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