Month: February 2017

Posted in Blog Series, Uncategorized

#21: Adventures in RV Travel – February 10, 2017

Posted on by R.M. Carlson

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Carrabelle, St. George Island, and Appalachicola

Above are pictures of Carrabelle Beach on the panhandle of Florida. Beautiful, isn’t it?

Yes, we have been a lot of places today! We started out the day at Carrabelle Resort RV Park. Early on, we took a drive about 20 miles away, over the bridge, to St. George Island. It’s 14 miles from the RV Park to the bridge to St. George and it’s a four-mile drive across the bridge. A beautiful drive on a beautiful day across the Gulf. We drove around the island a bit and visited the lighthouse. Quite a lighthouse which has been rebuilt since the original one fell after a hurricane. It was very old. This one is very sturdy and built to withstand hurricanes.

Then, we took off on the ten-mile trip to Apalachicola, again a gorgeous drive. It’s a quaint little town and we were looking for a good restaurant to take our friends, Marty and Phil, to tonight when they arrived from Tennessee. We found several. I also think we found some interesting shopping. Marty and I will make a return trip or two and check it out. I think I’ll like this interesting little town.

I’m still not crazy about Carrabelle Resort RV Park, but for those of you RVer’s who like a lot of peace and quiet and don’t mind doing most of your own cooking, you may like it. I’m a little more high maintenance, I guess. And I don’t particularly like a lot of peace and quiet! 🙂

Marty and Phil arrived tonight and we had dinner in a very good, rather frou-frou restaurant in Apalachicola. Everyone liked their meals very much. They had a very long day and after a rest, we will see each other tomorrow!

Below is the St. George Island Lighthouse.

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Posted in Blog Series

#20: Adventures in RV Travel – February 8 – 9, 2017

Posted on by R.M. Carlson

Trip to Carrabelle RV Resort Park

Hello everyone from Carrabelle RV Resort Park in Carrabelle, FL. It was a reasonably long journey from an island off the coast of Ft. Myers, FL to this rather isolated spot right after you make the turn onto the Florida panhandle from the peninsula. Had I realized just how isolated, I might not have made reservations here. Maybe I should rephrase that. Had I realized that they warn you about BEARS here, I probably would NOT have made reservations here!! At Pine Island, I was accustomed to walking my dog, in the dark, at night, without worrying about tripping over a bear. Not so at Carrabelle. I am unhappy. I am also spoiled because I love Pine Island so much. 🙂

On the upside, there is quite possibly the most beautiful beach I have ever seen on the other side of the road from this park. I promise some pictures tomorrow. This afternoon, we had to get settled. The view of the Gulf of Mexico and the beach is phenomenal. It would have been better had it not been for the spectre of BEARS. I am looking forward to some time on the beach with my friend, Marty, after she and her husband, Phil, get here tomorrow evening. I can’t wait to take some pics to share with you of that beautiful beach.

We had no RV problems on our journey here, but my traveling companion can tell we will have one on the trip back home. An elbow gasket on the exhaust is giving him a problem. It will not be the first time it has been replaced. I’m hoping we can get home without replacing it. On a trip to New England in the Summer of 2015, replacing it became an emergency.

Back to Carrabelle. Be forewarned. The beach is beautiful. However, if you don’t like to cook much and prefer eating out, forget it about it in Carrabelle, FL. Unless you undertake a 40  mile roundtrip, you won’t be eating out. More about that after I do just that tomorrow night!

The RV Park is not quite what I had in mind. It is very nice, almost too nice. There isn’t the same friendliness that I’ve found at some other RV parks. Everyone stays very much to themselves. We will only be here for a few days, and we have Marty and Phil joining us, so it won’t bother us much. I’m glad I didn’t book a longer stay.

We will prevail! I’m going to go down to that beach tomorrow and find a place for the four of us to have dinner tomorrow night (the 40 mile trip). I’m planning on some beautiful pics to share. More “Adventures” then!

