was that we needed to cut up both the carrots and apples. James the Foreman of the refuge did that for us. 80% of the horses in the refuge are over 30 years old and need their treats in small pieces. Jeannie Weatherholtz, the president was our guide. She started this refuge 1985 and was relocated to their current home 40 minutes outside of San Antonio in Pipe Creek in 1994 when they needed more space. Today they had 97 horses on site. Some had been seized as abused and some had been surrendered by their owners. Most Texans are of the mind that if they aren't useful anymore they should be put down.... but not Jeannie and her staff and volunteers. They know each and every horse by their name and treat them as a member of the family. Here is the welcoming committee.....  boy were they noisy until we got over to feed them.

All the animals live in pods or groups in a specific area. There are shelters and feeding stations in each area also. Of course their are Bosses / Horse in charge in each of the pods. It was really interesting to watch the social dynamics between them. This little shaggy pony is the boss of 3 ponies and 4 large horses. You should see her in action.

Here is John dispensing some of his treats. They just love visitors because they know they will be receiving treats. They make you feel like a rock star.... they can't wait to get near you and have your attention.

They also have an ICU for the really sick ones when they first arrive. There were 2 horses in the ICU today, both with feet and leg problems. Here is one of them.  

The boss of the ICU however isn't a horse or pony or donkey or burrow. It is a cat..... smoochy by name. One of the friendliest cats I've ever encountered. Yes, being a refuge they have the problem of people dropping off cats in the middle of the night. Some stay, some find adopted homes, but smoochy found a job.

Below are a few more candid shots around the place. Their web page is, of course, brighterdayshorserefuge.org in case you want to see or read more. If you want to do more you can send a donation. Their WEEKLY feed bill is in excess of $1000.00, so they can use the help. Did I mention that they have also acquired 2 goats a sheep and a pot bellied pig. Feel like adopting a pig?

Oh, one more thing we learned.... if your going to a farm after 2 days of rain..... wear boots, not sneakers. On the way back to TT (Thousand Trails) we ran across these guys just sitting by the fence.

Christmas at the Lake

I just realized that I went on about the Lake here at Medina having water this year but never included any pictures. Here are just a few. They don't give you a proper perspective of it's size. Let me say that the dam on the river that creates this lake is 18 miles southeast of this park. The lake is not round or even oval in shape. It has many inlets and fingers and runs about 28 miles in length.

We had Christmas dinner with about 75 other RVer's at the activity center. There was plenty of good things to eat and the company was very enjoyable. Here are a few candid shots.

Christmas evening we had a gift exchange. About 35 people participated. We did a "White Elephant" game. Everyone had a number and when it was called you choose a wrapped gift from the table. After opening and displaying it to all, you placed it on the floor in front of you, Anyone whose number was called after number 1, had the opportunity to take a gift from the table OR steal a gift that someone else had opened. If your gift was stolen then you went back to the table and got another one. The bottles of wine and gourmet coffee gifts went around a lot. Here is part of the gift circle.

Today John and I took a ride over to Bandera, the cowboy capital of Texas, and did the sightseeing thing. There are many dude ranches around here as well as regular working ranches. I learned about a horse rescue ranch nearby, so I'm hoping to get there before we leave. The price of admission is a bag of carrots or apples. We had to stop at the feed store on our way back to pick up some more corn for the deer....  they are hungry critters.

Decking the halls..... RV style

Can you guess where we are?  If you followed our blog last year, this will look familiar. Lake Medina Texas, where the deer roam... in the hundreds ... eat out of your hand ... and drive the dogs nuts. There is one difference this year from last. There is water in the lake. This is a man-made lake, for agricultural irrigation. Last year the drought was so bad that the lake at this end was completely empty. This year it is down about 10 - 15 feet but there is plenty of water and it is huge and beautiful.

The weather has been warm, in the high 60's to low 70's during the day and in the mid 50's at night. We have not needed any heat. It is raining today, Christmas eve, but this is the first real rain since September so the locals are very grateful.

