Still Hanging Out in Florida

Both Friday the 23rd and Tuesday the 27th we went back out to E. G. Simmons Park on Tampa Bay and sat by the water. On Thursday we had watched a manatee with a calf in one of the estuaries here. Friday we found a nice shady spot near the waters edge where we could sit and read. After a while we lost the breeze, which meant the flies started biting and we had to move a bit away from the water into another shady spot where there was a breeze to keep the flies down.

On Tuesday we found a spot with a lovely breeze and a nice view of Tampa Bay - no bugs at all! We sat there for a couple of hours, reading and just enjoying the beautiful weather and the sea breeze. We were able to watch pelicans diving for fish less that 50 feet away from where we were sitting. It was really fascinating to see the pelicans diving into the water and coming up with a fish! We also caught a glimpse of a dolphin a ways out into the bay.

We have been spending a fair amount of time in the evenings watching the Stanley Cup playoffs - Go Hawks! Since we have both a cable connection and our satellite dish we can get Chicago Sports Net on Dish Network and Versus on local cable so we can see most of the games.

It got pretty warm here over the weekend and we finally had to break down and turn on the AC - and it did not work! Flipped it on and nothing happened; switched to fan only and still had nothing; checked all the fuses and everything was OK; checked the control and everything seemed OK. Then, while we were standing around and scratching our heads and wondering where we would find an RV tech to take a look at it, it started operating! This was about a half hour after we first turned it on! Soon it was blowing air at 47 degrees and working just fine. Only thing we can figure is some sort of circuit breaker needed power for a period of time before it would reset. Whatever it was the AC ran for two days solid without a hitch before it cooled of enough Monday evening to open up again. Speaking of AC, the one in the smart is working like a champ now. Guess we were to quick to condemn it as inadequate for four years!

On the subject of weather, Sunday evening we had some pretty substantial thunderstorms in the area. Most of the worst stuff went north of us, but there were a few times during the night that the trailer was rocking in the wind. It is kind of cool to watch the weather radar here since the National Weather Service radar dome is just a half mile down the street from where we are parked. You can see exactly what the weather is doing since we can tell right where we are. The local frogs seem to have liked the rain - they are singing away this evening (Tuesday).

After leaving the park Tuesday morning we stopped at Ybor Grille for lunch. Nancy had the grouper sandwich and Dennis the pork sandwich. Excellent as usual and this time we scarfed everything down with nothing left to take home for dinner! The we stopped at Hydro Harvest Farms, a hydroponic farm in Ruskin. It is a U-pick place and all of the herbs, leaf plants, peppers, and strawberries are grown hydroponically in pot. Pretty interesting and we picked up fixin’s for salads for dinner.

Wednesday the 28th we drove down to Bradenton in search of a natural foods store and lunch. We drove out to Bradenton Beach to check out Rotten Ralph’s 2. Looked OK, but it was still early and we like the original Rotten Ralph’s a lot, so we took a walk on the pier and then drove up to the north of Anna Maria Island. Had a leisurely lunch at the original Rotten Ralphs, and then stopped at Richard’s Whole Foods in Bradenton. Not exactly a scintillating day, but sometimes you take what you can get.

Kayaking and Good Food

4/15 - 4/22

On Thursday the 15th we took another kayak ride down the Little Manatee River from Canoe Outpost. The water in the upper part of the river was considerably lower than on our last trip, which meant more work for us! Instead of just floating along on the current we had to paddle and steer around sandbars. We rubbed bottom a number of time and at one point Dennis had to get out and push!

We started about an hour earlier in the morning, so we went on past the normal lunch point and stopped at the take-out point and had lunch.Then we went a little farther down the river. We had planned on going around the Little Manatee Loop, but the river widens out and there was a fairly stiff breeze blowing downstream. We were concerned about how hard it would be to work our way back upstream against the wind, so we did not go too far, opting instead to to explore a few side channels. That came to an end when Nancy saw a large alligator slip into the water about 20 feet away from us!

We also saw the same small alligator as last trip near the take-out point and a number of turtles, although not as many as last time, maybe because it was earlier in the day and the banks were not yet in the sun. Not a lot of birds this time either. The last trip we saw some Swallow Tail Kites.

On Friday the 16th we took another drive up to Tarpon Springs in celebration of our 18th wedding anniversary and had lunch at Rusty Bellies. We sat on the deck and watched the fishing boats come in to the seafood store dock next door. After stocking up on fresh local shrimp we came back home. Says something about our desperation that we are willing to drive two hours through fairly heavy traffic just for a good place for lunch (and the fresh shrimp!).

On Tuesday the 20th we went to Ybor Grille to celebrate Dennis’ 65 birthday - hello Medicare! As usual it was an excellent dinner.

We tend to visit a grocery store almost every day since the trailer has limited storage, a fairly small refrigerator and a tiny freezer. So we have hit a number of different grocery stores while we are here. Seems the best one for the kinds of foods we like is Publix. There do not seem to be any Whole Foods or Trader Joe’s type stores around here and Nancy is feeling the loss.

The weather is still reasonable, although it is getting hot. So far we have not needed our AC as it is cooling off quite nicely at night and we are parked in the only shady spot in the Sun Lake RV Resort! We are backed up to fairly large trees on the west side that shade us from the sun from mid-day on and it is quite pleasant.

Thursday the 22nd - We went over to E G Simmons Park and took a nice walk along along the beach. There are a couple of areas where you can walk through the mangoes along the shore and out on small fishing piers. On one of these we saw a manatee out in the estuary. It was rolling around and surfacing quite frequently. We stood and watched him for 15 or twenty minutes, really kind of a neat thing to see. Being a weekday there was hardly anyone in the park, so we had the whole place to ourselves, although the boat ramp was fairly busy.

Thursday evening we drove into Tampa and had a delightful dinner at Chefs on the Loose . We stumbled across this outfit on-line, they offer small group dinners with “hands on” participation in preparing the dinner. It is a very nice room, very crisp and minimalist, with adjacent kitchen and work counters with room for all of the attendees to participate. The dinner was presented by Chef Bobby Triplett, who is a guest chef at Chefs on the Loose. He did a really nice job preparing an interesting menu:

“Roasted and Ripened” Bruschetta: (Roasted Red Pepper and vine Ripened tomato)

“Real Deal Cesar Salad with herb roasted Sunday Chicken” A from scratch Cesar salad with roasted chicken and croutons like you have never seen before.

“Green With Envy” A grilled Pork chop marinated in Basil Spinach pesto, topped with the most perfect poached egg. Served with Sweet Potato Chips and creamy BBQ vinaigrette

For Dessert: “Grilled Peaches and Cream” Grilled Peaches served with a Homemade Vanilla Pecan Ice cream, topped with a dark cherry caramel rum sauce.

There were only nine guests there, so everyone got to participate in preparing the food as much as they wanted. Dennis sliced tomatoes for the bruschetta while Nancy learned to slice "ribbons" of basil. Chef Bobby and the rest of the staff at Chefs on the Loose were fun and personable. It was a a lot of fun; we picked up some good tips on food preparation and recipes; the food was wonderful; and the guests and staff made for a very enjoyable evening. Next time you are looking for an interesting evening in the Tampa area you can’t miss with Chefs on the Loose!

The Air Conditioner Works!, so did Leonardo.

4/2 - 4/14

Still spending time caring for Dennis’ mom. We have managed to see and do a few interesting things. We went over to the nearby Tampa Electric Plant to check out the Manatee viewing area. They have a very nice nature walk and museum set up there. While we did not visit the free museum we did walk out onto the pier in the estuary and then to the manatee viewing area. The manatees there are apparently not as numerous as they were during the colder weather, when there were several hundred in the area, but we were able to watch about a dozen manatees swimming around from the viewing platform.

