Florida Panhandle

Destination: Carrabelle, Florida

This week brought us to Ho Hum RV Resort along the coast of Florida's panhandle. Carrabelle is a remote area of Florida, far from the hustle and bustle of tourist mecas like Panama City.  The scenery was beautiful and the weather was perfect! We visited and hiked several state parks, including St. George Island just south. It felt a little like paradise. 

James resumed fishing this week and brought home a flounder and some croakers. One of the fish filets slipped off of the cleaning board on the pier and into the ocean. Instead of letting it become food for the Pelicans, James threw on his swim trunks and dove into the frigid water to retrieve it! That's dedication.

Could we afford to live right on the ocean like this in 'real life'? Nope, but we sure can live in some amazing places thanks to our new nomadic lifestyle.

Yeah, we even saw some dolphins out here!

Welcome to paradise :)

Maya's loving the beach life

We had a few technical issues with the RV this week:

1. The top of our exterior ladder mysteriously fell off! And by mysteriously, I mean we may have grazed the roof of an unsuspecting building..  That was kind of an accident waiting to happen anyway and not exactly our first run-in with ladder vs. object.  :O

2. Our door latch stopped working. We actually couldn't get in or out via the door for several days, as it took us that long to figure out a way to drill/pry the door latch loose. We FINALLY got it open which came as a great relief to Maya, who was a little sick of being hoisted through the passenger side door. A new latch has been ordered and let's hope it's easier to install than it was to dislodge.. That brings me to this very important point:

#2

If you feel your door latch getting sticky, OIL IT! Or just replace it before it breaks. This is apparently a common issue with these latches, which need to be replaced every 5 years or so, so get ahead of the problem (especially if you have a large dog and/or a motorhome with no alternative entrance).

Since we now have more free time to make stuff, I present another recipe:

Pete's Homemade Yogurt without a yogurt maker

Ingredients:

• Milk - we used a half gallon of organic 2% milk.
• 1/3 cup of plain starter yogurt - we used a single serving Chobani we found for .75 cents.

• Heat milk over the stove until it gets frothy, but not boiling. Technically you can use a thermometer to measure the temp to 185 degrees, but we didn't use one. 

• Let the milk cool until it's kind of like very hot tap water (about 115 degrees). 

• Stir in your yogurt starter, then poor the mixture into containers of your choice.

• Put the containers into a small cooler, and add hot tap water. Nuke a mug full of water every so often to keep the temp in the cooler up. This is not an exact science! The warmer the cooler stays, the sooner your yogurt will be ready. It can be ready in as little as 5 hours, but we started the recipe at 5pm, then let it sit in the cooler overnight. 

• Move containers to the refrigerator where the yogurt will continue to firm up.

• Enjoy!

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