The Princess Place 04/04/21

Four Lakes Campground, Hastings, Florida

For what I received I passed on to you as of first importance:  that Christ died for our sins according to the Scriptures, that He was buried, that He was raised on the third day according to the Scriptures, and that He appeared to Peter, and then to the Twelve…. And if Christ has not been raised, our preaching is useless and so is your faith.  ~ I Corinthians 15:3-5, 14

Guess what we had for breakfast this morning?

Eggs.  And today, that makes them . . . .

EASTER Eggs! 

Hahahaha! 

Oh, never mind.  If I have to explain it, it’s not funny anymore . . . .  😊

What IS funny, is the sauce I made for dinner tonight, but more on that later.

We attended Parkview Baptist Church this morning.  One of the campers here had a lawn sign outside their site.  We never saw the campers, but based on their sign, we decided to drive 20 minutes to attend their church.  The music was nice, but not what we consider “Easter-y”.  I know.  Any song about Jesus being alive should be counted as “Easter-y”, but we miss the hymns we grew up on!  “Christ the Lord is Risen Today!”  “He lives!”  “He Arose”; do you know those songs?  We sure miss them!

But the message was one of the best we’ve heard on the road (Our Pastor Mike Castelli excluded, of course, because he truly IS the best!).  The Pastor’s been there 26 years, so he must be doing something right, right?  He talked about faith, and the difference between believing IN Jesus, and believing ON Jesus.  His main analogy?  He recently got into a homemade airplane a friend of his built.  He believed the friend had built it.  He even believed it could fly, because the friend (and the plane) were still intact.  But it wasn’t until the plane took off with him in it that he believed ON the plane.  That’s the moment when faith kicked in.  And once it did, he had great peace in his soul – instead of anxiousness.

Do you believe in Jesus?  Many people do.  Many believe he lived on the earth.  Many believe he was a great teacher.  Many even believe that He’s the Son of God. But that doesn’t mean they believe ON Jesus.  They haven’t accepted His gift of salvation.  They’re still holding it in their hands, but have yet to open it.  Open the gift.  Accept it.  And live!

On the way home, Blaine wanted to stop by a place he’d read about for possible kayaking.  What we discovered was this incredible Park!  So we went home, changed clothes, ate lunch and drove back to Princess Place Preserve, which has a pretty unique history.

In 1791, the King of Spain granted this land to Francisco Pellicer (remember that name?  He was the manager of Bulow Plantation!).  it became known as Cherokee Creek.  Nearly 100 years later, the land was sold to Henry Cutting.

Henry Cutting started construction on a hunting lodge, but then he met Angela Mills, and the men’s hunting lodge became a seasonal home for the newlyweds.  He died four years later at the age of 27, leaving behind a young wife and two very young children.

In 1901, Angela married a wealthy stockbroker named John Worden (who served during the Spanish American War with Teddy Roosevelt’s “Rough Riders” in Cuba).  They stayed together for about 20 years, until they divorced in 1920 due to John’s infidelity. 

Then, in 1923, Angela met and married exiled Russian Prince Boris Sherbatoff, who later changed his name to Sherbatow (rumor has it he was afraid of assassination), and she became known as a Princess.  Hence the name Princess Place.  I was unable to discover why he was exiled.  ☹ Their marriage ended when he died of natural causes in 1949. She sold the property to the Wadsworth family in 1954, and died two years later at the age of 87.

We walked a lot – part of it in search of nesting eagles the signs here boasted about.  We didn’t find them, but we did learn during our tour of the lodge that the tree their nest was in toppled during a storm four years ago, and the pair moved to a new location about five miles away.  They really should change their signs . . .

The next picture grouping was taken outside off an information board.

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Anyway, since we were there on a Sunday, the Park unlocks the doors to the lodge and its kitchen so you can walk around and read information.  We didn’t know that either, but it was pretty cool inside!

We walked around outside a bit more, then headed home to make our Easter dinner.

We sure were missing our large family Easter get-together today.  ☹  But Blaine and I managed to put together a decent dinner.  Nothing fancy, just ham, baked potatoes and a package of those Birds-Eye Steamer veggies that had Gold and White corn, carrots and asparagus.  That’s it.

But we like a little sauce for our ham.  You know.  Like those little glaze packets they give you when you buy certain types of ham?  Or, in the past, I’ve made a flavored sauce out of pineapple juice, brown sugar, cloves and cinnamon – just heat and serve like gravy.

Well, today, I decided to make something a little different, after all, it’s just Blaine and I.  He requested brown sugar and honey.  I got down a cereal bowl, threw in about a ½ cup or so of brown sugar (I didn’t measure anything), poured some Worcestershire sauce over it, sprinkled in some ground cinnamon and cloves and squeezed a good amount of honey over it all.  Then I decided to add some molasses – just a little – stirred it all together really good and set it on top of the toaster oven where the ham and potatoes were baking for the next hour.  Oh.  And of course, I taste-tested it.  Pretty good!

But then, I lost my mind and forgot everything I’ve learned about cooking over the past 45 years or so.

Just before dinner was ready, I decided to heat up the sauce in a skillet.  And I boiled it for a bit.

Now, those of you who cook are probably already snickering because you know where this is going.

As soon as I poured it back into the bowl, I knew.  Silly girl!!  I now had tacky candy-like substance!  Oh, it tasted good . . . when you could manage to get a drop out of the bowl.  But we had lots of sticky strings strung out from the bowl to our plates, and it coated our teeth (our dentist would cringe!), and in the end, once it hardened up?  We could pick the bowl up with the spoon!

If you’re not laughing by now, you should be.  We got a good chuckle out of it. 😊  We covered the bowl – complete with the spoon – with foil and tossed it in the frig.  I’m not sure we’ll ever be able to retrieve the spoon.  One day, we’ll have to figure out a way to soften it again, enough to either eat it, or pitch it. 😊

Here’s some pictures from home. Chris’s ex had his sons this year for Spring Break week, so he and Elise went down to see The Ark, and then over to Indiana to an animal place.

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