We drove up to the Apple store in Brandon to pick up a new battery for Dennis’ laptop, which gave us a chance to play around with the new iPad. That is really an amazing piece of hardware and may be a real game changer when it come to the world of computers. Nancy compared it to automobiles - in the beginning a person needed to understand how they worked in order to drive them, today you just get in and turn the key. Here is a link to an MSNBC article on the impact of the iPad http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/36158687/ns/technology_and_science-tech_and_gadgets//

Other than the apps though, our laptops generally will do everything the iPad does and do it better. We will stick with the laptops and iPod for now.

While we were in the area we stopped by the Camping World in Seffner and picked up a few things. One of them was two new snap-on screens for our Fan-Tastic Vents. We have three Fan-Tastic Vents, all of which are temperature controlled with rain sensors. Only the newest one though has the snap-on screen cover. The other two have the old style that require removing eight little screws to remove and clean the screen. Here at Sun Lake RV Resort we are backed up to a line of trees which give us delightful afternoon shade, but also drop a lot (and this time of year I mean A LOT) of debris on us. Inevitably some of this gets into the fans and starts to make noise. Life will be a lot easier now with the snap-on covers since Dennis needs to stand on a chair to reach the fan in the living room.

Since we were in Brandon we had to stop at La Septima for lunch, it was great as usual. When we got home we discovered that we had picked up the wrong laptop battery! Why didn’t you check in the store doofus! So....the next day we went back to Brandon (it is only about 15 miles away) and picked up the correct battery, played with the iPads a bit more, and had lunch at La Septima again! Might as well make the best of it, right?

We went in to Tampa to check out the Leonardo Da Vinci exhibit at MOSI - the Tampa Museum of Science and Industry. The Da Vinci exhibit was excellent, very interesting and well presented. It was not crowded at all as it was a weekday and we spent several hours browsing through the exhibit. We should note that this is a commercially produced exhibit that focuses on Da Vinci’s overall genius in science, anatomy, architecture, invention, and the fine arts, but it was not an art exhibit and there were no original works on display. It included models of many of his inventions and a very comprehensive, high resolution photographic analysis of the Mona Lisa, along with reproductions of many of his other works. Well worth the price of admission.

The rest of MOSI was a bit of a disappointment. It is mainly aimed at kids and what we saw of the exhibits (granted not all of them) they are far from the claimed “state-of-the-art” and actually a bit tattered around the edges. Other than the Da Vinci exhibit we would not recommend MOSI.

The price of admission did included one movie in the I-Max theatre, so we watched the new release of “Alice in Wonderland” which was enjoyable.

We have found a place nearby where we can catch a weekly yoga class, we have missed doing yoga since we arrived in Florida, so we are now going to Apollo Beach Yoga once a week to get loosened up.

As the weather is heating up here our smart car is a bit warm with it’s glass roof. The AC has always been marginal around town and barely adequate on the highway and it had now stopped cooling altogether. We located a local auto repair shop that was willing to take a look at adding refrigerant so we stopped by. Turns out the AC connections are not very accessible! One will need to remove the entire front panel in order to get access.

So we went back home and Dennis looked up the information on evilution. Sure enough, he had step-by-step instructions with pictures. So we made an appointment at Southshore Auto Repair. The morning of our appointment we parked the smart in the shade and proceeded to remove the entire front panel of the smart. Other than being a two person job to lift off the panel, it was not to bad, just seven clips on the grille and fifteen bolts on the panel and it lifted right off!

Kind of looks like a NASCAR car at Martinsville! Also makes us think of Wall-E!

Turns out there was virtually no refrigerant left in the system! No leaks, just gradual loss from sitting (the car did sit for better than a year while G&K was trying to get approval for their gray market conversion). Once Greg at Southshore Auto did his thing the AC was blowing at 40 degrees! Guess we should have done this years ago - the AC is working great now, even in the Florida sun! By the way, the folks at Southshore turned out to be good people to deal with.

Dennis’ Mom continues to deteriorate and it does not look like she will be able to move to the Assisted Living facility after all, so we have canceled the lease there and are just sitting tight, waiting to see what the next few weeks bring. We are really thankful that we have our RV and are able to live comfortably while we are here looking after her. We are also thankful for the great care she is receiving at Sun Terrace Health Care. This is where she started her rehabilitation after surgery and they are continuing to care for her. The staff has been very attentive, caring and supporting throughout her stay and we are very happy with the care she is receiving.

