We LOVE Fort DeSoto

I always look back at my last post to see where I ended up, which, in this case, was the expectation that we would take the rig into Sarasota Ford on Thursday morning, get it dealt with and then spend the night at the Walmart before heading to Fort DeSoto first thing Friday morning.  Well, that's KIND of what happened, but unfortunately when the mechanics looked at the rig and took it for a test drive, they determined that the "service engine soon" light was just kind of a fluke, but "the bad news" was:  one of our brakes was almost down to the drum.  Yikes.  They had to order parts which wouldn't be there until Friday morning.  So we DID stay in a Walmart overnight, but then we had about $850 worth of work to be done on Friday.  Can you say "painful"?  We left the dealership at about noon on Thursday, since they couldn't do anything that afternoon, and pulled into a Walmart just off I-75 in Sarasota.  We left the rig in the parking lot and went down to Venice for the afternoon.  We took Brandi to the dog park in Venice, which was cool because it had a dog beach in addition to the dog park itself.  She had a BALL!  We stopped at Sharkey's for an early dinner, then went back to the Walmart and went to bed early.  We had said we would have the rig back to the Ford dealership by 7:45 so we had the alarm set for 7:15.  But at 7:00 in the morning there was a knock on our door and when I poked my head out (in my PJ's of course!) it was a security guard.  He said "Ma'am, we can't let you park here!" (quite ferociously!).  I apologized and said we'd leave right away, but we had a chuckle about it because we'd been there since NOON the day before - did it take them 17 hours to NOTICE us????

So then we took the RV to the dealership and dropped it off and went into Sarasota for a few hours.  We love the drive out to the keys off Sarasota - Lido Key, St Armonds Circle, the Mote Marina - it's just such a nice area.  We just drove out there and took Brandi for a nice walk - it was a little cool, but not bad considering in was still morning.  By noon, they had our rig done (and our money collected) and sent us on our way.  Oh well - considering that the Sea Breeze is now eight years old, we certainly can't complain about an occasional repair. We popped back onto I-75, took I-275 over to the Sunshine Bridge, and headed over to Fort DeSoto County Park.  We love going over the Sunshine Bridge - it's just so BIG and there is such a beautiful view in every direction.  It can be a teeny bit intimidating if it's very windy, for fortunately we had a beautiful afternoon so it was a pleasure to cross over the bay.

We were all checked in and set up by about 2:00 Friday - Fort De Soto has got to be one of the most beautiful COUNTY parks in the country!  It's basically 5 islands (or keys), covering about 1,100 acres, and it has EVERYTHING you could possibly ask for in a park.  There are literally miles of beautiful beaches, the kayaking is wonderful with lots of choices where to paddle, the campground is very nice, there is a very interesting old fort and museum, there are two very cool piers - one is 500' feet long, the other is 1,000' - there are miles and miles walking/biking paths, and there is a spectacular dog park and dog beach.  The dog beach is only 1-1/2 miles from the campground, so I think we've taken Brandi to the park every day except once or possibly twice since we've been here.  I'm attaching a map of the park, but I doubt if it will show up very well.  I'll throw in a few more pix before we leave, but honestly this place is really wonderful.  We've done lots of just "park stuff" - riding our bikes, running on the trails, going to the beach, kayaking, Dave's done a fair amount of fishing, etc. etc.

But no matter how beautiful it is, you can't just stay in the park every day - and we've done some nice "day trips" during the week we've been here.  On Monday, we went into downtown St. Pete and did an AVA walk - a very nice one, I would have to say.  It was called the "Northeast St. Pete" walk and it was very pretty - it started in an older but very beautiful northeast residential area.  We walked along the edge of the water for about two miles, and ended up in downtown St. Pete which is actually a very pretty area too.  We added 3K to the walk by going out on the city Pier, which has this big sort of inverted triangle building at the end, with shops, restaurants, etc.  (It's OK, but frankly nothing compared to the Navy Pier in Chicago.)  We went out there and got ice cream cones, but when we took them outside to eat a seagull dive-bombed me and took a big old bite right out of my ice cream cone ....REALLY??????  (Actually I haven't had good luck with birds this week, because when we were out walking on the big pier in the park one afternoon, another bird took a big old DUMP right on my head - it was all over my clothes, my hair, NASTY!)  Anyway, I know I've said this before but it is SO nice to have Dave able to do these walks with me - he couln't have possibly walked 10K (much less 13K) before he got his brand new knees.  He's not interested in doing every walk with me, but it's a treat for both of us to be able to periodically go on these walks together!  (PS-I'm not exactly sure what I'm sitting next to here - it's kind of a pirate-elephant-on rollerskates thing. But the main thing is - notice my T-SHIRT!  It's for running the Tulip Time 5K last spring-I LOVE this shirt!)

