A couple of days before leaving Palmetto I managed to pull a muscle in my lower back, so I've been hobbling around a lot lately. It is finally getting back closer to normal, after causing some fitful sleep the past few nights.
After leaving Palmetto we spent the evening with Marty Malone, Alea's high school friend. She has two cats, Max and Marley, so it was questionable whether Lana's presence would cause any issues. The uncertainty ended quickly, with Marley's deep, throaty growl and slow, menacing approach toward Lana. Max was more curious than threatening, but the sight of two big cats backing her into a corner was unnerving for Lana. She remembers Joe's cat, Sid, and wasn't eager to have to relive those experiences.
We made do by leaving the cats inside and spending the afternoon by Marty's screened-in pool. The dog/cat drama continued to play out with the sliding glass door assuring that nobody got hurt. Eventually they all calmed down and Lana tried to ignore them. After all, the pool vacuum would come on now and then, so her efforts were best focused on making sure that such an odd and threatening device stayed in the pool. An occasional growl or 'woof' was sufficient to keep the wild pool vac at bay.
After leaving Marty's we stopped to see where Alea had lived on Green Key Road in New Port Richey. The tiny little house was still there. It is memories of the ease of living in such a small space that have us thinking of eventually finding a permanent home base with a similar small footprint somewhere in the Sunbelt. That might be a house, condo or trailer - time will tell.
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| Alea's old house on Green Key Road. |
The neighborhood had changed quite a bit, with new estates and condos lining the road in areas closer to the Gulf of Mexico.
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| The ruins of an old sugar mill in Yulee, FL. |
We had thought there were some available campgrounds farther south than where we are currently located. But those sites were tent-only, so we kept driving until reaching to O'Leno State Park, where we had camped for one night back in November.
This time around we've had more time to explore the area (the last time it rained a lot). The Santa Fe River passes nearby and not far from here it disappears underground, only to reappear a few more miles down the road. For that few miles it travels underground through a maze of limestone caverns.
We invited Ralph and Debbie Martin to come over and visit with us, which they did yesterday. I met Ralph through Ancestry.com, where AncestryDNA originally stated that we were third cousins (that was later revised to be a less close relationship). We are fourth cousins, having the same third great grandparents, Simon and Anna (last name unknown) Williams of Posey County, Indiana. Ralph's Martin-3rd-ggf was Elder James Martin (who was not a direct ancestor of mine, but whose life was intertwined with those of several of Simon Williams' children). He likely was a big part of what led my 2nd great grandfather, Elder Lewis Williams, to also become a Baptist preacher. While Elder James Martin was not a direct ancestor, he was perhaps the most interesting person that I had researched in connection with my Williams book, as it eventually turned out that there were an abundance of records for him during the period from 1805 to the early 1820s. That is rarely the case for folks who lived on the Indiana frontier, but the records of the marriages that he performed there and in Kentucky give a very detailed account of his life during that time period.
We spent a few hours learning a bit more about each other, and we hope to see them again in June when our planned cycling route passes fairly close to their permanent home in Maine.
It looks as though the rains will return later today, and tomorrow we head over to Tomoka State Park to spend a few nights with some fellow teardroppers.
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