Lots & Lots of Turtles and an Alligator!

Wednesday 3/31 - Drove down to Bradenton and stopped at Mixon’s to stock up on oranges and orange juice. Made a quick stop at the Ellenton Outlet shops so Nancy could buy a new pair of shoes. We planned on stopping at C&K Smoke Shop for lunch, but they were on vacation, bummer. Dinner at Ybor Grille tonight.

Thursday 4/1 - We have been spending time with Dennis’ mom (who has taken another turn for the worse) and getting her ready to move to her new apartment. We will post here when there is something interesting going on.

On Thursday we took a drive up to Tarpon Springs, just because we had never been there. An interesting place, a lot of touristy souvenir shops, a boat dock and a lot of Greek restaurants and seafood places. A fair number of people on the streets, bet it is REALLY crowded on the weekends!

Had lunch at Rusty Bellies, which turned out to be an excellent choice, really good, really fresh locally caught fish. They are adjacent to their own seafood market Pelican Point Seafood which features locally caught seafood exclusively. If you go there they are all the way at the end of the street that goes past the sponge docks, beyond the traffic circle. We bought some shrimp to take home with us and it was the best shrimp we ever had!

Coming home we drove along the coast west of Tampa and St Pete, miles and miles of hotels, condos, restaurants, and tourist place. There is no easy way to get from Sun City Center to Tarpon Springs, but we may have to go back for the seafood!

Friday 4/2 - Weather looked really promising today after heavy rains early in the week, so we went down to the Canoe Outpost on the Little Manatee River just East of Sun City Center. We rented a two person kayak ($37) and headed out for a two hour paddle down the Little Manatee. It was the perfect day for it, high seventies, a light breeze and not a cloud in the sky! Saw a few birds, not as many as we expected, a LOT of turtles - must have seen 25 or 30. Also saw a fairly sizable alligator sunning on the bank, about 6 feet long! The folks ahead of us in a canoe said they also saw one in the water. We stopped at a picnic pavilion in the Little Manatee River State Park and had a picnic lunch we brought with us and then continued to the pick-up point where they met us with a bus and returned to the Canoe Outpost. We will definitely do this again before we leave and before the weather gets to hot.

A Prairie Home Companion Cruise

3/13 - Nancy’ sister arrived from Chicago and we had dinner at Ybor Grille.

3/13 - Off to the Caribbean on the Prairie Home Companion Cruise! We had a local driver pick us up Sunday morning and take us to the Port of Tampa. A bit of a hassle getting onto the MS Ryndam. It looked like everyone decided to arrive at the same time! Long, long line for the port security check, same thing as at the airport. The Tampa Port Security would not let people take in water bottles! Even if they were empty! Barney Fife lives! Give someone a modicum of authority and they go off half-cocked, making up their own rules and making life miserable for everyone. After we got through security we had to stand in line again to check in and get our rom key/ID cards.

Once we cleared those hassles the rest of the week was smooth and relaxing, exactly what we were looking for. We had an outside cabin on the Norway cruise in 2007, but we opted for an inside cabin on a higher deck this time and it worked out well with a convenient location.

Sunday afternoon Nancy and Joan (her sister) took the tour of the ship’s public places (no more “behind the scences” tours for “security reasons”, another example of people taking advantage of 9/11 to make their lives easier!) while Dennis relaxed in the Ocean Lounge with a good book. As usual this was his favorite spot as it was comfortable and usually quiet. He spent a lot of time either here or in a deck chair with a book.

After the mandatory lifeboat drill we went to the early dinner seating (we had the late one for the rest of the cruise) as we wanted to be on deck to see the ship sail under the Sunshine Skyway Bridge and out of Tampa Bay. Turns out that we had bad info and we went under the bridge sooner than we expected - fortunately we were seated right beside the rear windows in the dinning room, so we got to see the bridge from there.

