A Bad Start to the Day

 

Dunnellon, Florida  ( high 81, low 53)

On Thursday, we drove over to the headsprings part of the park, here at Rainbow Springs State Park.  The campground and the headsprings are in two separate areas. 

The campground is along the river, but there are no waterfront campsites.  You can launch a kayak, or swim in the river.

They have a nice kayak launch, complete with a guard.

It’s much prettier over at the head springs area.  You walk in, and look down onto the beautiful spring fed river.  It’s quite pretty, but  I accidently deleted my photos, thinking that I had down loaded them.

We were here in October of 2011.  If you’re interested in more information about the campground, or the springs and river, click here.

I am reposting a few pictures here from the previous blog, so that you can see just how beautiful the area is.  We’ll probably get back to the springs today.

The water was so clear, that it looked like air.

After we got back home, we spent some time outside on our nice patio area, reading and watching the birds.

There are a lot of Towhee here at this park.  Someday, I’ll get a better picture.

 

We saw this tiny little bird.  Not sure what he is and haven’t taken the time to look him up.

 

On Friday, we had the unpleasant job of moving to a different site, after only two nights on site 22. We liked the site pretty well, and we had pretty good privacy, but you could hear and see the road from behind our site.  Site 21, which is where we actually were supposed to have been, was a much better site.

We just had to move a few sites down, so site 16, but when we thought about moving, we wished we hadn’t decided to extend our stay. 

We took a walk around the campground in the morning, and on the way back, as we walked by our next door neighbors site, we heard a loud metallic sounding crash.   We heard some voices, then a female was saying “help, somebody please help.”   Of course, we started over, but their two dogs were barking and warning us away.  They said, “the dogs won’t bite.”  

Once we approached, the dogs calmed down, and they didn’t bite.

It turns out somehow the awning arm fell down and the man got his finger caught between two sections of the awning arm.   He was feeling dizzy and afraid he was going to pass out from the pain.    Al got a screwdriver and somehow pried the metal pieces apart allowing him to get his finger out.   It turns out his wife was a nurse.  She thought she should take him to see a doctor.  I looked up a couple of emergency clinics nearby, gave her directions, and they took off.

While they were gone, we showered, read a while, then decided we’d better get packed up and move to our new site.

It’s much easier packing up when you only have to move down the road, and we got the coach moved fairly quickly. I was working inside, and Al was outside hooking up the water and sewer.  He came in saying a few choice words, holding his head, and bleeding like crazy.

It turns out he managed to crack his head open on the slide out….again.  We really need to get some of those swim noodles before he kills himself.

The wound was about 1 1/2 inches long, but it didn’t look too terribly deep, but it bled a lot.  We put ice on it to stop the bleeding and the bleeding slowed.

We decided to walk back over and visit our nurse friend from earlier, and see what she thought.   We’re not sure of their names, but I think she is Diane and he is Bill (the guy with the smashed finger).

When we got to their site, they were back from the clinic.  His finger was not broken thankfully.  She was up on the roof, and he was working on the awning arm which had become loose from the side of the motor home.

She looked at Al’s head, asked him if he was dizzy or nauseous, then cleaned his wound with saline, then dabbed it with an iodine swab.  She didn’t think he needed to go to a doctor, but advised if anything changed not to hesitate to see a doctor.

While we were there, we helped them with their awning arm.  All that could be done, was to was secure the awning arm to the bracket so that they could travel, since the were planning on heading south.

So, we ended up with two medical emergencies, and each of us was able to help the other one out.  We had been next door to them for two days and only said hello, but ended up getting to know them when there was an accident.

We spent the rest of the day around the house.  Our new site is more private, but a little shorter and sunnier.  Our satellite signal locked on, but we spent the afternoon outside reading.

I’m reading the Stephanie Meyer novel The host.   She is the author of the Twilight series, which I very much enjoyed.  She has some kind of imagination and is an excellent writer.  I know the Twilight series was billed as a teenage book, but I thoroughly enjoyed both the books and the movies.  The host is supposed to be an “adult” novel, and so far I’m enjoying it.  It’s a little difficult getting into it and keeping things straight, but I think I’ll like it.  It was one that I had picked up at the library in the laundry room at Rivers Edge.  When you stay at RV parks, you rarely need to buy books!

Since, we don’t have to move today, we hope to spend most of the day outside reading.  The weather is nice and warm and hopefully will be sunny today.  I just need to keep Al safe!