We have been here for 5 days and have done a few things. We participated in a Hobo Stew lunch. Everyone brings a food item to the Activity Center at 11AM and the staff throws it into a stew pot for an hour and we all come back at noon and have lunch together. It's amazing how good this turns out and how many different ingredients are in it. We also attended a Christmas Cantata. Last night was the "Jam Session". Everyone who plays an instrument in the park, join some of the local musicians for a music session. What fun... the local talent as well as the TT (Thousand Trails) member talent was a hoot. It was mostly country with a little bit of Christmas.  Today is the Ladies Tea and Craft afternoon and tonight is a cookout around the campfire..... if the rain stops.... which it is suppose to do. Tomorrow, on Christmas, we will join the other park members for a Christmas Dinner.... turkey, ham, potatoes , dressing, gravy provided by the park and we all bring a side dish or dessert. Tomorrow evening is a gift exchange and sing along. We all bring a $5.00 gift to exchange.

When we were in Orlando Florida I collected pine cones and over the past several weeks I have been making our Christmas tree. Last year I did the easy thing and went to Walmart and bought a Norfolk Island Pine and threw some lights and bulbs on it. Since the only place to set it is on the dash, and Sydney has claimed that for himself, he kept knocking it over and I cleaned up dirt and redecorated it at least every other day. This year I decided to forgo the dirt part, but I still wanted something natural as opposed to artificial, so I decided on the pine cones. It took a while from start to finish but I'm happy with it, and Sydney hasn't knocked it over yet. All the ornaments are glued on, so he can't mess them up either. There is one problem however.... I haven't figured out where I am going to store it after the holidays. Here it is....

Also while in Orlando, I picked up a palm frond while on an excursion with Millie and Ray. Millie had spoken to a man who makes planters out of them. We found a couple of large ones on the side of the road and we were going to make something with them but never got around to it. I was going to make mine multi-functional. I started with a basic design that I could adapt depending on the season and or holiday and then added the flowers and accoutrement's of the holiday ( Christmas lights and ribbon). Here is a picture of what I ended up with...

Unfortunately, a passing dog thought it was a good place to relieve himself so I will not be bringing it any further. Did you ever see yellow Poinsettia before? The positive side is I don't have to worry about storing it.

Remember the sand dollars I picked up at Jekyll Island Georgia. I worked on them too. 2 of them are now little decorations hanging inside the RV. What do you think?

I hung lighted garland around the slide edge which goes around the couch and kitchen. It gives us some holiday mood lighting as well as greenery inside.

The front of the coach has some holiday spirit also. Santa hats on the mirrors and some garland with battery operated lights across the front completes our holiday decor this year.

Time to start making Cranberry Salad for tomorrows dinner. It's surprising how few people remember cranberry sauce for a holiday dinner. I add gelatin, raspberries, pineapple and pecans to make a tasty dish. There will be many good dishes and lots of friendly people to share them with.

John and I hope everyone has a joyous and healthy Christmas.

Cajun Country

We have been exploring the Southeastern portion of Louisiana. At the park we are staying at (Hidden Ponds), we met a couple traveling to Texas for the winter from their home in Wisconsin. Meet Larry and Sharon Chick. Larry is a retired pharmacist and Sharon a social worker.

On Tuesday we traveled to the Grand Isle area to see where "the" oil spill occurred. The area, in the past, was 9 miles of white sand beach. This is what we found. The beach is closed, blocked off with fencing. The sand was dark gray-brown in color and was furrowed into rows. Tents were set up every several hundred yards with workers who are supposedly cleaning up "Tar Balls". We walked into one of these tents to find 9 guys sitting around a table playing dominoes. We talked with the only one who could speak English to find out that they were Mexicans brought in from California to help clean up the oil. So much for employing the locals who's livelihood was affected by the spill. Here are 2 photos.

Today we took a tour through the bayous and canals of the wetlands. 75% of America's wetlands are in this area of Louisiana. The tour lasted almost 2 hours and was conducted by a local Cajun man. He sang us traditional Cajun songs as well as pointing out the critters of the area. Below are just several of the pictures we took. As in the swamps of Okefenokee, there were no bugs or smell as you may think there would be in a swamp. The air was fresh and exhilarating. We saw all types of birds and several alligators.

Afterwards we went out to a local restaurant and had Cajun cooking. It was really good shrimp, alligator and something called boudin balls. It was rice, sausage and peppers rolled into balls the size of hush puppies and deep fried. They were really great.
Tomorrow we leave for Texas. Our reservations give us 3 days to go 570 plus miles. John is going to have to drive further than he has been doing each day. We will be staying at Lake Medina for several weeks until the new year.

Holley King......Heaven

We have really been enjoying this place.  First of all we have front row seats to all the activities on the lake. Secondly we don't have to share anything with anyone.....  we are the only human occupants in the park. We have never run into this situation before. Here are some pictures. As you can see one was taken inside the coach and one outside. I wanted to show you what we have been enjoying all week.

