Today our cruise took us south, then northeast and then west. First, Peg was nice enough to let me go back south to see the dragline in Coleman. Today it was operating and we sort of sneaked into the access road to the quarry to get a photo. No sooner had we taken a video of the dragline working when some of the quarry staff came by to quiz us on what we were doing on their site without checking in with the office as plainly posted at the entrance. They were very nice about it, particularly when I mentioned to them that I would be leaving immediately.
We wandered around through the Ocala National Forest after that. The Ocala is very nice but we did not see many critters. We did, however, find a restaurant called Jan’s River Cafe near the town of Ocala which also had a candy store next to it selling “Whoopie Pies.” The food at Jan’s was terrific. Peg got a half of a lemon chicken with cabbage and beans and mashed potatoes which she said was superb. I got Shepherd’s Pie which was also very tasty. We are figuring out that chain restaurants have mediocre food but little cafes seem to have great stuff. After eating too much at Jan’s, we wandered next door to the place with the whoopie pies to see what they were. They seem to be big cake-sized cookies top and bottom with ice cream in between so we tried some of them, too. They were also good but by the time we left the parking lot we were close to popping from too much of a good thing.
Dinner today was deemed unnecessary. Somehow I lost my neat little pocket knife today although we can’t figure out how I did it.