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Another day ending in paradise

Before getting to the post, I want to warn my loyal readers (about 3) that I didn’t start to refer to myself at the third person or by my first name. This post was written by Christiane. I didn’t see anything news worthy, but it seems I was wrong…

Thursday Nov 15

In the morning we went to Sam’s Club.  We had just arrived when Richard, who had decided to wear socks and shoes to alleviate the itching from the insect bites, turned around and told me he was going back to the truck to remove his socks as the bites were too itchy and he couldn’t take it.  After he got back and found me, he left right away after saying he couldn’t bear the itchiness and the pain and was going to wait for me in the truck and for me to take all the time I needed.  All the time I needed… in a store?  Well, by then I was sure the poison from the bites had reached his brain!  J  Well I hurried up so we could get back to the campground and work (of course, if Richard were writing this, he would make a comment about the word work…) on those bites. 

I finally convinced Richard to soak his feet in a combination of water, sea salt and baking soda.  It was instant relief!  He was almost crying from joy!  Well, ok, I made that part up but in fact, the real Richard was back! J 

In the afternoon we went to the swimming pool.  The water was warm and in the blink of an eye Richard was already in the deep end, swimming.  That’s a first for him as he usually takes 10 – 15 minutes to barely dip his feet in the water!  I had to do a double take to make sure it was him!  At the beach, when he goes in the water, he barely gets his knees wet, and that’s because the waves hit him.

While at the pool we overheard a guy mentioning that a good place to eat was the Naples’ Miller Ale House, near Costco, which has great food and prices, so we had to investigate…  It turns out he was right.  More about that later.

We had supper with Jo and André at their place.  We enjoyed delicious beef kabobs with asparagus and a rice and broccoli casserole we found at Sam’s Club. 

Friday Nov 16^th

Richard did another foot soaking session and declared the itchiness was just about gone and he wanted to go to the huge Wal-Mart and some other places and did I want to join him?  So, away we went but as we reached the first set of lights which is 20 seconds from the campground he informed me that the itchiness was back and he would just go to the smaller and much closer Wal-Mart…  I bought some gel, same one as Jo, to threat the bites and some antihistamine, as suggested by the Mayo Clinic website.  We did some quick grocery and were back to the campground for another feet soaking session.   By that time, I was through being the tough one and had a soaking session as well!

Saturday Nov 17

Richard declared himself fit to travel.  We wanted to buy a printer so we went to Best Buy, Staples and Costco but didn’t find what we were looking for.  Well, we couldn’t let that “trip” go to waste so instead we tried Naples’ Miller Ale House for lunch and we let the potato soup in a bread bowl go to waist… J.  It was delicious!  We both had the soup, which was a meal in itself with the bread bowl, I had a pop and the whole bill came to $11.00!  Now, that’s almost cheaper than eating at home and there were no dishes to clean!  Actually, we were gracious enough to eat our bowl so there were fewer dishes for them to do as well…  That’s how considerate we are.

(Note from Richard: Sorry Christiane you forget a very important fact that will be necessary for tomorrow post… I bought sandals at Kohl’s for $30. Every time we went out, I couldn’t wear socks because it activated my itching, I didn’t want to wear croc in stores so it was necessary to get a pair of “dress up” sandal.)

We had invited Jo & André for supper.  Richard cooked some salmon, giving his cooking secrets to André because Jo doesn’t like André’s salmon.  The secret?  Cook it until it’s crispy brown! (Note from Richard: Probably chief Ramsey would send it back to the kitchen saying that it is burn!)

Not invited but there was No see um (Can you see them?)

 I had prepared a dressing with an oil/vinegar base which is very similar to St-Hubert’s restaurant’s own recipe.  The coleslaw was “marinating” in the dressing since last night and when I did a taste test it was just awful!  Saltier than sea water!  I couldn’t understand, I had made that dressing before and it was delicious.  The only possible explanation, which turned out to be it, was that my plastic container labeled Sugar was filled with salt and not sugar and since I had added 3 table spoons of “sugar”…  Well, at least we had green beans and Jo and I pulled our resources together and she prepared a salad.  Supper was delicious, once again. 

We ate outside on our patio but were assaulted by mosquitoes (Note from Richard: Grrrrrrrrrr!).

After supper, Richard and André went to watch a rerun of a Canadien/Nordique hockey game, in André’s motorhome while Jo and I chatted at the table.  Richard was happy; it was a game where the Nordique beat the Canadien! (Note from Richard: AGAIN!)

After I cleaned the dishes and put everything away I watched some TV.  I soon discovered and killed 5 mosquitoes in the trailer! When Richard came back, he killed another 5 just while brushing his teeth!  L (Note from Richard: With Christiane's toothbrush, NOT!)  We hunted and destroyed another 15-20.  I went to bed and turned on the light we had installed that day and I counted 7 more mosquitoes at the foot and head of the bed! So, we armed ourselves again and smashed some more.  When we finally turned off our light, we could hear some buzzing around!  Richard turned back on his light and killed a few more.  Had Julie been there, she would have gone mad (Note from Richard: Mad-her :-))!

Here some miscelanous pictures: