Friends, Nature Trails and an Alligator

Our final week in Florida was pretty full of activities.  We started the week off by attending a Cowboy Church in the area with our neighbors here in the RV park.  We met Bob and Jan while walking the dogs and hit it off with them right away.  They are fulltimers from Alabama and enjoy visiting and church.  Jan also enjoys doing things on her computer and provided us with our first social card.  Thanks Jan.

The idea is you can hand this out to people you meet who you want to stay in touch with instead of always writing it down when you need it.  We will surely stay in touch with them and see them down the road somewhere.  While we had never attended a cowboy church we really enjoyed it and plan on attending again next Sunday. 

  Bill received the convex mirror he ordered and installed it on Tuesday and everything is as good as new.  Just got to remember that when you are seated in front of the front tires, the front end of the motorhome swings wide when backing.  Maybe we can avoid more of these type of lessons.

  We had been told that the Peace River which runs through the Thousand Trails property has alligators and we were hoping to get to see one.  Well, that finally happened.  Bill took the dogs for a walk by the river one morning and was watching for one along the banks of the river.  Sure enough, it was just laying there.

 

It was probably only about 7 feet long nose to tail but it was impressive to us.  From that point on for the rest of the week, Bill would look for the Gator on every walk.  It was sort of like 'If you know where it is your OK' kind of thing.  It was there all week just lurking in the shadows, waiting for something to make a mistake so he could devour it.  At this point it is important to point out that one of the big activities people participate in here at the RV park is Shark tooth hunting.  Appearently this area was once covered by ocean, imagine that.  So the process is to make a wood frame with a screen stretched across it and attach those noodle floats to the edges.  Then they GET IN THE WATER, with the ALLIGATORS and screen for the shark teeth.

Now you can call me crazy, but I just think this shows a complete lack of respect for alligators, all for an old sharks tooth.  There must be a tooth fairy for sharks teeth that I am not aware of.

  On a different note, we never did get to see the Pioneer Museum that we intended on going to.  On Wednesday we did go to see it, 3 times.  From 11:30 to 1:45pm there was a sign on the door that said they were at lunch so we finally gave up.

  We did see one more interesting flowering bush while on our walks.



 

On Thursday, we had Bob and Jan over for a Brisket dinner and Jan brought Potato salad, homemade Pecan Pie and a game called Farkel.  We enjoyed our time together and the food was great but that Pecan Pie was FANTASTIC.  One of the nice things Jan does for people they meet is to introduce them to the game Farkel and give them the dice and a laminated score sheet with instructions..  It is a dice game with everyone trying to reach 10,000 points first.  We had a real good time.

  On Sunday we started our preparations for leaving the Peace River area and our trip out of Florida.  We will be headed for Alabama with a short stop in Georgia.  More on that in our next blog.

Hello from Cracker Country

Well we made it from Bradenton, FL to the Thousand Trails park near Wauchula, FL on Monday 12 May.  It was a short and uneventful trip except for smashing the drivers side convex mirror on the motorhome while we were trying to back into our site.  While the trees here in Florida are so very green and beautiful they are still solid wood and break glass mirrors when the 2 come into contact with each other.  Chock it up to another lesson learned on the road.

Bill did some searching on the internet and found a camping world around 30 miles from where we are camped so we made plans to go there on Tuesday to buy a replacement mirror and get it installed.  On Tuesday morning we got a call from Lazy Days RV telling us they already had our License plate and registration.  We changed plans and drove there instead thinking Lazy Days would be just as likely to have the mirror plus we get our License plate.  Turns out we needed to order the mirror from a company in California and they wouldn't have it for probably 10 days.  Bill decided to order it himself and we are promised delivery by Monday 19 May, plus save well over 1/2 the price quoted.  When we got back to the motorhome we were greeted by our ever alert guard dog.

  

  So, back to 'Cracker Country' reference.  As it turns out we have landed right in the middle of what is known locally as Cracker Country.  Now if it had not been for some prior knowledge of what a Florida Cracker was we might of thought this was NOT going to be a very nice place in a politically correct sort of way.  For those with no prior knowledge of what a Florida Cracker is, as the story goes, this area of Florida was a large cattle raising area.  The cowboys used whips while herding the cattle and the sound the whips made was a Crack.  The cowboys became known as Crackers.  So now you know what the original meaning was.  There is a museum about a mile away from  us which is dedicated to this pioneering history which we plan to go to on Tuesday next week hopefully.