Here are some photos of the non-human park occupants. There are 5 geese and 1 guinea hen. We wondered why we saw small mirrors sitting on the ground and leaning up against trees throughout the park. It seems that the guinea hen had a mate and last year had a brood of kids. Unfortunately a red shoulder hawk made them his meals over a period of a few weeks and the hen is the only one left. In order for her to not stress out they distributed the mirrors around until they can get her another mate or company. When she sees herself, she thinks she has friends and family around. We came home one day to find the hen admiring herself in the hubcaps of our RV.

The nearest town is called DeFuniak Springs. The town is built around a small lake. It is one of 2 naturally round lakes in the world. It wasn't man made and it is unknown how it was formed by nature. A park immediately surrounds the lake and many beautiful Victorian homes encircle the park. This time of year they have a seasonal light display. The caretaker here at the park (who is a transplant from New York) told us it was worth the visit. We spent an hour driving around the lake enjoying over 5 million lights strewn over trees, bushes and arranged into every conceivable shape and form. Even dinosaurs were represented. These pictures do not do it justice and I encourage anyone passing through this area to stop and enjoy. According to the chief of police, who was nice enough to spend some time with us and explain the history, they start decorating in September and open up the show the day after Thanksgiving. It will be on until Christmas.

We took an afternoon and drove south 20 some miles to the gulf shore. We meandered around the town of Seaside, had lunch sitting in the sand of the beach and explored antique and art shops. As I said before, we really enjoy this area...... although we did have one day where the temperature didn't break 45 degrees. The nights have been below freezing also. Not what we expected for Florida.

We leave tomorrow morning and go further west. We have reservations in 3 days near Gibson La. I love the gulf coast and I want to see for myself if there are changes after the oil spill.

Manatee Move

On Thursday Dec 2nd we said goodbye to Orlando and our friends Millie and Ray and headed off toward the Gulf Coast side of Florida. We stopped for a few days in Crystal River. The park was not very nice, but it didn't matter much because we weren't there most of the time. We went exploring every day. We found the city park where the Crystal River runs into the Gulf. Here is a picture. Note the white sand....

Within 10 miles of Crystal River is a town called Homosassa Springs. We learned that it is home to a Wildlife Preserve/Park. You know me.... if there are critters... I'm there. We paid $10.00 a piece to board a boat, and be taken through canals that are home to ducks, cranes, birds and untold other creatures. The ride lasted 15 minutes. The ranger on the boat told us that should something unforeseen happen, there were life jackets under our seats. He asked if we would, in the event the boat was sinking, take a preserver and hold it over our heads as we walked through 3 foot deep water to the shore. The coast guard mandates that they carry these life preservers even though the water is only 3 feet deep. BUT, if the preserver gets wet, they have to replace it with a new one, so that's why we were asked to carry them. BUREAUCRACY !!  Anyway, back to our tour. The boat dropped us off on an island that was a rehab center for wounded, sick and/or animals unable to return to the wild due to their injuries. The main purpose of the center however is to care for wounded manatees. The warm springs in the area keep the water temperature in the inlet between 74 and 78 degrees all winter. The manatees need a minimum of 68 degrees so many of them come to this area to winter.... just like the snowbirds of Pa. We saw a 3,000 pound manatee called Rosey. They currently have 6 manatees in the "care center". The day we were there, Saturday, was the first day that they opened the bay gates so the free manatees could come into the inlet to the springs. The manatees in the "care center" are kept separate until their injuries are healed. We listened to the ranger explain the system and she showed us the contraptions they have to lift 3000 pounds of manatee to an operating table. It was a wonderful afternoon and I would have paid 3 times the money. I was so intrigued that I forgot all about taking pictures. But what's Florida without pink flamingos.....

Another one of our trips took us to an old archaeological dig along the Crystal River. It was a ceremonial site of the Indians. Many shards of pottery and tools were found here along with human remains. Here is a picture of one of the mounds and the plaque beside it.

On Sunday, we headed on the road again. 2 WalMart stops and then we will spend some time in De Funiak Springs. It is between Tallahassee and Pensacola in the panhandle of Florida. We stopped in this area last year and thought we would like to go back, but to a different park. Last year we stayed at a large park, 180 sites, where John exclaimed...."I don't like it here, there are too many old people". We have reservations at a VERY small park, 34 sites, but in the same neighborhood.