Saturday - June 25 -- We got started on our busy day right after breakfast.  John and Joe loaded up Barbara's spare bed and hauled it back to their house, and Joe brought the RV back to John's.  I started my room-to-room search for everything we had brought in, and we started loading when they got back.  Although we made several trips, we will still have a lot to load in the morning.  Next up, we took the Explorer to the car wash, mostly to get the beach sand vacuumed out of the back, since the outside had been rained on and wasn't too bad.  But they ran it through the wash while we ate lunch next door, then off we went to University of Tampa so Bridgette could feed the seahorses.  We picked up Barbara on the way, and got to see where Bridgette is currently working while they get her new office ready for her.  This really is a beautiful campus, and it's nice that Bridgette gets to work at a school with such modern equipment and wonderful classrooms.

 It really is a beautiful campus, and it sits right on the Hillsborough River.

Bridgette took us into her building and showed us her temporary desk, and the office they are fixing up for her (which was a storage room).

Then we went into the lab, and she demonstrated a piece of equipment they use for DNA testing.  She also showed us a package of frogs in formaldahyde (yuk).  Some of her classy UT students really don't like to get their hands dirty, so that should be interesting experiments. 

Next we went into the lab where her boss is raising the baby seahorses, and Bridgette mixed up the food for them (shrimp eggs).  The babies are hard to see, but they are clinging to the seagrass in this . photo below.

We have seen lots of mailbox posts out here that are fish -- dolphins and manatees mostly, and also some birds (pelicans), but we found one of a seahorse that we thought Bridgette might want to get for her boss.  (This was in Marco Island on Monday).

Then we walked down to their dock on the river, and she caught a ctenophora (pronounced "tenafore) to show us, which looks like a form of jellyfish but is a different family and is not harmful.  John and Joe walked down through the rocks and found some oyster beds.  All pretty cool stuff.

We came back through the building and Dr. Bridgette showed us one the classrooms she will be teaching in.  We all sat down like students, but she didn't have her lecture notes with her, so we got off without any homework.

Finally, we finished up here and headed for Costco, in our efforts to get ready to leave tomorrow.  We got home and put those purchases away, then had a hot game of dominoes to finish out the evening. 

Sunday morning, we finished loading (which was much more than one would think).  We went to Village Inn for our last breakfast with the doctors, and then Joe and I went off to Publix to finish our grocery shopping, since we (I) got too tired on Saturday.  We finished up with everything (with help from J and B, and got on the road at 11:10.  We did get invited back, but John intends to put a lockbox on the thermostat before we are allowed to stay, since he thinks we messed up his temperature programming (we denied it).

We only went 155, to the Collier-Seminole State Park outside of Naples.  But the mosquitoes here about carried us off.  We were the only ones in this campground, so we had our choice of all 120 spots, and we tried out 3 different ones before we settled in (getting eaten alive by mosquitoes throughout this process).  After we rested for an hour, we decided to drive around this park and head to Marco Island, about 10 miles away. The Black River (which was black) flows through this park, and has a boat ramp, and allows access to "10,000 Islands" and the Gulf of Mexico. This water is definitely brackish but it would be a nice river float if you could stand the mosquitoes.  We stopped by the water, and there was an alligator watching us.  It was a decision on even to roll down the car window to get a picture, but I did attempt it.  He's in the reflection of the trees, though so he is hard to see.

We then drove through the every exclusive area of Marco Island.  We couldn't get to the water without paying for parking, so we gave up on that and headed back to the park, and got caught in a pretty significant rainstorm.  We decided to stop at a bar and grill right outside the park, but we sat in our car 15 minutes waiting for the rain to let up.  As we came back in the park, we checked on our alligator again, and he was on the further side of the river (must have gotten under the trees during the rain).  We also saw some kind of hawk here.  And this park is full of squirrels, birds, and Tuesday morning, a raccoon was visiting the campsite in front of us.  Guess we'll have to add a raccoon to the traveling zoo now.  My web site was really slow here and it took a long time to get this blog done, but now it's time to get the car hooked up (as soon as I douse myself with mosquito spray), and hit the road, heading to Florida City, right outside the Everglades. 

tire

Final Days in Tampa

Wednesday - Saturday.  We are getting down to the wire for our visit with J and B.  We contemplated going to one of the beaches on Wednesday or Thursday but, instead, pretty much stayed home.  On Wednesday we did a little shopping, then I decided to pay for our keep by cleaning the window blinds in their house.  And they have lots of windows.  It was a two-day job, but I got all of them, including washing the inside of the windows, except for the two big windows. I left those two for them.  Joe rigged me up a pole in the shower, and I washed and dried each blind, slat by slat.  John told me I was hired and that I could come back next year and do it again.  So instead of sunbathing at the beach, we worked.  Got that out of our system, believe me.  The Florida summer rains finally started today, so we had a little shower about 9:00 p.m.

