Today is the day our month-long rent at the Tampa East RV Resort ends, so we are heading out of here. It's been a busy and exciting month, welcoming the arrival of Andrew Thomas, then helping the kids get moved to their new mini-ranch east of Bradenton. We made several trips down to see them, and that little baby is filling out. We've enjoyed every precious moment we have gotten to spend with him. It is hard to leave, knowing he will change so much each day, and will be so much bigger by the time we see him again. We just learned how to download pictures from our new smart phones, so here's some of our best shots of our baby.
This last one was posted on Facebook by Bridgette's dad, but it is one of my favorite. It was taken on July 9, just before her parents left.
We didn't to much "touristy" stuff during our days here. Joe has had a flare-up of his plantar s faciaitis (sp?) in his left foot, so we have tried to restrict our walking, plus it has rained a lot here so that restricted us some too. We did make use of the pool at the campground a few times, and we went to the movies twice (The Heat and White House Down, both of which we enjoyed). When we went to see White House Down, I found a card in the parking lot, which I thought was a credit card but it turned out to be a movie card. We assumed it was probably empty, but when we checked, it had 2 small popcorns, 1 medium popcorn, and 2 medium sodas still on it, so we redeemed all the points and ate our way through the movie. A cheap night.
We saw just a small amount of wildlife here -- one deer, two wild hogs, numerous birds of all sizes including sandhill cranes several different times, and Joe saw a raccoon. And squirrels were plentiful at our campground.
John and Bridgette, and Andrew's, new house is a mini ranch on 5 acres with horse pasture and a horse barn, so they moved their horse Ocean Breeze over last weekend. They are also boarding a friend's horse so Ocean has a companion. They love being able to look out their window and watch the horses graze.
Of course, having horses comes with some chores.
So as we got ready to head out this morning and brought the slides in, Joe decided to hose off the side of the motorhome because the water on top ran off the side and all the dirty water from the roof (we were parked under trees) made the side of the motorhome a mess. I pushed the button to put the slide back out, then he hit it with the hose as I brought it back in. From the corner of my eye, I saw something move inside the RV, I thought something fell off the sofa, but all of a sudden a FROG jumped up right next to me, underneath the driver's seat (where I was operating the button on the slide). I think it came in on top of the slide to get away from Joe's water hose. I tried to get Joe's attention to tell him there was a frog inside, and at the same time I was trying to get the driver's side door open. Joe kept yelling for me to bring the slide in, and was hitting the door with the hose. Finally, he got done, and I got the door open, and I told him there was a frog inside. He wasn't overly concerned (I really don't think he believed me), so I got the fly swatter and searched around for the frog but I couldn't find it. So we take off down the road with a frog hitchhiking along with us. I kept my eye out all day, and was afraid to put my feet under the dash, but he didn't show up. I know Joe thought I was hallucinating.
Joe stopped to fuel the RV and check the air in the tires, and I grabbed breakfast sandwiches at McDonalds and then drove over to Lazy Daze to return some keys we had made. All that took about an hour, but we still got on the road about 9:00 a.m. We headed up I-75 to just past Ocala, then headed west/northwest on 441 to Perry, then picked up U.S. 98 to take us over to the Panhandle, south of Tallahassee. We had picked out a campground in Carabelle, right on the coast (this area is known as the "forgotten coast"). We have a campsite overlooking the water, so close we could almost cast a fishing line from the door. But it's not the typical "beachy" area of Florida because we are behind the St. George Island, so it's more like a sound. But the fishing is supposed to be good. We did see a dolphin swim by.
It should be a nice place to relax for a few days before we head north. We drove 298 miles today (got an early start but stopped for a nap at lunchtime), so it was about 4:00 when we got off the road. Paid $3.399 for gas today. It went up about 6 cents the day after the holiday. It rained intermittently as we headed west, but nothing heavy.
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