After dinner we listened to Jearlyn and Billie Steele in the Ocean Bar for a while before retiring. The gentle motion of the ship at night made for good sleeping the entire week week! The first night back in the trailer Dennis laid there wide awake and realized the problem was that it was not moving!

3/15 - Monday morning the ship was still en route to Key West. We went to Fred Newman’s first show “We Don’t Have Earlids - The Anthropology of Sound”. Fred’s show were really the highlight of the cruise for us. He is a master of sound effects, the majority of which are done vocally, his imitation of the ship’s fire alarm, is uncanny, but his mimicry of the ship’s toilets is hilarious. Beyond that he is warm and friendly guy and a fabulous story teller. His stories are punctuated with hilarious sound effects and physical antics.

The ship arrived in Key West at Noon and tied up right at Mallory Square right downtown. After lunch we walked into town and toured the Little White House. Interesting, but a not a real wow. If you grew up in the fifties you saw a lot of houses that looked just like it inside. The big highlights seemed to be specific chairs that famous people sat in, the fact that Harry Truman played poker and stuff like that. Not too scintillating. We then walked over to Duvall St and had a drink in Jimmy Buffett’s Margaritaville. Lucked into a prime spot right in the open window on the sidewalk.

The we went through Mel Fisher’s Maritime Museum which has artifacts from a number of Spanish Galleon’s that have been recovered from waters around the Keys. A very interesting museum and you even get the chance to put your hand into an acrylic case and lift up a bar of solid gold.

The MS Rydam sailed at 6 PM. As we were leaving the pier the crowd was forming for the daily sunset celebration, and they were to have us leaving since we were blocking the west side of the square! The cruise is set up with an early and late primary show each evening along with early and late dinner seatings. The various performers then have individual shows in the ship’s lounges throughout the day and evening. We were signed up for the early show and the late dinner seating throughout the cruise. The main show Sunday evening was “Duets”

After dinner we went to Fred Newman’s second show, “Once Upon Some Time” (A tale of The Juggler, The Weaver , And The Star Thrower). accompanied by Andy Stein. It was a bit of an off-beat take on the creation of the universe.

3/16 - At sea all day today en-route to Belize. We all had a relaxing day, reading on deck and just walking around. We went to a naturalist lecture on “Reef Fish Behavior”. Nancy and Joan took the “Behind the Scenes Kitchen Tour” and then the three of us went to “Story Hour with Garrison And Jearyln”.

After lunch we went to Fred Newman’s show “Putting Your Best Voice Forward (with a few horns & honks)” Another hilarious (and quite educational) show! That was followed by John Sauke’s “Scotch Tasting” - always an enjoyable event in any venue!

The evening show was “A Prairie Home Companion”. They did two full radio shows during the cruise, and since they were doing two shows a night , that made four shows that they were able to edit into a single radio show that was broadcast on NPR on Saturday March 20.

I won’t go into any detail, suffice to say all of the shows throughout the cruise were excellent. And well they should be since that was the point of the cruise in the first place! As far as we were concerned the visits to Belize and Mexico were secondary to the entertainment on board.

3/17 - MS Ryndam anchored off Belize City at 7:48 AM. We did not actually go into Belize City since we had signed up for a snorkeling trip. They picked us up from the ship and took us to the reef, about 20 minutes away. We then had an hour for snorkeling. The weathers was overcast and spitting rain, only poor weather day of the trip, but who cares if you are swimming! Turned out Dennis did not do so well at the snorkeling - lots of sputtering and swallowing sea water! He had practiced in the pool at home before our trip to Australia a number of years ago and did pretty well there - not so hot in the Caribbean!

After the snorkeling they took us to a small, private island for lunch and beach time. Would have been better if it had been a hot sunny day, but it was nice anyway.

After we returned to the ship we all went to the spa for massages, courtesy of Dennis’ mom who treated us to the spa afternoon as a thank you. The Ryndam weighed anchor at 5:33 PM and headed north for Costa Maya. The evening show was an “All Request” show, which was very good as usual. After another great dinner (man, we really ate a lot on this cruise!) we relaxed until Fred Newman’s late show “Growing up Weird”. Another great show!