 

Posted in Flash Fiction

Guitar Man

Posted on by R.M. Carlson

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She was only sixteen. Oh, all right. She wasn’t quite sixteen. Just fifteen and a half. She liked the way that boy looked when he played his guitar. He worked on her granddaddy’s farm. Just a field hand, working in the kitchen garden and in the corn. Sometimes working in the dairy with the milking machines. Her granddaddy said he’d make something of himself some day. All she knew was how much she liked to watch him play that guitar.

Jake would use his breaks from work to practice guitar playing. He was already good but she overheard him say he wanted to be better. That he wanted to be famous. She would hide and listen to his guitar playing. That boy could play that guitar and make her feel things she’d never felt before.

Then he was gone. They said he went to Nashville to find a band that needed someone like him. It didn’t matter that she wasn’t quite sixteen. She hopped on a bus with a suitcase and a few dollars, determined to find the boy. She thought she was in love. She went to find that guitar-playing boy that made her feel things she couldn’t forget.

Posted in Flash Fiction

The Unknown Wife

Posted on by R.M. Carlson

Ingrid walked into her friend’s party and there was her ex and a woman. She overheard someone say he was married. She could hardly believe it. He’d called her only last week. She didn’t care that she’d thrown herself together. She walked up to him and said, “Introduce me to your wife.”

Posted in Flash Fiction

The Old Man and Daisy

Posted on by R.M. Carlson

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“Daisy, you and me, we gotta have ourselves a talk,” the old man said.

Lately, he thought to himself, Daisy wasn’t answering him very often. Usually, she coughed or sputtered or something. These days, not a peep.

“Did you hear me, old girl? Look at me when I’m talking to you,” he shouted. He kicked her in the side.

Still nothing. The old man didn’t understand. She always backtalked him. He had noticed she wasn’t looking so good these days.

Then he heard a voice but it didn’t sound like Daisy. He looked up. His nurse was saying, “Mr. Stevens, it’s time for your supper. Did you hear me? Who was that you were talking to when I came in anyway?”

Posted in Blog Series

#19: Adventures of RV Travel – February 8, 2017

Posted on by R.M. Carlson

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Leaving Pine Island, FL

Tomorrow, February 8, 2017, we leave Pine Island Resort RV Park in Florida to travel north to Carrabelle Beach RV Resort in Carrabelle, Florida, located on Florida’s Panhandle. I’ll have to admit I’m sad to leave Pine Island, as I always am. But, I’m very happy too since we bought a little place to stay here this year. We will be back soon.

It took most of the day to get the RV road ready to make the 432 mile trip from Pine Island to Carrabelle. We had an issue with the front cab air conditioner. The good thing about staying in a large RV park is that mobile RV mechanics and technicians are available to come to your aid. My husband can fix just about anything that goes wrong with our RV, but he couldn’t figure this out so we used a mobile technician. About $150 later, the air conditioner was fixed.

Since we have been here for three weeks, we had some significant packing to do. It’s done. The RV is packed. Everything is safely stowed away. We are ready to pull out tomorrow a.m. Check out time is noon, but I suspect we’ll be on our way before that.

There is one issue. That issue is Betsy, our little dog. She is ill. She seems to be getting better, but she is not well. If she isn’t well by the time we get to Carrabelle, I will be finding a veterinarian first thing. Issues plague you on a long RV trip just as if you were home. Betsy is number one in importance to me. The innocent puppies and kittens have to be cared for first. There are lots of dogs in a big RV park. Betsy is not usually around other dogs. I suspect she has picked up some sort of virus.

I don’t know if we will stay somewhere on the road tomorrow night or if we will drive all the way to Carrabelle. It depends on my traveling companion since he is the driver. We may end up at a Flying J since we do not have a reservation at Carrabelle until the night of February 9. I will write from the road tomorrow night about the first leg of the trip! Good bye for now, Pine Island! We’ll be back in about seven weeks!

Posted in Non-fiction

There is Support for Autocratic Government

Posted on by R.M. Carlson

This is a blog post I didn’t know I was going to write until I ran across some information today. The research completely baffled me. It boggled my mind so I thought I would share it with you, my readers. This won’t be a long post. It is more a journalistic post than anything else.

