sewmona – Page 40

Geocaching

One of the things we love to do as a family is geocaching. It’s great way to discover your neighborhood even if you’ve lived there for a long time. In our case, we’ve only lived here for a few months and there’s a lot we haven’t discovered yet. We also get to see a lot of wildlife which is always fascinating to the kids.

While driving down this road…
…we saw this tortoise and I don’t know where the idea that a tortoise is slow came from, but this one moved right along!

The road ended here at a river. What a view!

Then on our way back, we saw this – a little piece of local history.

A tombstone in a concrete boat. How cool!We did find a couple caches too, plus a snake that slithered past me, a snake skin, some very unhappy fire ants (ouch!) and we made it home before we got poured on!

There’s a Bat in my PopUp?!?

A couple years ago on our last camping trip of the season, we had a surprise visitor. It had only been about 3 weeks since out last trip so a lot of stuff was still in the pop up – I had washed the bedding and towels and put it all back out there. After I got everything loaded, I pulled the pillow top down on the floor and started shutting up the camper. When we got to the campground, we set up with no problem and I went inside to put the beds up. I picked up the pillow top so I could get to the smaller bed and something fell off it. It was a BAT!! I yelled for John, but he wasn’t going near it (bats aren’t his thing). I carefully pushed it out with my foot (I think it was pretty startled to be so disturbed during the day). It flopped out the door and crawled under the camper (I was afraid that it was going to roost under the beds and then end up back in the camper when we closed up – so far I haven’t seen it). We then took the pillow top out and shook it off (I handed the end with the spider on it to John – spiders aren’t my thing). There were no more surprises in it. Whew! I was too surprised to even think about getting my camera!

So, how did it get in there? I have no idea. I’m pretty sure it rode under the pillow top the whole way to the campground (there was a ummm, bat stain on the pillow top which we lysol’d really good!!), but how did it end up under it? Maybe we left the door up too long last time we unloaded? Maybe it rode in on the beds when we pushed them in?

What’s the strangest thing that’s ever ended up in your pop up?

English Muffins

We go through a lot of english muffins around here! Hubby has two egg & cheese sandwiches on them every morning for breakfast, I eat half of one with peanut butter for breakfast everyday, and frequently my kids eat them too. There was no way I could afford to buy them at the rate we were eating them! Even on sale at 4/$4, I could only store so many in my freezer – no where near enough to last us until the next sale. Plus, I’m trying to avoid a lot of processed stuff and HFCS in particular.Â So, when I found this recipe and they came out perfectly on the first try, I knew it was a keeper.

Adapted from here.

1/4 cup warm water
1 tablespoon yeast
3 cups whole wheat flour, plus more as needed
1/4 cup gluten
teaspoon salt
1 cup milk
3 tablespoons oil
1 tablespoon honey
1 egg
cornmeal as needed

Sprinkle yeast over warm (about 105Â° F. is ideal) water and let stand until foamy, about 10 minutes.
In a large bowl, mix milk, oil and honey. Add egg and stir until well blended. Stir in the yeast mixture.
Add flour, gluten, and salt.Â Stir until well mixed.Â It will be a little sticky.
Cover with plastic wrap or a damp towel, and let rise in a warm place until doubled in size – about an hour.
Turn risen dough out onto a work surface that has been liberally dusted with cornmeal and pat or roll to about 1/2″ thick. Cut into approximately 3 inch rounds with a jar lid or similar size round cutter.
Cover the muffins with a towel and let rise for 20-30 minutes.
Heat a griddle or large skillet over medium-low heat. Using a spatula, carefully transfer muffins to hot griddle. Cook about 4 minutes, turn and cook for an additional 2-3 minutes. Outsides should be golden brown and crusty, insides should be soft, but not gooey.These freeze great!Â I normally make a double batch, split them and freeze them.Â That way they’re ready to toast straight from the freezer.

To Grow a Honeydew – Transplant

Are you tired of hearing (seeing) about our honeydew growing attempt? I hope not! I’m really hoping that we get some edible honeydews! Our sprouts were getting a little too big for their little pots, so we moved them to bigger ones. I’m hoping that they can stay in these pots permanently. We aren’t planning to plant them in the ground because the soil here in southwest Florida is very sandy. If they seem to be struggling as they get bigger, I may try planting one or two of them in the ground and seeing what happens. For now, we wait. Honeydews need 3 months of warm (hot) weather.

Why A PopUp?

I’ve posted about camping, but never really talked about our camper and why we chose a pop-up. Growing up, my parents had a class C camper (you know, the kind with the bunk over the cab) and I have lots of happy camping memories. Fast forward to when John & I had our first baby. We had talked about getting a camper, but just weren’t sure. I was sure I wanted a class C, but the cost seemed prohibitive (and this was before gas prices spiked!). The other problem was we really didn’t have a place to park it at our house, so there would be the added cost of paying to park it somewhere else. Plus, I really thought we would want to have a car with us rather than having to drive the RV everywhere (my parents never towed so if we went somewhere, they had to unhook everything, stow anything that was out, and then when we got back, hook everything back up again…seemed like a lot of work to me!).

At my parents recommendation, we went to the RV Show in Harrisburg, PA. Wow!! We saw all kinds of very expensive rvs! There weren’t too many class C’s, but we did have fun looking at the million dollar class A’s. We didn’t buy one and put it on the back burner until we moved to a place that had room for a camper. Fast forward a few more years and we have three kids and a new-to-us house with lots of room to park a camper. We started talking about buying a camper again. John was really interested in a pop-up. He had been camping in one a couple times and thought it would work for us. I wasn’t at all sure! However, the price was definitely better! Also, we found out that our Explorer came with a tow package, so it was already to tow (I’m sure that was mentioned when we bought it, but at that point we were mostly interested in a 4WD vehicle). The idea of getting to a campground and being able to set up once and then take the car where ever was very enticing! I can remember my parents unhooking everything when we wanted to go to a museum, the grocery store, the laundry, anywhere really. It seemed like a lot of work to me even as a kid. So, off to the local Coleman dealer we went. Actually, it was a used car place that also sold campers. The model they had there was a Yuma which is not the smallest, but pretty close. There are no tip outs, no bathroom/shower, a tiny kitchen, and enough beds to sleep 6-8 people (OK, probably 5, but we’ve had 7 in there with no problem). I loved it!! It somehow seemed perfect for our little family. So, we ordered one. They were made at a plant about an hour and a half from where we live (it has since closed). I think the salesman was a little surprised that we bought one so fast. He had no idea that this decision actually took about 6 years!! We knew nothing about towing and asked a bunch of questions trying to figure out what we needed. Finally we determined that we needed a ball mount and that it should only have a 2 inch drop. Our next stop was at the auto parts store to pick up a ball mount.

About a week later we got a call that our pop up was in. We got a quick lesson on setting up and tearing down and then they helped us get hitched up for the first time and we were on our way.