  The camp area we are at borders the Peace River and is very pretty.  We have taken numerous walks on the nature trails they have here and taken some photos to share.

Peace River

One of many hollowed out trees we've seen

Nature Trail at campground

More Spanish Moss



They is an abundance of wild flowers here which we have enjoyed.

Spider Lily

 

More Lazy Days and Some time in Bradenton, FL

The whole reason we were back here in Florida was the need to get some work done on the motorhome and we wanted it done at Lazy Days RV where we bought it.  We also needed to follow up on our vehicle registrations.  So after all the fun of Disney World it was back to Lazy Days in Seffner, FL.  Our appointment was for 6 May and after checking in they got right to work on the motorhome.  We took the opportunity to speak to one of the business managers about our motorhome registration.  He put us in contact with a young lady who had that responsibility.  The problem was we wanted the Motorhome registered in New Mexico and they were not having much luck getting it done.  After we spoke with Kelly, she contacted the MVD express in NM and got things rolling.  We then needed to go to Clearwater where we bought our car and go through the same process.  All and all a very successful day.  The repairs on the motorhome were complete except for a key being made for the deadbolt.  Lazy Days made an appointment with a locksmith to come directly to our camp the next morning.  Really great service.
  Wednesday morning the locksmith showed up and had us taken care of in no time at all.  The rest of the day was spent getting ready to travel down the road to Bradenton, FL., our next stop.
  Thursday morning we were off, we had a whopping 45 miles we were traveling and wanted to get an early start.  We arrived at the Encore RV Park in Bradenton at 1100am and got checked in and assigned to a campsite.  The Encore parks are generally more of a long term residence type park with lots of Park model type RV's.  One afternoon Cara started barking out one of the windows and we looked and saw a Hawk sitting on our electric box right outside the motorhome.


From the studying we did this appears to be a Cooper's Hawk.  He just sat there and let us take all the pictures we wanted. 
  We spent Saturday morning out doing yard sales looking for movies.  We didn't do very well on movies but we saw some nice areas.

We decided to have a nice lunch at a restaurant which Steph found good reviews for called Pier22.  It turned out to be a very nice place and we enjoyed our meal at a very low cost $$.  Stephanie had a Blackened Amberjack Tuna dish and Bill had a Grilled Grouper dish. 



This is a photo right outside of Pier 22 restaurant.  

On Sunday, Mother's day we relaxed and made steaks on the grill to celebrate.  Had a wonderful day and got ready to leave on Monday.  We would be leaving for Peace River Thousand Trails park near Wauchula, FL.  More on that later.

 

Disney World Part 2

We took Tuesday off to catch up on laundry and rest.  On Wednesday we headed for Epcot Center.  Epcot is having a Flower Show and the whole park is filled with beautiful flowers and greenery.

 

After walking around the park for a while, taking in all the beauty, we decided to ride a very popular ride called "GM Test Track".  You design your own car and then as you go on the ride they show you where your car stands in the race.  It was a pretty lame ride and we didn't place well in the race.  All this after having stood in liner for nearly 2 hours.  Never again.  Below are some of the cars they had on display.

After the ride, we took a boat over to the Germany area of the park for lunch.  Now this was a good experience, and also a decent deal for a Disney meal.  We had a wonderful, large German buffet, served by true German servers, and followed by wonderful German entertainment. The pictures of the entertainment didn't turn out too well, but I wanted to include a few.

 

 

 

 

Below:  Lego Dragon at Downtown Disney on Thursday.

 

 

 

Walking around Downtown Disney

 

Looking across the bay from Downtown Disney






On Sunday we did the last of our Disney day.  It was spent at Animal Kingdom, which was both our favorite.  It was quite crowded.  Probably because it had rained all day Friday and Saturday.

 

Animal Kingdom

A roller coaster ride we were suppose to go on, but never made it

Tree of Life

Safari Adventure Ride

 



Look close. She's Alive!

 



Bye for now