3/18 - Ms Ryndam docked in Costa Maya at 7:08 AM. We slept fairly late since we did not have any activities scheduled. We walked into town, what there was of it. The cruise port consists of a fairly new, medium sized shopping center with cheap souvenir shops, jewelry shops, a few bars and a small beach and swimming pool. Not much to see other than the folks on the pier who will take your picture with a monkey on your shoulder. The city itself appeared to be a few miles inland, but we did not do any exploring. Purchased a couple of pieces of jewelry and went back to the ship.

We spent the rest of the day relaxing on deck and enjoying the beautiful weather. We left Costa Maya at 6 PM. The evening show was A Prairie Home Companion again, a different show of course, and also very, very good. After dinner we listened to Jearlyn and Billie Steele in the Ocean Bar. Her shows were another highlight of the cruise.

3/19 - We docked at Cozumel at 7:39 AM. We were scheduled for a bicycling/snorkeling tour, so we headed into town to meet the tour, but had to wait in the gangway while another cruise ship came up alongside the pier opposite us. They apparently are concerned about a sudden movement of the ship causing a wave over the pier and the danger from loose mooring lines. The support crew from A Prairie Home Companion were chomping at the bit to get off the ship as they were carrying the tapes of the APHC show and had studio time scheduled in Cozumel to transmit them to Minnesota Public Radio.

We met our tour guide on the pier and climbed into taxis to go to get out of the center of town. Cozumel is a large city and a pretty bustling place whose main industry is tourism. Lots of traffic and lots of resort hotels along the beach. We were docked right downtown at the main pier and there were a number of very large cruise ships docked at the International Pier north of the city. In all we counted seven other cruise ships docked or anchored there.

The taxis took us to the bike tour headquarters, a dusty lot with a lean-to where they were doing car repairs. The bikes were fairly rough looking, but they were actually 10 speeds in pretty good shape. We then rode the bikes north along the coast about three miles to Chankanaab Nature Park. This was nice park with some reproductions of Maya and Inca ruins, tropical plants and apparently some animals, although all we saw were Iguanas. There was a really nice beach and we would have enjoyed relaxing on the beach longer as opposed to walking through the park. The snorkeling was pretty good with a fair number of fish, but the surf was a high which made it hard. Dennis did a little better this time, but did not last long. After a short rest on the beach it was back on the bikes and back into Cozumel.

Once again we did not do any real exploring, just browsed the shops by the pier a bit. We did find some bargains on scotch and Irish whiskey at a shop on the pier.

Back on the ship we stood at the rail to watch it pull away from the pier. We were supposed to leave at 4:30 PM, but there was apparently a passenger missing! They paged the lady several times and there were officers and crewmen talking with port officials. A couple came up by us at the rail and asked “Have they found Pattie yet?” Turns out they knew her from the Norway APHC cruise and they said she was always late for everything. We waited almost 45 minutes and eventually left her in Cozumel! Not a great way to finish up your vacation.

The main show tonight was a Lake Wobegon Q&A with Garrison answering questions about the characters and the creation of his fictional town of Lake Wobegon. After dinner we went to the chocolate extravaganza on the Lido deck and then Sue Scott and Tim Russell, with Vern Sutton, presented a one-act play about voice impersonators that was really good.

3/20 - Our last day of the cruise and a full day at sea. We pretty much relaxed most of the day. The Chief Engineer of the Ryndam presented a video tour of the engine room and propulsion system which was followed by a really interesting Q&A session.

We listened to Jearlyn Steele’s last evening in the Ocean Bar after dinner.

3/21 - Back in Tampa, an overcast, rainy day. As he did at the end of the Norway cruise in 2007, Garrison stood at the end of the gangway and thanked every passenger for coming! A nice end to a great and entertaining cruise. We are ready to sign up for the next one as soon as they announce it!

Nancy and Joan are of to Disney world for three days, while Dennis is headed back to looking after his Mom and finishing up the packing for her move.