John got back from Puerto Rico on Thursday afternoon -- he wasn't too impressed with that country, especially the traffic.  Doug and Barbara came over for dinner for Bridgette's tacos, and John was happy to be able to eat food that he recognized.  We had another rain storm tonight, and it looks like we should be getting them every day for the next week or so.

Bridgette had to get blood drawn first thing Friday morning -- she is beginning the process of a physical, so she has lots of doctor appointments coming up.  She's really wanting to get her knee taken care of, even if it requires surgery, so she can get back to her marathon running.  So when she finished at the lab, we picked up Barbara and went to breakfast, then shopping at Beall's (Barbara's request), then came home for a while.  It rained off an on most of the day.  Bridgette took us to UT's marine science lab this evening, which is right on Tampa Bay -- a very nice facility.

Bridgette's boss, Heather, who is the Chair of Biology at UT, has a clear-bottomed kayak here, as well as a canoe, and has offered Bridgette free access to both.   I think that would be pretty cool to float around and be able to see what's underneath the boat.

This is also where UT's boats are docked -- the smaller one in dry dock (which they just pick up the phone and ask that it be put in the water -- my kind of deal), as well as the 50 foot one she went out on this week.  Both Bridgette and John have been around lots of marine labs and university boats, but UT is in a class of its own.

They use huge forklifts here to pick these boats up out of the water and store them in the 3-story drydock building.  I am thinking I should write a grant proposal to get one of these at Roosevelt Lake so I can retire from my job of backing the boat trailer down the boat ramp and into the water, not to mention finding a parking space for my truck and trailer in the skinny parking lot. 

Although it had rained off an on all day, we could see a bigger storm was probably going to land on us in the next few hours.  We were on our way to dinner and the dog tracks, but we knew we were probably on borrowed time.

We got to the race track just two minutes before the first race, and Joe and I actually won $27.40 on it (on a $6 bet).

We thought we would make our fortune here, but unfortunately, that was the only race we won.  John and Bridgette won the 8th race, and it started pouring during the 9th race, so John "manned up" and ran out to get the car, and picked us up under the valet parking roof.  We were in St. Petersburg, so we had to drive back across the bay bridge in heavy rain.  After we got into Tampa, it stopped raining.  And started again.  And stopped.  And started again.  Just like Arizona, we were in and out of the rainy areas all the way home.

Today, Saturday, is packing day.  I got up at 8:10 and went downstairs to find our two nerds e-mailing each other at the kitchen table.  They are getting ready for presentations they will be making at a conference in Minneapolis in 2 weeks.

I tried to get Joe on the move, unsuccessfully, so John sent up the 4-alarm final wake-up call.
Needless to say, they had more success than I did.

John fixed breakfast for all of us, and now they are on their way over to Doug and Barbara's to return the bed that Tyler slept in, and to bring the motorhome over so we can start loading.  We've carried in lots of stuff during the month we've been here, so I hope it all fits again.  We will have to go to the grocery store today too, but Bridgette has to stop by her work to feed the baby seahorses that were born in captivity at UT, and we certainly don't want to miss out on that trip!

AND A YEAR AGO TODAY, JUNE 25, WE WERE FLYING TO PRUDHOE BAY, ALASKA!  What a year we have had!

