Roads to be Traveled: 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.