Swimming with Sharks ...in Las Vegas?

My New Year's Resolution:  Go down the 3-story water slide.  I've never been down even a 2-foot water slide in my life.  Bob nixed the idea:  "Act your age; you'll break your back and be an invalid for the rest of your life!"  Actually I was only worried about my feet.  If I don't keep them perfectly warmed, I get frost bite...that's how inferior my circulation is.  But it's a new year, and it's time to stop living in fear (my miserable enemy).  When Bob wasn't looking, I did it!!  When I came up from the water I realized all kinds of fears had been washed away.  The sharks had liberated me!!

I took off exploring (on my own).  Upstairs was another pool with in-water lounges, surrounded by double beds, complete with pillows.  Need I say this was an "adults only" area? 

It could be busy during the day, but I found out "The Retreat" was open late.  When the sun was setting, I had the pool and cabanas to try out all on my own.

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I hastened through the casino next, trying to hold my breath to limit the damage from second-lung smoke.  Outside the half-dome cover over Fremont Street was lit up with ads.   Zip-line enthusiastics went by squealing overhead.  I was invited to be a street magician's assistant.  Fun.  He was from Switzerland and was loaded with charm and talent.  Then I watched spray paint artists create fascinating art with unimaginably quick strokes and clever shielding of areas they wanted free from an added color.  But I was undeterred in my quest.  Focus, Eileen... focus.   I wanted to find... chocolate...the darker the better.  Walgreen's had just the fix I needed.

I couldn't resist taking the above picture of this Fremont Street classic. You really can eat free if your are 350 pounds (minimum). "Nurses" are your waitresses, because you will clog every available artery with the food they serve. At the "Heart Attack Grill" you have to walk in on your own, but they have an ambulance to assist in your departure.  As glitzy as Vegas gets, I kept being drawn back to the shark tank and the giant aquarium at our Rush Tower registration desk.  It had a wondrously well-designed, high-end restaurant wrapped around behind the aquarium.   It beckoned to me each time I walked by.  The fish and I became fast friends, as we had to stay for 3 days before we could get a plane.  They raised the price of our room $20 each day we stayed.  Intertesting.

With plenty of time, I made a movie of Las Vegas chandeliers.  Really!  Ask me, and I'll share it.

I took one last swim, but this time all of the way around the shark tank.  I thought the water would be cooler on the back side (the shaded part of the pool) but it wasn't.  The coldest part was standing under one of the water falls.  I hadn't been swimming in so long...it was a truly FREEing experience.

Below is the poster the hotel has hung outside to lure visitors in.  Come shoot the tube!

We finally flew out...to Minneapolis and then to Orlando.  We flew right over our kids' home on Lake Fredrica.  What a beautiful sight.  Let's play tigers and go fish on the dock!

BEST Destination in Florida....so far....

Bob at The Orlando LDS Temple

The RV took us on a sacred path to our Florida Temple.  We have been here many times...with the most special (and exciting!) trips being to see our two youngest sons married and sealed to their Karens.  Yes, their wives are both named Karen and have been good friends for a long time.  It was good to be back and to participate in sacred ordinances for deceased family members.  To read an explanation of marriage in a temple, click here.  If you want to read the rest of this story click here.  

If you want to drive to this temple get directions here. 

One of the first things we saw on this trip was a security man in a John Deere Gator like the one we use in our campground work.  You can see where it is parked in the bottom of the above photo.  The best-ever security person is pictured here, Wilber Alfaro, de El Salvador.  He was sealed in this temple to his wife, who is de Puerto Rico.  He will visit his mother in his homeland so she will soon have the blessings of the temple as well.  Joy!

The crèche....It's only 5 days to Christmas~!

No overnight parking at the Orlando Temple....sorry....but....
There's a campground just a few miles away that will astound, amaze and alter your mind!

Bill Frederick Park at Turkey Lake is the formal name of this Orlando city park.  It's beautifully maintained with the best 18-hole Disc Golf Course I've ever seen.  The farm is darling, with activities galore for kids...and the impressive pool overlooks the lake.  We had to stay in overflow but it's the best value we ever had for $15.  It's only $19 for shaded camp sites with electric and fine showers.

Pie, a retired race horse at the park's Farm.



Overflow RV site with view of Turkey Lake

Miss Becky has fed the livestock at Turkey Lake for 12 years!  You can rent her (and the farm) by the hour for kid parties. Trails leave the farm to outdoor musical instruments, paved bike trails and playgrounds. 

It doesn't get any better than this!

