Festivals Abound

Hi all,
 Wow, we are down to our last two weeks volunteering at Suwannee. We think we got a nice schedule with work camping for four months and then off for two. That gives us time to play retired tourist then back to work-(kind of).
 Plans for the next two months are a bit lacking. We have a reservation for the first two weeks of March near St. Augustine, time to get our beach on. Then we will head back and mooch camp by Amanda for a couple weeks before beginning a slow trek to South Dakota. Our start date there is May 8th and we do not want to get there any earlier than necessary. So we will just see where the road takes us.
 The past weekend was a busy one as we found two nearby festivals to attend. It was nice as Amanda has taken off the next two Fridays to spend with us. On Friday we took in the Olustee Battle Festival in Lake City. The main event here is a battle reenactment of the largest civil  war battle in Florida that took place in 1864. Sadly for us the battle was held on Sunday when we had to work.( We did get a chance to visit the craft sales and sample some tasty cuisine. One side feature was a show with some of the worlds best Frisbee catching dogs that was quite fun to watch.

 Saturday was the 7th annual Stienhatchee Fiddler Crab Festival. This festival took place in the busy litte fishing village of Stienhatchee. Main events here were crab races, river rides, and a Swampwater cookoff. They also had a large supply of craft and food venders. Music was also held but we thought $10. each to hear a jam session was a bit much so we just walked about getting some nice exercise.
 Seems we had got there just as they were finishing up with the Swampwater cookoff missing the chance to get samples. Just need to plan better, but we did get a tasty Jamaican wrap. We watched a crab race then saw a young ventriloquist that was surprisingly good. There was also a unicycle juggler that was previously featured on Americas Got Talent.

 Sunday after work we helped plant a couple more fruit trees by Mandi and hook up irrigation to them. She says we can't leave till the garden is all in- we'll see??
 One other thing that you don't see in Wisconsin is baling of the pine needles, they call  pine straw. They manually rake and pile up the long needles in big piles then bring in a baler to the piles. They load them in semis and take them to various stores for use as decorative mulch and such. I guess a good way to make some money while waiting to harvest the trees.

If you look really close you can see a tear in Wendy's eye as they take her basket supply. JK.)