Wednesday. We had a few chores to take care of this morning since we planned to arrive at John and Bridgette's today. I got the laundry caught up again, and then Joe dumped our tanks so we could go in empty. At this point, we are not sure what we are doing with the RV while we are at the Doctors Froeschke. We cut over to I-75 through Chiefland, and this is some beautiful horse country -- huge horse farms, with lots of barns, round pens, training stables, etc. Beautiful horses dotting the pastures.
We got information from John about a Ford dealership in Tampa, so we made arrangements to take our Explorer in there for service, since we had had issues with it in Corpus. We got there about 2:00, and Joe gave the service guy a whole laundry list of things that needed fixed (he finally started writing stuff down). Then we grabbed some lunch and headed on to Ruskin. We got to John and Bridgette's about 4:00, and John was on his way home so we found a place to park just down the street, and waited for him to arrive. He had stepped off the driveway at Bridgette's parents house and they all thought our RV would fit there, so after Bridgette and her cousin Tyler (from Phoenix) got home from her work, and we had dinner, we drove over to the Nace's houses. Everyone agreed that would work, so we went back to John and Bridgette's and started carrying stuff in so we could stay with them. That's about as much work as loading in the first place. We decided to wait until in the morning to drive it over, so when I went to bed I kept making lists in my mind of all the stuff we still needed to get out of it. How I'm going to keep track of our stuff is a little uncertain, but we got comfortably settled into their house. We watched the Tampa Bay hockey team (Lightning) beat the Bruins, but it got to be a late night. We were glad to hit the bed when the game ended, although Bridgette was probably too excited to sleep. She's looking forward to Friday night's game.
The next morning, after Bridgette fixed us a full-course breakfast (John had already gone to work), we got it backed in over at the Nace's, then Bridgette decided to take us to the Hillsborough State Park, a park they had discovered and just loved. So we headed up the road to the park, which is just a few miles north of Tampa. She was right, it was beautiful.
We did the River Walk (Hillsborough River runs through it), about 1.2 miles. (Tyler got here Monday night and is staying for 3 weeks, so we will be bonding with him.) The river it was very pretty, and we saw turtles, fish (including alligator gars, but no alligators), squirrels, lizards, and spiders. And beautiful cypress trees, palm trees, lots of Spanish moss.
Tyler, and often Bridgette too, walked down by the river's edge. Here's Tyler checking out a cypress tree.
Bridgette is trying out a new camera and she took lots of pictures of lizards, and even spiders. We got a picture of the spider too (we see enough lizards at home so we didn't get too excited about them).
We finally ended the trail and made our way through the picnic area to the road. Bridgette and Tyler went back to get the car, and Joe and I moseyed on to the camp store (seeking air conditioning). There was a great old tree just waiting for me here.
We left here, had some lunch, then Bridgette drove Tyler (and us) through the campus of the University of South Florida (he thought it was big and that he would get lost). Finally, she took us home to get some rest (Joe immediately took a nap). Bridgette's mom and dad came over for her famous tacos, and when they left around 7:00, they decided we should go to the dog park! Joe and I were really ready to be done for the day.
The dogs were having a good time, but (fortunately) we forgot to take bug spray with us, so we didn't stay very long. They really think they have to wear us out, and they are succeeding! And tomorrow, we are going to the beach!
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