In politics, there is a phenomenon called “democratic deconsolidation.” Sounds like some term out of a political science textbook. It happens when a significant portion of the population thinks that democracy is a fairly poor way of running a country. It happened in Venezuela. Researchers named Yascha Mounk and Roberta Foa decided to study this phenomenon using a three-factor model. The first factor was public support for the democratic form of government. Something odd happened or it was odd to many of us who live under a democratic form of government. Public support for  democracy in currrent democracies like the United States, Australia, New Zealand, and others was low and falling, especially among the younger people.

In the United States, 75% of those born in the 1930s believe that a democratic form of government is preferable. However, among those born in the 1980s, only about 27% believed the democratic form of government was preferable. To make all this even scarier to people like me, many of the younger people believe that army rule (autocratic rule) is preferable to democratic rule. I will have to admit that I don’t understand that at all. But, then again, I’m only reporting facts in this blog post. The same phenomenon was found in Europe.

This is all I have to say currently except one thing. If you are one who feels this way, please take a class in political science.

 

Posted in Non-fiction

The Case for Political Correctness

Posted on by R.M. Carlson

Speak Out

In the spirit of speaking out, I believe in political correctness. There. I said it. Do you know why I believe in political correctness? Because I call it, for the most part, manners and being polite to other people. Maybe I’m old fashioned. Maybe my mother taught me well. I always thought that being respectful about someone else’s politics or religion was the polite thing to do. In fact, as I grew up, I didn’t know the political affiliations of most of my classmates or neighbors. Sometimes, I knew their religion only because I knew who I went to Sunday School with and who I didn’t. No one really talked about it.

Over the last five years or so, political correctness has been a hot topic. The consensus among the public seems to be, at least during the last Presidential election, that political correctness was not a good thing. Who am I to say? But, I think the lack of it has caused chaos in our society. Lack of political correctness pits neighbor against neighbor, friend against friend. Why not just go vote or go to the church of your choice without making a big deal about it? Keep your business to yourself?

Dropping political correctness from the vernacular and from our behavior has had an effect on our society and, I say, a detrimental effect. As I run around out in the world these days, I feel like people are studying one another, trying to figure out these very personal things about each other. I further feel like that if you don’t pass muster, if you aren’t the correct political or religious persuasion according to their standards, then they aren’t interested in your friendship. Meet the galvanizing of America! Meet the red people and the blue people! Can this possibly be a good thing? I don’t think so.

I have many friends who have different political and religious beliefs than I do. We have lots that we talk about that is not associated with politics or religion. Don’t you? Are those two topics suddenly the only two that Americans can speak intelligently about? What happened to music, literature, relationships, and everything else that is going on in our world?

I refuse to surround myself with people who think just like I do. How boring would the world be if we all thought alike. On the other hand, I don’t want anyone pushing their beliefs down my throat. That brings us back where we started. To manners. And political correctness.

Does this mean that we can’t discuss these hot button issues? Of course not! We need to discuss them, particularly when we are electing the government of our country. We need to discuss them in the proper forums. If the government tries to ram its beliefs down our collective throat, then the people of the U.S. are going to rise up and protest as we should in order to protect our rights as a nation. The government needs to remember that not all the people support their particular point of view and the government is representative of all the people, not just half of them.

 

Posted in Blog Series, Uncategorized

#18: Adventures in RV Travel: Island Cafe, Matlacha, FL

Posted on by R.M. Carlson

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We have eaten at a lot of excellent restaurants on this RV trip. Matlacha, FL has some of the best around. The one we ate at tonight after our visit to Tropical Point was called  the Island Cafe. It has some of the best seafood I’ve eaten. But, what I want to show you is the decor. It is truly island decor as you can see from the pictures above. Hope you enjoy them. The Island Cafe is right on the water.

Posted in Blog Series, Uncategorized

#17: Adventures in RV Travel: Tropical Point, Pine Island, FL

Posted on by R.M. Carlson
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Tropical Point Bay
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Manatee warning
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Tropical Point Bay

Today we took a side trip to a spot on Pine Island called Tropical Point. It has a little park, a launch point for kayaks and canoes, a spot for fishing, and the best view you could ask for. My little dog, Betsy, had her first little swim in the edge of the ocean! She had to watch out for the manatees!

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