Beach Day

Friday.  Bridgette says no one is going hungry on her watch, so after another wonderful breakfast, we packed up the BBQ grill, towels and cooler, and headed to the beach!  We went to Coquina Beach on Anna Maria Island, in Sarasota, which is famous for its beautiful beaches.  This one not only had beautiful water and sand, but it also has a shady area with picnic tables so you can get a break from the sun.  There wasn't much surf, and it was shallow a long way out.  It was a wonderful day, John grilled some delicious hamburgers, and we spent the whole day at the beach.  I don't think I've ever had a beach barbeque before, and this one was great.  We kept spreading on the sunscreen, but I think we all have a few red spots.  Tyler is almost 16, and has lived in California most of his life, moving to Phoenix last year, so this beach was quite an experience for him.  The water was about 85 degrees, so it was easy to get right in. 

Bridgette has fell in love with sand cranes, and we even saw one of them on the rocks, then fly out over the beach.  After we left the beach, we stopped for ice cream at a neat little shop right down the street, then got Joe a soda, then stopped at a fruit stand for watermelon, cantaloupes and tomatoes.   It seemed to take forever to get back home.  And I was wiped out!  (This was just before Annie gave me a full-mouth lick on the nose, which rudely awakened me.)

We finally all got showers, Bridgette did a little yard work, and now it's time for dinner and the hockey game.  Go Lightning!

Arriving at the Doctors Squared (a/k/a John and Bridgette)

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!

On through Pensacola

Tuesday - I got behind on my blog, and now we are at John and Bridgette's and I've completely lost track of those last few days, but I'll try to catch up.  Tuesday morning we left the state park about 9:00 a.m. and headed toward Pensacola.  The first town we drove through was named "Watercolor," and it was a very pretty beachtown -- high rent district, I'm sure.  Most of the houses were different pastel shades, and all the grass along the highway and lawns was beautifully manicured.

Of course, peeking between every house were strips of beautiful beaches.  There was, however, lots of beach access all along here, and on into Pensacola.  We saw number 98 but don't know if that was the first access or not.  Here's no. 78.

We got into Pensacola and saw the Ripley's museum, and the building across the street which must be part of it -- it looks like it's crooked and upside down.

This looks like another fun beach town, with lots to do for kids -- water parks, miniature golf, bumper boats, lots of food places.  This would be another good place to vacation.  There's also a busy harbor here.

We got stuck there behind a train in town that wasn't going anywhere, so with Lucille's help, we maneuvered ourselves through neighborhoods and back to the highway without too much delay.  These detour decisions are never easy ones to make since we don't know where we are, and we are too long to make u-turns.

We got out of town and continued along the coast.  There are lots of Air Force bases in this area of Florida.  We got real excited when we saw a bear-crossing sign and Joe immediately went on the look-out for bears.

We saw several of these signs but no bears.  We crossed another long bridge (I can no longer keep my bridges, bays and rivers straight).  Again, we had lots of water on both sides.

There's lots of shore birds along all these bridges, and in several places they had roped-off areas for the nesting birds, so I guess it's the season.  It's also the season for hatching turtles.  We haven't seen any but the campgrounds include cautions about walking on the beach at night because of the turtles.  Crossing this bridge, we about got dive-bombed by a pelican -- Joe had to honk at it.

Next, we passed through the oyster area, along Apalachicola, where most of Florida's oysters are harvested.  Joe spotted some guys unloading them so he pulled over and we watched for a few minutes.  They were unloading bags and bags of oysters, and just a little further down that highway we passed piles of oyster shells (a little smelly in this area).

And we saw some of the boats they use for oyster harvesting (whatever that is called).

For most of the day, we drove right along the coast, but we finally headed inland and ended the day at a campground at Old Town, about 140 miles from Tampa.  This wasn't a great campground, but it served the purpose for the night.  Joe drove 257 miles today and he was more than ready to stop for the night.

Near Panama City

Monday, May 23 - We had kicked around the idea of going back down to the beach this morning and taking another dip, but Joe wanted to grease the RV, and we spent some time trying to figure out where we were going today.  No conclusions were reached, so finally, we just went.  We left about 10:00 but after about 10 miles we hit a traffic delay that took us 70 minutes to go three miles (road construction on the bridge).  Traffic was heavy leaving the music fest, but we just waited it out.  It's great not to have an agenda, especially since we didn't know where we were going anyhow.  A van in front of us, full of kids probably from the music fest, finally got impatient and decided to turn around.  He made a big U-turn and got off into the sand, and immediately sank both the front and back wheels.  Some of his passengers got out to try to push, and as we watched through the rear view mirror as we inched ahead, it looked like someone pulled over to try to pull him out.

I had lots of time to take pictures; we passed the turnoff to the seashore and found a neat pelican sign in front of a business.

Finally, just as the traffic started to break at the bridge, we came upon the sign about delays (we had wondered if maybe there was a wreck).  By now, it's 11:30 and Joe's thinking lunch, and we've only gone 14 miles.

Finally, we got to Pensacola and took the bridge over to the seashore and Pensacola Beach on Hwy. 399, which is a really neat-looking community. Even the sign makes you feel happy, and the water under the bridge was very pretty.

We saw work barges, boats and a parasail as we came over the bridge.  I still can't believe Marilyn went parasailing in Hawaii.  It looks fun but I'm not sure I'm brave enough to try it.

When we got past the "town" stuff, the beaches, sand dunes and water were just too much to resist. 

We pulled off and played in the water for an hour.

A wave just about took me out, though.

We soaked up a little sun and buried our feet in this great sand.

After about an hour, we thought we probably needed to make a little time.  It was really cool to be able to just walk back up the beach to the RV, step into the shower to wash the sand off, and then fix lunch.  Life is good.

I was pretty sure the day wouldn't go by without Joe needing to park alongside the road, just to show that guy this morning how a pro would pull off (and not get hung up), so sure enough, he found us a spot here at this beach.  And like a pro, we pulled right out.

We drove on then, through Destin, which also looks like a really neat town -- lots of stuff for kids to do.  Our nephew is bringing his family here next week, so we looked it over pretty good.

Another nephew just left Panama City Beach on Saturday, so we'll check that out tomorrow.  The beaches in this area are wonderful, we are so lucky to be seeing all this.  We got a little sunburned today but not too bad.  Joe decided about 4:00, just as we were passing a state park, that he was tired, so we pulled into Grayton Beach State Park, about 30 miles from Panama City.  We got in 105 miles today, but it took about 6 hours.  We are only about 1/2 mile from the beach, but so far we haven't worked up the energy to either walk over to it, or unhook the car.  I'm thinking Joe's down for the night.