Florida – Butterflies, birds, and beaches

While it's winter in New England, we savor the sunshine in Vero Beach FL. This has been a restful month, mostly hanging out with Barbara’s dad, delving into a few projects, and planning some future travel itineraries. Stay tuned!

BUTTERFLIES

Right across from our trailer is a scruffy, blooming bush. It attracts butterflies. Butterflies often avoid posing for our pictures, but this particular bush allowed us to “capture” a few.

BEACHES

Since it is only a ten minute drive, we’ve tried to walk the beach as often as we can. Our routine is to walk together for 3/4 mile, then Barbara strolls back while Bill continues with a brisk, 3.4-mile walk.

Bill walking the beach

We love to see the various ways people enjoy the beach: sunbathers, swimmers, surfers, fishermen, volleyball players, shell collectors, joggers, walkers, metal detectors, and we even saw a powered paraglider. 

Forgot my telephoto lens camera.

BIRDS
While walking the beach we watch the shore birds run back and forth amidst the waves foraging for food. Bird watching reminds us of Barbara's mom, an avid bird watcher. We are total beginners at bird identification, but we just downloaded a bird identification app to help us along.

Royal Tern

Sanderling

Eastern Willet

2016 Year in Review

Without listing our Sudbury MA house, a couple offered to buy it and we sold it in May.

We didn’t find a new place – a tight market and hard to find what we wanted - so we are now unintentional full-time RVers currently in Florida. Between real estate searching we squeezed in little outings: hikes, letterboxes, and time with family and friends. 

In July while visiting family in Ohio and Florida we saw some of the premier aviation museums in the country. 

And we spent November as “Care-A-vanners” - RVers who volunteer for Habitat for Humanity (see previous post).

The girls share an apartment in Boston. Kate now works as a bartender in a German restaurant – Oktoberfest was busy! She loves the outdoors joining a CSA (Community Supported Agriculture Farm) where she worked in exchange for free produce. She mountain bikes with her boyfriend and did martial arts.

Carrie, a senior at Boston College majoring in Economics, traveled to El Salvador and Ghana in conjunction with Economic development classes and organized a youth leadership conference in the Philippines. She interned over the summer with Cornerstone Research, an economic consulting firm in Boston, and will work there after graduation.

We traveled back to MA around Thanksgiving. Here we are at the restaurant where Kate works.

Florida – “Care-A-Vanners”

Bill (in white) & others on the build site

We spent the month of November as RV Care-A-Vanners in Fellsmere FL. Care-A-Vanners are RVers who volunteer with Habitat for Humanity building houses for the community. The Care-A-Vanners get free or cheap RV hook-ups in exchange for working on the build site. 

Grace Meadows, a Habitat for Humanity community in Fellsmere FL

Habitat built this entire neighborhood of over 50 homes, adding 5 new houses per year. Here are some of the completed homes.

We worked from 7:30am to 3:30pm 5 days a week and it was hard work. Each day involved new tasks and so we contributed to various projects in the construction process, with Barbara doing easier jobs. We worked along side local volunteers, future homeowners, some Care-A-Vanners who arrived later in the month, and a bilingual supervisor who amazingly juggled people with wide ranging skills and all the aspects of running a building site.

Here are some of the trusses Bill made for the three sheds.

Among other tasks, Barbara taped the windows and drew chalk lines.

Bill built the major beam for the front porches on both houses and all the supports. Wish we had a picture of the beams being installed by a fork lift.

It was fun to watch the transformation of the houses and we were glad to have the opportunity to participate in this great organization.

Early November: Just the frames of two houses right after Bill & Ricardo installed the first porch beam.

End of November: Two houses with porches, trusses, plywood, safety rails, and some windows

Washington DC & Virginia – Aviation Museums

We spent July on the road visiting parents and all siblings except Barbara’s brother Ron. We were very close to Ron’s house in Northern Virginia, but he and his family were in Alaska. Nevertheless we stopped there to visit both of Smithsonian’s Air & Space museums and complete our aviation theme.

We parked at the Wiehle-Reston East Metro stop – the west end of the silver line.

All we had to do was stay on until we got to L’Enfant Plaza, but there was a train derailment at Falls Church. So we were bused directly from McLean two stops to Ballston (yellow stars on map) where we got back on the train. We’ll revisit that map later.

Despite the detour we made it to the Smithsonian’s Washington DC Air and Space museum before its 10am opening. The DC Smithsonian gets the most prestigious and unique planes. We saw most of the planes with more attention on the World War II planes, Bill’s particular interest.

1903 Wright Flyer

Ryan NYP Spirit of St. Louis

only remaining Macchi C.202 Folgore (Italian WWII fighter)

The derailment was not cleared when we returned midday, so we were bused from Ballston to McLean, except this time it was a two-hour ride through congested city streets with stops at East Falls Church, West Falls Church (not even on the silver line), and Tysons Corner (one stop beyond). See map above. Lots of irate passengers left the bus at Tysons Corner, but bypassing McLean meant a large additional fare, so we stayed on the bus. After a wait, we got the train at McLean and when it stopped at Tysons Corner we saw all those who jumped off early. What an adventure!

At Reston we took a bus to the Smithsonian’s Udvar-Hazy Center near Dulles Airport. This museum has a Lockheed SR-71 Blackbird, a Concorde, the Space Shuttle Discovery, and countless other planes from every era. Again, Bill spent more time in the World War II section, as they had some unique German and Japanese planes.

Air France Concorde

Space Shuttle Discovery

 We never heard of an Airphibia before – a plane that could turn into a car.

And we liked how Airstream made quarantine quarters for the returning Apollo 11 astronauts.

We also looked in the restoration hanger, where we saw a Martin B-26 Marauder in pieces. Bill’s dad had a friend that flew them.

Florida – Heathcote Botanical Garden

While in Florida visiting Barbara’s dad, we went to Heathcote Botanical Garden in Fort Pierce. It was a hot day and we weren’t sure what the blooms would be like, but we were pleasantly surprised.

We weren’t sure what this was, but it looked cool.

We saw some butterflies in the butterfly garden.

The name of this plant caught our eye!

There was a Japanese garden.

One thing this garden is known for is its collection of bonsai. This one was even blooming.

Glad we had the chance to do a little outing with Barbara’s dad.