Indiantown for a Month

Pictures: The Indiantown Marina storage yard has many boats from many places and is fun to roam through; not sure what type of lizzard this is, found near a work shed at the marina, but it sure is colorful; we are posing in front of the Habitat for Humanity house we worked on; the street of Habitat homes is in the background, sandhill cranes are in the foreground; nephews of a new homeowner have come to help put in volunteer hours, to go toward the 100 owner volunteer hours required; lunch on the worksite; Ken is fishing in the St. Lucie Inlet on our day off; the path to the beach from the Intracoastal Waterway at Peck Lake;one of the public buildings in Indiantown.

More Pictures:The Virginia bluegrass group Nothin' Fancy plays at the Yee Haw Junction Music festival; a smoke plume from burning sugarcane fields before they cut the cane for processing; during our off-week from building, Heidi attended a safety training for building and posed with Bob and Rosemary from West Virginia (we all got new hardhats); Ken is watching a hawk in the Dupuis Reserve near our marina/campground; we believe these are two immature eagles, that we saw from the canal near to the campground; Ken with Dennie and Chris (Habitat volunteers from Minnesota)

Our Habitat Project  in Indiantown Florida is rewarding us with progress in the building and chances to meet the new owners as they work with us on Saturdays each week.  We've also met a few locals who volunteer on a regular basis and the staff of the Habitat affiliate who are all very easy to work with.
The other volunteer builders who have come here in their RVs for this session are married couples from Wisconsin, Minnesota and West Virginia. We all worked comfortably with each other and we had a few social events as well. The marina has a wonderful waterfront area with a shaded patio, firepits, rattan tables and chairs, and a small store with extra soft drinks, beers and ice cream in case we run out! We went to dinner with our group and the volunteer coordinator from the affiliate, to a neighboring town one week, and we ate at a restaurant in Indiantown as a group the next week. We brought ends of pine studs from the worksite and burned them in several evening campfires at one of the firepits.
Working with Elek, our construction supervisor, gave us a chance to learn to use some new tools (at least for me) like a nail gun and a drill with a concrete bit. And we built walls with doorway headers and "California corners". I have a new vocabulary! All of this has been tiring, but as volunteers we don't have to punch a clock and if we are seriously hurting, we can take longer breaks or get assigned a job that uses different muscles. Our volunteer coordinator, Nancy, brings us snacks, lines us up with safety training, and in general keeps our spirits up. She has been a delight to work with!
The homeowners-to-be are mostly, but not all, immigrants from Guatemala and Mexico that have settled here to work in the agriculture industry. Some are second-generation and speak great English, some are Spanish-only, but we managed to communicate and get to know them a little. The town has several restaurants and bakeries that serve Guatemalan and Mexican food.
Indiantown has a hotel called the Seminole Inn with a great history and lots of attractions. One is the parrot that greets you in the lobby with a "Good Morning". We also heard that the racehorse that won the Belmont Stakes in 2014 is from a stable in town. There is also a "Championship Polo Field" in the horse-section of Indiantown. It's been fun being in an area that is a little bit like home, and not so much like the south Florida coastal towns. After all, Cohasset has the Red Lion Inn and a former major horseshow arena (that is now the Music Circus).
We are on the Okeechobee Canal that connects the St. Lucie Inlet at the Atlantic with Lake Okeechobee. So boating is still a possibility. We trailered our outboard to Stuart twice; one time we had a beautiful day and did some fishing in the inlet and sitting at the beach. Another time we took the canal from Indiantown Marina west, toward Lake Okeechobee, and we saw a lot of birds including two immature eagles--sitting next to each other, very cute!
During our last 10 days in Indiantown we had Sunday brunch with the Habitat group at the Seminole Inn, and we attended a day-long bluegrass music festival in a town called Yee Haw Junction, about an hour north of us. Ken fixed a few problems with the trailer, water leaks that had been giving us trouble.  We spent some more time with a few of the boaters at the marina, including a couple from Rhode Island in a Cape Dory Pilothouse 30. The weather has been chillier and windy, but the daytime temps are still between 60 degrees and the low 70s.
Superbowl Sunday found us watching the game in our trailer and joined by Linn and Ray, the Rhode Island couple. We had some really good ribs cooked by the local grocery store, along with salads and drinks, and were greatly entertained by the football!! As some journalists have said, it could have been one of the best superbowl games ever (and our son Pete texted similar sentiments during the game!).
Finishing up our stay at Indiantown Marina, we said goodby to a western Canada family of 5 (with three boys) who launched and left for the Virgin Islands, and to Linn and Ray, leaving for Florida's west coast via Lake Okeechobee. The marina is very busy with lots of other comings and goings. We said hello to the new Habitat group who arrived for their two-week stint. And then it is our turn to leave, heading for a campsite at Jonathan Dickinson State Park, about a half-hour away. We plan to be there for two weeks and during this time, check in with friends from New York and New England that have winter or full-time homes in that area.