Monday-Tuesday

Tuesday, June 21 - We sent J and B back to work on Monday, and we had the day to ourselves.  Joe's cold has made his treadmilling difficult, but he has been putting in his time when he can - he was up to 40 minutes, but last night he had to quit at 30, I think. I guess we have to have the Claytons bring back our elipitical when we get home so he (and I) can try to get on an exercise program. He's done well here, but I haven't even tried since I am still coughing so much, especially when I get hot. But he usually has entertainment when he walks -- John playing ping pong on the Wii, or Bridgette boxing. I'm not exactly sure what he is going to expect from me when we get home. We did venture out shopping today for a while, just to get out of the house. Found our first Panda Express since we left Arizona, so we had a nice lunch there. Walked through part of the mall, Costco, and Bed Bath and Beyond, then called it a day.

Tuesday John left for a 3-day trip to Puerto Rico for a meeting, and Bridgette was going out on the UT boat to collect samples with some of the UT students, so we decided to take a drive, but I had to have help getting Joe out of bed. 

a>
Once Annie gave him a good licking, the other dogs assisted and he got up.  They were ready, though, in case he had to have more assistance.

We headed over to Alafia State Park, which is on the Alafia River.  It had a nice campground, but it is a really mountain biking park, with challenging off-road trails.  Once the site of a phosphate mine, the topography offers some of the most radical elevation changes in Florida (which is a pretty flat state).  The reclaimed mine altered the landscape here and created new landforms such as several small lakes, and steep grades which made it popular for bikers.
 

The bike trials were built by volunteers from a Bicycle Club, and the park even provides a bike wash rack.  We did not do any hiking here, believe me (it was 95 degrees, with 60% humidity), but Bridgette and John have, and Bridgette said they run a marathon here too.  Bridgette has not tackled this route yet, but just give her time.

The river runs along the edge of the campground here (we did NOT go swimming), and there were some small lakes right at the campground too, but they were moss-covered and very low. 

<

We looked for wildlife of any kind, especially gators.  We did see an osprey on a tree limb pretty close (Joe spotted it), but an nosy squirrel scared it before I got the camera ready.  We had seen some osprey nests on the way into this park, and there were even 2 ospreys in one of the nests.



The trees here were laden with Spanish moss, and this would make a good movie setting for jungle scenes.  On a cooler day, this would be a good place to spend some time (maybe November).

There were 2 other entrances to this park, one right by the river, so we drove over to it.  The river was really shallow here, but there were a couple of people fishing out of the back of a pick-up truck.

We headed north, with no specific destination except that it was lunch time.  We found a local restaurant in Plant City to take care of that, then we started working our way a little bit east, with no particular destination in mind.  We did see some wild pigs alongside the road, and Joe even turned around so I could get a picture, but they spooked before the camera decided to click, so I only caught their foraging area in my picture.  There was a litter of 5, I think, but you have to use your imagination on this one.


Joe is always interested in the agriculture of the states we are in, and Florida has a pretty wide variety of that.  We passed through huge citrus groves, acres and acres of tomato fields (the tomato season is just over here, so the vines are now dead, and the tomatoes are dying on the vines).  We have been watching the fields near J and B, and they are taking up the tomato stakes and stacking them at the ends of the fields.  We also passed some pepper fields, and we came upon this one field with probably 100 or more pickers, with lots of vehicles out there.  Joe pulled in to see what was going on here, and it was a pickle field.  It looked like they filled baskets, then dumped the baskets into wooden crates.








We headed on down the road and came upon Lake Manatee, another very low lake with the boat ramp out of the water.  There is a Manatee River and a Little Manatee River here, and we don't know if both of those rivers feed into this lake, but there was more evidence here of how badly Florida needs some rain.




Our last stop was at the Rye Preserve.  We have seen several "preserves" but not driven back to any of them, so we decided to check this one out.  There was also a Sheriff's Youth Camp back here, as well as trails to the river, camping, restroom and shower.  On our way in Joe spotted a turtle chomping grass right beside a parking area.  It was a very cooperative turtle, so we got a good turtle picture. 
The Manatee River runs through this preserve, and we met a couple of kayakers who stopped here (they had not seen any gators on the river).  The Lake Manatee Damn releases into this river, and there was a warning sign about sudden changes in its depth.  It was a pretty setting.

The blog web site is having some problems today and I've had a lot of trouble trying to get my pictures in the right place, so I hope it all makes some sense, and I really hope blogspot gets its problem fixed.  Some of the coding may also appear, which I tried to delete but it keeps reappearing, so I am giving up on that.   I had to consult with my expert, Cathy, to get my pictures to load at all, so Cathy, thank you again.