A Beachy Day

Sunday School for adults at NMIUMC was an adult Bible study booklet we read and then discussed.  The class meets for 1 ½ hours, not 45 minutes, 30 minutes before the children’s class because they like to have time for more discussion.

  

 

Worship was at 10:30 till about noon, much like our Hope Church worship was.  And the casualness of the worship center was reminiscent of Hope as well.  A snack and coffee table was set up at the back of the worship center from 9am on, and it was manned by Andy.  Andy is a Korean War  US Navy veteran and a long time civilian vet of the Cape Canaveral base.  He’s seen most every record setting flight go up since 1959.

And it was Andy who awarded us each a METHODIST MUGGING as guests of the church.  We kept one mug and returned the other to Andy after the service to give another.  We just don’t have space for extra anything in the coach!

While the style of the service here is very casual its form is blended.  We enjoyed hymns and praise music well spaced to make the service flow.  In fact, the keyboardist was an accomplished local stage vocalist so we were blessed with a solo from him half way through the service.

Today was a fifth Sunday of the month and on these four Sundays Children’s Church is moved to an art and craft/missions table under a dining canopy at the rear of the worship center so families can be closer together. The kids are involved in the service that way.  They call it Family Sunday.

Pastor Joel was dressed for this FIRST Advent service by one of the children and the boy chose tinsel garland for his theme.  And the theme was, ‘Standing out, not blending in, to the culture”.  I’d say Joel and his wardrobe consultant succeeded.

The service ended with another memory of Hope Church. Prayer warriors were called forward and folk were invited to come forward for personal prayer time.  One young lady did. You never know the need unless you make an opportunity for it to be met.

We learned that the live nativity dates on the church road sign were incorrect.  It happens Dec 13-14, not tomorrow night.  But we hope to join the Wednesday night Bible Study at 6pm when they meet this week.

We had a nice lunch at home and headed out to Cocoa Beach’s Mercury 3 - Sheppard Park for some ocean reading time.  Each beach park in Cocoa is named for one of the Mercury Program astronauts of the 1960’s. Alan was the first US astronaut to ever fly.

On the beach an air force kite caught my attention till a beach neighbor of ours began to feed the gulls.  Dangerous business feeding gulls at the beach.  Just ask Mona about it some time.

We scoped out a place suggested to us this morning by John for getting the best view of the Thursday launch from Cape Canaveral.  As of this evening all lights are green for the Orion takeoff at 7:05 am.

Should be exciting.

-Ken

Sleeping at Cape Canaveral

We arrived at North Merritt Island UMC in early afternoon today after the two hour ride south, with a one hour stop at a campground to dump our waste tanks, and fill with fresh water and propane. Sunny and 75!

The church, as do many buildings on this barrier island just a short distance from the launch pads of the Cape Canaveral Air Force Station, sits on a man made hammock (island) in the middle of primeval swamp in the middle of Merritt Island. We are only about 2 miles south of the Kennedy Space Center Museum and Visitor’s Center on NASA Blvd.

Some of the swampland around us has been drained and the water flow managed so homes can be built. When Cape Canaveral was first developed as the primary American space launch site there were almost no people anywhere on these hot, malarial islands.  A few cottages and motels on A1A in Cocoa Beach. And now!  Wanna buy some Florida swampland?  No longer cheap!

We entered a long avenue of live oaks that are not high enough yet for a 13 foot coach to enter without some trepidation on the part of the driver, and his co-captain.  But any new marks we received on our coach walls were negligible and we parked comfortably at the end of their flat drive, at the rear of the property.  Probably closest to where the alligators come out for dinner.

Sunday School tomorrow is at 9 and Worship is at 10:30.  They advertise a ‘living nativity’ this Monday evening so we are looking forward to that.  We don’t know what it will be like, or if its inside or out.  Some rain is predicted for Monday and Tuesday so that will keep us off the beach and the nativity indoors, we would imagine.

We drove around the island and into Port Canaveral and Cocoa Beach to see what had changed since we’d been here in 2009 with the family.  The Port Canaveral Jetty Park, nearest place on the coast for the public to see rocket launches costs $15.00 for non-Brevard County residents to enter. $5.00 for residents.  Mona says owning two deeded weeks at the Fort Lauderdale Marriott doesn’t make us Brevard residents, just customers.  L

I thought we would be able to drive to the Banana River to see the launches from there, but that land is all swampy, private, or just inaccessible. We’ll ask at church tomorrow where the locals go to watch a launch.  And we can stay here and watch Orion shoot up over the trees on the other side of the road we are on.  We are still only about five miles away.

