Tag Archives: Trader Joe’s

2014/02/12(W) Back In Time

We woke to an overcast sky with rain in the forecast for the afternoon.  One of the closer state parks to us is the Dudley Farm Historic State Park.  I don’t know how many types of state parks Florida has, but so far we have been to: “Regular” (un-designated/default); Preserve; Buffer (Preserve); Wilderness (Preserve); Archeological; Geological; and Wildlife/preserve.  This was our first Historic(al) park and I know they have Battlefield parks.   I will not be surprised to find out there are other types as well, such as Marine or Bird Sanctuary.

Located in Newberry, Florida the Dudley Farm Historic SP is NW of Williston and due west of Gainesville.  We also needed to do some shopping today, so a trip to the state park in the morning (before the rain started) followed by a swing through Gainesville was our plan for the day.  We were on our way by 10 AM, taking US-27/41 NNW out of  Williston through Archer to Newberry where we headed west on Newberry Road (FL-26) about a mile to the park entrance.

Although there was plenty of room to park, we were surprised by the number of cars in the parking lot.  The park is not open on Monday’s and Tuesday’s, but the reason for the crowd became evident when we entered the visitor center.  In addition to the normal park staff and volunteers there where at least six women in period clothing working on an old large quilt and another woman weaving at a small loom.  Wednesday mornings is when this happens and it added a touch of “living history” to our visit.  I have posted a separate photo gallery of our visit to the Farm.

There were a few buildings by the visitor center for display and demonstration, but the main farm was a quarter mile walk through the woods on a level path.  The Dudley Farm was a thriving, successful family enterprise that began before the Civil War and continued until after WW II.  The farmstead, consisting of 18 buildings, equipment, and furnishings, was donated to the State in the early 1980’s along with 23 acres of the 600+ acre farm.  The State later acquired an additional 232 acres and more recently another 80 acres for the visitor center, entrance road and parking lot area.  This is not a “recreated” farm; all the buildings are in their original locations except for the General Store, which was moved to the farmstead from its location near the main road.

We roamed the farmstead for over an hour looking at, and going in, buildings and taking photographs.  We had the place to ourselves except for some birds, chickens, turkeys, and three mules.  Although the farm was “rough” by modern standards, it was interesting to try to imagine this place as a “state of the art” operation full of generations of Dudley’s and farm hands engaged in the slow but steady work of farm and domestic life.  The tendency is to romanticize and envision this place as somehow idyllic.  It wasn’t.  The farmhouse was certainly comfortable compared to being outside, and life was good (at least for the Dudley’s), but it was no doubt a hard life.

By the time we were done touring the farmstead the overcast had lowered almost to a ground cloud and it had started misting.  Although we lacked bright sunlight, blue skies, and intense colors, the soft, even, subdued light was ideal for making lower contrast images and seemed somehow appropriate in mood to the empty, gray, weathered buildings of this now quiet farmstead, preserved so that we might glimpse a moment back in time.

If the Dudley Farm HSP was the past, Gainesville is definitely the here and now.  As we got to I-75 on FL-26 we encountered heavy traffic.  We had not been to this part of Gainesville yet, but now we know where the major shopping area is located!  You name it, it’s here.  Conveniently for us the Office Max, Michaels, Trader Joe’s, and PetSmart were all in the same mega shopping center (one of many).  Trader Joe’s had a quite a selection of house brand wines for $2.99/bottle (750 mL) so we bought several.  I hope they are to our liking, because I sure like the price.  They did not, however, have a house brand moscato 🙁  A final stop at the Kangaroo filling station for fuel and we were on our way back to WCRVResort.

Linda made one of our favorite dishes for dinner; whole wheat capellini (angel hair) pasta with garlic, onions, mushrooms (two kinds), sun-dried tomatoes, and basil lightly sautéed in olive oil; simple, but absolutely delicious.