Looking for a Job Camp Hosting in all the right places

Turn downs, “no openings”, “we have all of the help we can use“, “keep us in mind for next year”...

and other nice ways of letting us know we didn‘t get the job abounded this week. We did get two more job offers, but not in the Orlando area. We really do want to stay close to our son and his cute, cute wife and girls and to our nephew, Craig, and his wife, Tanya. They are expecting their first baby, and we just have to be a part of that. Besides, they all have Disney passes and I, like all of the world, want to go to Disney.

The two offers were intriguing: One in a Florida Preserve , helping in the visitor center, and the other in the Everglades, working in a lab studying marsh lichens . But the jobs were not only too far from family but involved too many scheduled hours, which would kill exploratory trips. Florida truly is Adventureland. And I’m done with 100% of my time being tied up with work.  We need time to play with little mermaids and baby tigers.

VERY Creative Job Search...from the Street

This is the craziest job hunt ever. We are parked in the best condo area near HB’s place of work, Florida Hospital. It’s fancy name is: Lake View on Lake Fredrica. There’s no buildings on this particular street because of the housing market crash. We met the security guard for the development, and found there were no jobs in the area. He had been forced to cut back to where he only had two employees himself.

HB took us to lunch at his hospital, and we were joined by his boss…the nicest and healthiest doctor we’d ever met, Dr. Dale S. Birenbaum.  He has posted a slide show about the Emergency Room Residency which you can see here.     Dr. Birenbaum is the tan and fit supervisor in the pictures with very short, dark hair.  He treats our HB very well and has made HB's time in the ER exceptionally worthwhile.

Before we moved on...we had lots of fun with the family.  There was "El Dia de los Muertos" with Tanya's superb face painting, a trip to The Science Museum (my favorite activity) and a mega-feast at Joe's Crab Trap Restaurant, slopping up big pots of steaming sea food at its spiciest best.  Wow!

The odd thing about the fantastically diverse museum was the huge amount of space and $$ allotted to create a replica of "Florida's Wild Places".  Then I got it.  In a big city like Orlando, some kids never get to see a Cypress Swamp or wild, animal-filled scrub lands.  

Emergency in the Florida Keys

 

Life is more than good at Bahia Honda..... for the mosquitoes.  We just completed our emergency evacuation.   This chair is in our "back yard" breeding ground at the Volunteers' RV parking. The camper in #20 emailed me today (Oct 28th) about their emergency evacuation, after vicious mosquito attacks. And we were informed of at least one other camper who had to get medical attention for their bites. Hurricane Rina is now a tropical storm, which chose The Keys as its dumping grounds for the moisture it's been scooping up in The Gulf. At first a lake rising around us was rather a novelty. Our neighbor, John, just got out his kayak to mock the flood. But then the police boat SANK, Buttonwood Campground vanished under water, and our RV sank ever deeper in the sodden mess.

The brown waters of the campground made islands of the restrooms.  The campers were very brave.  Here's Volunteer Andrew strolling in our front yard.  And the last pictures are of park rangers saving the police boat. 

So...what does one do?  There are better things to do with a life than offer your body as mosquito bait and live trapped in an RV to escape the bugs, mud and weather.  Let's go on an adventure!  We really are in Florida, and our youngest son and his darling family are in Orlando.  Where should we flee?    (2B continued....)

How to get a Camp Host Job (State Parks)

We got serious about looking for a state park job when we remembered our fabulous tour of Florida parks the winter of 2010.  We tried for Wekiva Springs (pictured) because it was the closet one to our youngest son, who lives with his family in Orlando.  It was a recreational bonanza, but our call to the nice volunteer coordinator revealed half of it was closed to put in a sewer system...and so there's be no openings until 2012.  Our call saved us putting in an application.

We called the next closest one, Lake Louisa State Park , and the coordinator, Jenny, was super nice and helpful.  She had no openings, but she explained the best way to apply:  Don't just fill out the ap (by clicking here:  Volunteer Opportunities ) ...but call the park you are interested in and then follow up with a hand-written ap.  You can get the contact info at the bottom of the home page for many campgrounds by going to ReserveAmerica.com or Recreation.com and searching the campground or area you are interested in.  Here's a link:  Campground Addresses and Phone Numbers   According to Jenny, the campground managers get a steady stream of emailed applications...and they often just get lost in the deluge or deleted.  But a good application that comes in the mail (especially with a picture and a friendly note of introduction) gets filed for when an opening does come up.  We followed Jenny's instructions and mailed our explanation of what we hoped would happen...and sure enough....the next month she called with an offer to work for a one-month opening she had.  We wanted something for the whole winter, but she promised to hang onto our ap in case something "bigger" opened up.  [If you need help doing any of this, just email me at camphost.white@gmail.com ]