Back to Dad's

We finished up our little camping odyssey with a four day stay at Ortona South Campground. It's on the Caloosahatchee River section of the Okeechobee Waterway. The sites are good sized, well maintained, and reasonably priced. Ours was right on the river with a good view of the Ortona lock.

I brought our hand held marine radio. By tunning into channel 13 the chatter between the lock and the boats could be heard. That allowed us some warning that a boat would soon be coming through. My lovely wife and I almost took our sailboat down the Okeechobee last winter. Instead we decided to cross Florida Bay. Maybe next winter. At least now we know the procedure for traveling through locks.

What the campground lacked was any sort of Internet connection. It's fairly out of the way and the next nearest town, LaBelle, is a some miles down the road. It's best to arrive well provisioned. Using the campground for a base we drove all over the region checking out the surrounding towns and the waterway. Since we'd never been there before we considered this somewhat of a scouting mission.

I was able to sort out the remaining fuel issues with the van. It was reassuring to be able to drive hundreds of miles without any fuel problems. It does look like we have put that problem behind us.

My insurance company got back in touch with me about my little fender bender in Florida City again. They were very good to deal with and I think everything is in order.

The cell phone that went for a dip at the boat ramp never recovered. If put on charge the flash will flicker like a strobe light, but that's about all. I'm saving it as there's a phone expert back home who might be able to recover something from the memory.

The phone did not have cell service, but it was a good for reading books and checking e-mail where there was wifi. I finally broke down and ordered a small Kindle Fire tablet. That should allow me access to my books “in the cloud” and also provide e-mail functions. It even has a small camera. Now all I have to do is keep it out of the ocean.

Now that I've got a reliable Internet connection again I'll do my on-line business. In fact, I'm even going to write a few paper checks for snail mail delivery -like some kind of a barbarian.

I hope to help dad with a few projects around the house. Then we'll plan the next stage of our adventures.

Please bear with me as this year's Internet connections are hit or miss. Last year I paid way too much money to a phone service with a hot spot connection. I really can't justify the expense. My lovely wife's phone is a cheap Straight Talk phone and that does not allow hot spot connections. It does allow us some limited Internet capability, but updating the blog isn't one of them.

-Sixbears