Supper is over. It will soon be reading time, or movie time (for me), and then bed time.  It is SO quiet here, as it often is when we stay at churches.

The campground we dumped and filled in this afternoon was not crowded, but it felt like it; and a bit noisy.  Thank you United Methodist Churches for your generous hospitality!!

-Ken

Magical Moments from the past several weeks

Our last full day at De Leon Springs, Florida.  Its sunny, but not 75.  In fact, it struggled all day to get to 60, and didn’t last long. And it stayed pretty breezy.

We had planned a drive through the Ocala National Forest, which we are living just southeast of.  So we had a day with a plan (no deadline!) and we stuck to it.

We drove over 70 miles, all told, through rolling small hills with solid woods (jungle, really) up to the mowed shoulders, over rivers and streams well hidden beneath the bridges by the trees, and through small towns filled with references to bass fishing, BBQ, and GATOR MEAT. 

We found a park with a beach to have lunch beside… in the car. The ranger was raking the beach with his GATOR in preparation for Sunday when the temps here will go back to their afternoon 75 or so norm.

And we found a pretty tree nearby to photograph as well.

That’s it for today.

We went home, watched a part of a movie, and took care of our monthly paperwork, bills, etc.  The internet does make this life much easier!

Tomorrow we go south to Merritt Island and Cape Canaveral. Its averaging 10 degrees warmer there! 80’s again are just a few miles away, we think.

So with only two pics from today it seems only appropriate that I take time to revisit some of the places we’ve gone most recently where we have seen and felt the greatest blessing from God in His creation.

I hope you enjoy this short rewind of those scenes since I last shared some with you:

-Ken

Happy Thanksgiving!

Thanksgiving in Florida.  No biggie if you’ve ever spent Thanksgiving in Florida before. Very much a biggie if you have not.  Its November 27^th and the high today was about 72 at Ormond Beach, above Daytona.  And when we drove past this small orange grove at about 11 am it was about 65.  For us this is a BIGGIE.

I was delighted to find air plants, Spanish Moss and Resurrection Fern (because of all the rain we’d just had) covering the trees along with the plentiful almost ripe oranges. These are very early oranges, so they will not taste overly sweet.  The best freshly eaten oranges, so Rick Stauffer told us (see yesterdays blog), are those that ripen after Christmas.

One fruit was hanging way out over the fence, in the state highway department right of way. So to help the grower avoid having it cause an accident with an oncoming vehicle I removed it for a taste test to occur later this evening. It was tasted and Ramona reports that out of 10 it scores an 8 with her.

But its an orange!  On the 27^th of November!  And I picked it!  Please excuse my momentary loss of composure. I blame my age, and my former life in snow covered habitations.

We drove to the River Grille on the Tomoka River at Ormond Beach, Florida, for Thanksgiving Dinner with the McDowell’s.  We arrived at the restaurant two hours early on purpose.  We wanted to enjoy the restaurants setting on the water. 

The breeze made it a bit too cool for anyone to sit outside but we had a great time reading at the bar with my coffee and Mica’s conversation.

Mica is a twenty-something who loves to read, and she is into supernatural, and spiritual things, Physical science and astronomy.  I asked her what she’d like to be doing if she could do whatever she wished and Mica responded with , “Read, study, explore more (My paraphrase)”. She, like so many, think what we’re doing on the road is cool.  I told her that’s why we are heading farther south soon. J

The McDowell’s showed up right on time and we had a wonderfully prepared meal together.  This is only the second time Mona and I have spent TG dinner in a restaurant. The last was with the Crums and Tristan (when he was four years old, 15 years ago ) after the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade in New York. We ate at the Hyatt Regency TG buffet next to Grand Central Station.

I asked the hostesses, our servers, and Mica if they were going to be able to have a nice Thanksgiving with their families and they all affirmed, quite believably, that they were.  I hope the clerks at the Walmart we passed at about 6:45 pm on our way home had a chance to do the same earlier in the day. They opened at 6pm and I imagine staff had to be on site by 5. The parking lot was full and all adjacent bank, closed restaurant, etc lots were full as well.

After dinner we all went to Jerry and Wendy’s home in Port Orange, about 30 minutes south of the River Grille. Everybody watched the Dallas Cowboys being beaten by the Philadelphia Eagles at Dallas Stadium (at this typing) and I made silly comments about a sport, among most, I know little about.

Everyone was kind to me however, especially Aunt Jane (Mike and Jerry’s mother) who at 92 is probably the most physically active and sportif of us all.

Happy Thanksgiving everyone!  And an early Merry Christmas!!

-Ken