Tuesday I had to do some Kerkstra stuff in the morning, and then we went out kayaking in the afternoon.  We generally start out together, and then Dave settles in someplace to fish while I head out and do a little exploring.  I was pretty proud of myself because I was paddling in some shallow water and suddenly noticed I was right over top of a pretty BIG stingray.  He let me paddle by him, and he just sort of gently flapped his...fins?  wings?  whatever they are... but then when I circled back he took off.  After a couple hours, I headed back in and stopped by and told Dave, and (just to show me up, I think) when he got back in he told me HE actually saw a stingray jump up out of the water SEVEN times in a row.  I would have said I didn't believe him, but we actually saw the same thing happen yesterday when we were at Coquina Beach, so I guess I have to believe him.  It's just weird - we've been down here eight years in a row now, and neither of us ever saw a stingray before, and now we had 3 sightings in the same week.  Crazy.  We love spotting the sealife down here - it's just so different than what we see at home.

Tuesday evening I noticed I wasn't feeling too well, and I ended up spending ALL day Wednesday in bed.  I have NO idea what it was but I literally slept all day - I'd get up for an hour and then go right back to bed for another 4 or 5 hours - and then I went to bed at 8:00 that night and slept through until 9:00 Thursday morning.  By Thursday I was feeling better, but kind of weak so we just stayed in the park and took it easy, which was fine with both of us!  I still have no idea what hit me but by Friday I felt absolutely fine again.  Good thing, because Friday we had wanted to spend the whole day at Coquina Beach.  We love going there and just sitting up our chairs on the beach and relaxing.  I read, Dave did some shore-fishing, and we took a little walk up to the concession stand and splurged on some greasy French fries!  It is just SO pretty there.  We left the beach about 4:00 and went back over to the mainland to Bradenton and stopped at the Cortez Kitchen for dinner.  This is one of our favorite old "fishing village" type of restaurants - the freshest seafood you could ask for, served on this old scruffy deck on the edge of the water.  Dave had peel-and-eat shrimp, while I got the seafood combo platter.  It had shrimp, stuffed crab, grouper and the tenderest scallops I've ever had - you could literally cut them with the side of a fork.  I love scallops, but NOT when they're kind of rubbery - but these were great!  What a wonderful day!  (PS-now THIS T-shirt is another story - I actually got a tiny bit chilly walking up to the concession stand so I had to borrow Dave's NASTY Florida gators T-shirt - he made me let him take a picture and told me I had to post it in my blog-YUCK!) 

So finally we are up to today - what a LONG posting, but it's just been a really nice week (other than the sick day!).  Today we got up and took Brandi for a nice long romp at the dog park, and then we drove up to Tarpon Springs - it's about an hour long drive, but we absolutely love it up there.  It's been about three years since we've been there so it was nice to go back.  The initial plan was for me to do an AVA walk while Dave rode his bike around, but we ended up just walking around together and skipping the AVA walk.  We stopped at a couple of the quaint, old bars for a beer, and then of course we had to stop at one of the many authentic Greek restaurants for dinner.  Each time we've been here we've tried a different restaurant, and honestly they're probably all pretty much the same, but they are all GREAT!  We never eat Greek food at home, so it's a real treat for us when we come here.  I am absolutely going to get onto the internet and find a couple of recipes to try - there's a "classic" lemon-egg-orzo soup that just can't be TOO difficult.  Anyway, we spent the whole afternoon in town, walking around, buying a gallon container of olve oil (!), catching part of the Michigan/Wisconsin basketball game, and just enjoying the day.  I'm posting a couple pix, including one of my favorite Dave-and-Gail pictures, taken by our waiter at the restaurant.  The restaurant itself was a HOOT - it was very "aquatic" in ambience, hence the BLUE BLUE BLUE pictures.  Anyway, we had another absolutely wonderful day in paradise. 

We are here for a few more days - we'll be leaving on Thursday - but I had SO much to fill in that I decided to do a mid-stay post.  One last note-we did have something funny happen to us - we LOST a day.  Our initial plan for the week was to go to Coquina on Thursday and Tarpon Springs on Friday, and then spend the weekend in the park since there's generally so much more traffic on the weekend.  And that's exactly what we thought we were doing.  Both of us!  We both thought it was weird that families were arriving on Thursday in the park, and we thought it was REALLY weird that the Michigan-Wisconsin game was on Friday afternoon, and we really couldn't understand why the downtown Tarpon Springs area was having their "food truck" festival (...don't ask!) on a Friday, but oh well.  But the more we talked about it, the weirder these things seemed, until finally at 6:00 while we were driving home Dave said "are you SURE it's Friday?  Maybe it's Saturday."  I told him, no, I was SURE it was Friday, but I finally checked my I-phone and sure enough we were both off a FULL DAY.  And we don't even know when we lost the day!  We finally decided it was around the time I got sick - somehow we both got confused about what day it was and we didn't figure it out for DAYS!  Now THAT's how you know you are on vacation, right?  (Or maybe that's how you know you're BOTH developing early dementia....)  The good news is:  IT DOESN'T REALLY MATTER!