 

2013_12_24 (T) Christmas Eve in Florida

If you had asked me even 10 years ago if we would ever be in Florida on Christmas Eve I would have scoffed at the suggestion.  And yet here we are; and loving it.  We got up around 8 AM to clear skies and cool temperatures, the overnight low having gotten all the way down close to 50 degrees F.  There was a light breeze, and it was a bit brisk, but we were bemused to see people bundled up like they were in Michigan (where the temperatures were near 10 deg F).  Speaking of Michigan, there are quite a few people here at Williston Crossings RV Resort from our state, as well as from Ontario, Canada.

I made coffee, as I do every morning, and that got Linda up, as it does most mornings.  Teeko’s Sweet Seattle Dreams is a 50/50 mix of their Seattle Blend (caffeinated) and Sweet Dreams blend (decaffeinated).  We were the first customers that Jeff made this particular combination for, and he liked the aroma so much he is considering brewing up some to serve by the cup.  Not that we’re addicted or anything, but we like to start our day with the smell of coffee being ground and brewed.  The drinking that follows isn’t too bad either.  I uploaded several blog posts before breakfast and a few more afterwards while Linda went for her first walk of the day.  She is very focused on getting in at least 10,000 steps every day, and determined to drag me along.  🙂  We then headed for Gainesville, Florida to do some grocery shopping.

There was a Christmas Eve social at 4 PM in the Activities Building at Williston Crossings RV Resort; BYOBeverage and a hor d’ourves to share.  We didn’t have anything with us to share, so we picked up hummus and chips while we were in town.  Linda also needed various ingredients for our Christmas eve and Christmas day dinners.  Our research indicated that our best general purpose grocery option would be Publix, a large grocery store chain in Florida.  There are several in Gainesville (home of the University of Florida and the Florida Gators).  There is also an Earth Origins organic market in Gainesville.  One of the Publix stores is in the SW corner of the Gainesville area at the intersection of I-75 and FL-121, just 15 miles from the back entrance of the Williston Crossings RV Resort.  The Earth Origins market is in the northwest quadrant just north of the University of Florida campus.  Between the two stores we were able to find most of the products we are used to getting from the stores where we live, including Whole Foods.  We did not look for the Trader Joe’s in Gainesville on this trip, but we know there is one there if/when we need it.

We had a light lunch when we got back.  I continued to work on blog posts (I am almost caught up) while Linda entered receipts into Quicken and copied photo files from the NAS to her machine for redundant storage.

We took a roasted red pepper hummus and chips to the Christmas Eve social.  Our main reason for going was to be sociable, not for the food, but we always try to take something we can eat on the assumption that there won’t be anything else vegan available.  We got there just after 4 PM and left about an hour later.  During that time there were approximately 40 people there, enough to fill the room but a small percentage of the residents.  All seven people at our table were first time residents at Williston Crossings.  One couple was from Ontario and another had recently become full-timers, having sold everything and hit the road this past July.  Someone brought veggies, so we had something to eat besides the hummus and chips.

Linda prepared a lovely Christmas Eve dinner of angel hair pasta (somehow appropriately inappropriate for us) with mushrooms and sun-dried tomatoes tossed in an olive oil with garlic.  A little white wine to wash it down and some fresh strawberries for dessert finished the meal off nicely.

After dinner I went to the Adobe website to see if I could get some pre-sales technical support before deciding whether to order the Adobe Photoshop Photography Program.  This program is subscription based and includes Photoshop Creative Cloud and Lightroom 5 for $9.99 per month (with a one year commitment).  My Live Chat customer support person indicated that I would be able to use this on my old Windows XP Pro laptop, so I went ahead and ordered it.  Adobe was very efficient at taking my money, but as soon as I tried to download Photoshop I was informed that it was not compatible with my operating system.  Aaaarrrrgggghhhh.  I had a few “words” with the Live Chat person about this.  When our Live Chat session was done I was presented with a survey and I made it clear I was not pleased with the pre-sales support I had received which seemed more concerned with “helping” me to place the order than with accurately responding to my technical questions.

The subscription allows us to install the programs on two computers, and I did establish (I think) that we can move it to a new machine if/when we get one.  For now we downloaded the Creative Cloud app onto Linda’s much newer 64-bit Windows 8 machine and then used the app to download both Ps(CC) and Lr5 onto her computer.  Although Linda will probably not be the primary user of this software it at least got it installed so we can start learning how to use it.