Real Cowboys, In Florida?

3/7 to 3/12 - We spent the week packing up Dennis’ mothers apartment and getting things ready for her to move into her new place on the assisted living side of the Courtyards. We have long distance movers lined up to take some furniture to her niece’s in upstate NY, local movers to move her across to her new apartment, and a Our Lady of Guadalupe Thrift Shop set up to take all of the things she cannot take with her. It has been a busy week and Nancy has been doing more than her share of the work. We both need a good week of RR on the PHC cruise.

We have managed to get out for a good dinner a couple of times. We had dinner at the Ybor Grille again, and also made it to Anna’s in Wimoma FL for some authentic Mexican fare. We also had lunch at Danny Boys a couple of times.

We had lunch at Anna’s on Thursday and actually ran into a group of real cowboys! Yup, we spent almost two months in Arizona and then we run into a group of cowboys in Florida. When we pulled into Anna’s lot there were several trucks with horse trailers, saddled horses in the them with blanket rolls! Inside were five cowboys - yes, battered hats, scuffed boots with spurs, the whole works! Go figure!

Friday it rained, and it rained. Started during the night and poured rain for several hours, then just a steady light rain all morning. We are getting ready for the PHC cruise. Getting our luggage packed, etc. We leave on Sunday and return on Sunday the 21st. We will have a post then to tell about the trip.

More Good Food

3/3 - We took a ride down to Bradenton to check out the Red Barn Flea Market. What a mob scene and this was Wednesday! Cannot imagine what it is like on weekends. The market is huge with a wide variety of stuff - we picked up a pizza cutter, some fishing tackle boxes for Dennis’ Mom’s costume jewelry, and a phone charger. After the flea market we back to Haslem’s bookstore int St Petersburg to pick up a book Nancy had ordered. Naturally Dennis bought a couple more books! We had lunch at Island Seafood right down the block. Outstanding seafood - don’t miss the Philly Fish Cheese Sandwich. Back in Sun City Center we stopped at Wal-Mart. We were looking at an inexpensive table for Dennis’ Mom’s new apartment since her table is to large. A lady approached us and said she had a small table and two chairs for sale. Turns out she has a cherry drop leaf table with two chairs that will be perfect for $100! Serendipity.

3/4 - Thursday morning we went to Brandon and shopped for a new twin bed and bedding for the new apartment. Had lunch at La Septima Cafe, just as good as last time. We had not expected to be back here, so it was a pleasant treat.

3/5 - We drove into Ybor City in the morning just to look around. Not much to see or do there, seems to be more of a nightlife area, lots of bars and a few historic buildings, but not much left of the real old Ybor City. Lunch at the Green Iguana, then back home.

3/6 - The Tampa Bay office of the National Weather Service is less than a mile down the road from Sun Lake RV. These are the folks that produce the NOAA weather reports for this area that you hear on your weather radio. They had an open house today, so we rode our bikes down there and took the tour. Pretty interesting stuff. They showed us the weather computers and told how they go about creating a forecast. They also demonstrated a launch of a weather balloon. They launch a balloon each day at 6 AM and & 7 PM (noon and midnight Greenwich Mean Time - now called Zulu Time.

Speaking of bikes, we have not gotten as much use out of them on this trip as we had thought. It turned out that there were no good places to ride near our campground in Tucson (same thing applies here in Florida) so we will most likely leave them at home next winter. Even with the cover on them on the rack they have gotten wet and rusty, Dennis’ more than Nancy’s for some reason. Do not recall if we mentioned it earlier in the blog, but we liked Desert Trails RV Park in Tucson so much that we have reserved the same spot for next winter, starting the 1st of December and running through the end of March. We will take the trailer down there after Thanksgiving and then fly home for Christmas. Hopefully that way we will avoid the snow and bad weather that we ran into by leaving after Christmas this winter.

In between our touristy activities we have been working on cleaning out Dennis’ Mom’s apartment and getting her ready to move into a smaller place. She is doing incredibly well in rehab and we are hoping to get her back into her own place by the end of March.