2014 Mar 29 - A day with cousin Alan, his wife, Alex, and her daughter, Lora

Well, the title of this post just about tells the story. We drove the 85 miles to New Port Richey and spent the day with my cousin, Alan, and his family in their beautiful home. Alan's mother and my mother were sisters.

Alan and Alex just bought their retirement home a year ago and only spend weekends there. They live and work, for a couple more years, in Tallahassee during the week. The wine cellar is a hidden room off of the garage. They have a ways to go to fill it up. We had shrimp sish-ka-bobs for lunch and spent the afternoon and evening visiting and telling family stories before driving back to the camper. We got home about 10:00. Another good day.

Tomorrow we move up the road about a half hour to Myakka River State Park. See you there!

2014 Mar 28 - Bird Day

After using the WiFi at the Nature Center, we headed out on one of the trails to find the American Bald Eagle. Not only did we find the eagles, we were visited by a Florida Scrub-Jay. The Scrub-Jay is unique to Florida and is having trouble due to the loss of habitat.

We came home to eat lunch and read and take a nap. Guess who did what! Then we took a walk around the park and visited with a few people. Back at camp, I started a fire and cooked some brats for dinner. Nice day!

Enjoy the pictures.

 

2014 Mar 27 - Nokomis Beach, Casey Key Fish House, More Music

It's a gloomy day. We went to the Thursday morning pancake breakfast. Good pancakes and great people. After breakfast, we started to walk to the trail head where some Florida Scrub Jays are nesting, in hopes of seeing one, but it started raining, so we decide to drive around the area.

We drove out on Casey Key and discovered Nokomis Beach, another popular sharks' teeth hunters' hot spot. We walked along the board walk, in the rain, before driving south to a bridge that got us back onto Tamiami Trail. We saw a Target Store, so we stopped in and picked up a few things. By that time, it was after 1:00 and past time for lunch.

We drove back out onto Casey Key and went to the Casey Key Fish House which we passed earlier. It looked interesting, so we stopped there for lunch. We ate inside because of the weather.

Then it was back to the park to take in the last couple of hours of the Thursday afternoon jam session. A bunch of people, some local and some from around the country, got together and made some pretty good music.

After the jam session, Bill and Kate Isles ( www.billandkateisles.com ), professional musicians and song writers, entertained us for a couple of hours.

The weather was lousy, but it turned out to be a pretty good day.

I took the last picture while out for a walk after dark. I came upon a man sitting in the dark in the front window of his class A motorhome, working on his laptop. Although it's not the best quality picture because I had no tripod, I thought it was neat.You'll have to enlarge it to see him.

 

2014 Mar 26 - Caspersen Beach and Music by Carl Ross

After a late breakfast, we wend to Walmart for a couple of things, then on to Caspersen Beach, the Shark Tooth Capital of the World. A woman we met at Kissimmee Prairie Preserve State Park told us about this place and how she LOVES to hunt for sharks' teeth. She has about 24,000 of them!

The weather was cool and windy at the campground, but the beach was sheltered from the wind and the sun was warm. We spent a couple of hours there, walking the beach and the people using their special tool, a sandflea rake, to hunt for sharks' teeth. We talked to one lady from Canada who comes here just to hunt for the teeth. I guess it's kind of addictive.

We didn't get back from the beach until 3:30, so we had a late lunch. Then I took a nap while Marsha washed sheets and towels in the laundry across the road from our campsite.

We headed for the Nature Center for the 6:30 show of the Grand Ol' Osprey where Carl Ross was scheduled to play some old time mountain music. He was quite entertaining. Said he once had a job as an underwater ceramic technician, also known as a dish washer! The program lasted until 8:00 when we came back to camp for some hot chocolate. It's 57 degrees (Brrrr) and going down, maybe to the high forties by morning when we have to get up early to go to the pancake breakfast at the Nature Center. See you there!