Our Travel Blog

Continued working on the rearview camera set up this morning. Like most gadgets the concept is simple, implementation is more difficult. The camera came in a housing the mounts to the licence plate This gave a couple of problems as the licence plate is on the drivers side, and the bikes on the back platform would block the view across to the passenger side; also the transmitter is not waterproof and there would be nowhere to put it to keep it dry. Finally there was no power source readily available back there. Finally decided that the best place for the camera would be inside the back window of the trailer! Now to figure out where to  put the display in the truck, decisions, decisions, decisions …..

After lunch it was off to the clubhouse for the free cherry pie I mentioned yesterday. I got the wrong free, it should have been three (as in dollars!), well they threw in a dollop of ice-cream as well so we were happy!! The pie event was linked to a fashion show, which I had no intention of watching, so I picked the chair nearest the door so I could make a quick getaway 🙂 As it turned out the fashion show was in fact a number of short skits based on nursery rhymes, I wont try to describe it ………..you had to be there to appreciate it!!

Need my rest now as it’s an early breakfast in the clubhouse.

No change in the weather, life is good. This is a long weekend down here in celebration of Presidents day, not sure what they do, but there’s free cherry pie in the club-house tomorrow.

Spent some time setting up my radio gear, and connecting it to the computer. Every time I do this it takes about 30 minutes as I forget which cable goes where :-(, this time I got smart and wrote it down.

This afternoon we headed out to a large flea market about 7 miles away. Flea market was overstating it a little, it was the biggest junk sale I’d ever seen….

On the way home we went exploring to find the local airport which is not too far from the campsite. It was a good sized airport with two concrete runways, but no planes using them. I have no idea how they could justify the cost of keeping the place running, unless the National Guard unit just across the road had some influence.

Another hard week has passed, and the week-end is upon us, time to relax. Another warm day of clear blue skies and temperatures in the high 70’s.

Started off the day with a few essential repairs, the TV remote required excessive pressure on some of the buttons, tiring Lyn out as she fast-forwarded through the commercials. Gave the BBQ a thorough cleaning and then made up some connector wires for the rear view camera, powered it up and it worked first time. Now I should be able to see who I am cutting off when driving the trailer!

At dinner time I found a disadvantage to cleaning the BBQ; it’s a lot more efficient, making it a lot hotter, poor sausages didn’t stand a chance!!

Yet another warm sunny day, life is so tough!

Today was laundry and shopping day. While Lyn was busy doing the laundry I was putting a new antenna together. You may remember when we were in Georgia I put up an antenna for ham radio. That one worked well, but needed a space about 60ft in length to put it up in. In the last two sites we haven’t had the luxury of that much open space, so I now have one that mounts vertically on the ladder at the back of the trailer.

Also on the gadgets front, we have just received the replacement camera to put on the back of the trailer so I can see whats behind me when we are travelling. This one seems to have a little more life in it than the previous one, I’ll try and get it all together in the next couple of days.

Being shopping day means Pizza for dinner, today it was still warm enough to sit outside and eat this evening, our first evening meal out this year!!

Another warm day in sunny Florida, seems they have got their act together weather wise for the next few days. Today we headed out to Captain Fred’s for an air boat ride. For those who don’t know an air boat is a flat bottomed boat with a bl**dy great aircraft propeller mounted on a V8 engine at the back

These beasts can operate in only a few inches of water, and happily go through grass and weeds; but they are NOISY, luckily we got a good set of ear defenders issued to us. We set off down a small channel that led out into a 5500 acre lake, all was sedate but when we got to the lake he opened her up, the noise and speed rose and we were skimming across the lakes surface. This was all well and good for a few minutes, but then the novelty  wore off, if we were going to spend the next 90 minutes driving over the lake, boredom would set in!

Luckily the skipper felt the same way, and we headed right into the swampy / grassy areas where the water was about 6″ deep, or less. The advantage of the air boat is there is nothing under the boat to worry about. We saw a couple of smallish ‘gators, and an abundance of wild life, including 2 bald eagles sitting atop a tree. The boat stopped, and those who wanted a chance to drive were allowed to do so. Couldn’t refuse an offer like that! It’s a little weird to drive, the throttle is on the floor like a car, and directional control is done by using a metal rod on the left side of the driver, push it forward to turn right and back to turn left….. there are no brakes!!

Having survived that we went int a back channel, really isolated from everything, down here we saw a few more ‘gators and a variety of tree life, including mistletoe, which appears to be a bush growing high up within a tree. We continued around the lake, and found an area where there were a whole group of baby ‘gators and mum. There were probably 75 – 100 of them all over the place, there were two groups of babies there this years and last years, mum only tolerates 2 groups in the family unit, when a new batch arrive the eldest are kicked out to fen for themselves. Nearly 2 hours into our 90 minute trip we arrived back at the base! An excellent trip.

At the base they had some baby ‘gators

The one I’m holding is about 5 months old, and the blurred one in front about 18 months old

Mostly sunny with high of 78F today, life is good. Wednesday has become bowls day for me, getting the hang of the game now, must have been the lesson I got in Portugal!!

With the return of the warm weather I got to thinking (I know, not a good idea) about the trees we have seen around here. Some are bare, as I would expect this time of year, some are turning red… a little late, some are in blossom and yet others have normal foliage. Not sure where the thought was going, but I think I am as confused as the trees.

Other than bowls, and a confused thought, the day was spent doing very little other than sitting around reading and painting the model…. may have to buy a new one soon!

Today is halfway through our stay at this site and also the whole trip. Doesn’t time fly…..

After the excitement of last night, we were up at the crack of dawn (0745) for the weekly breakfast. The clubhouse was noticeably empty this time compared with last weeks turn-out. I guess the late night put a few people off, after all it was almost 7:15 PM by the time the show finished last night.

Once breakfast had settled, we headed off to the beach, first stop the pier at St. Petersburg. I pumped the destination into the GPS and it dutifully asked me if I wished to avoid toll charges, to which I replied yes…….. a mistake!

The GPS had us heading north for longer than we expected, but slowly turned us in the general direction of the destination, smart GPS thinks I, it’s taking us the great circle route!

Well it continued to lead us past roads that we thought were the obvious choice to take, hindsight suggests a little more human input to the routing in future. We finally arrived at the pier, which is supposedly famous for it’s architectural design that is meant to resemble an upside down building… I’ll keep studying the photos, it may come to me. Following a wholesome Chinese lunch on the pier, and a bit of aircraft watching, we headed off to the other side of the peninsular to find some beaches. The beaches we found were great, nice soft sand and not very busy at all. We took a walk along them, in some ways they were little like the beaches in the Caribbean where resorts had their area of beach with loungers and water sports activities set up.

From here we set off to go home, we wanted to go via the Sunshine Skyway Bridge, which is a 5.5 mile bridge across Tampa Bay. This time we allowed the GPS to take us via the toll route, but also made a back up plan using the map. After a short fight with the GPS we coaxed it into going our route, not its.  We had two toll charges, the first for about a mile of causeway that set us back a staggering .50c, and the second for the 5.5.mile bridge that cost $1.00. In Florida at least, I will let the GPS take us on toll routes 🙂

Before we get to the evening….. Our 4th stereo arrived today, so far it’s working but after this one dies we’ll   probably give up and buy something a bit better! Also managed to fix the squeaky tap from a few days ago, the toilet bowl still holds water so life is pretty good as far as the trailer is concerned.

Being doing some work on automating some excel spreadsheets for reconciling our credit card spending into my household budget, brings back memories of some of the excel spreadsheets I used for project budgeting back in the days of work, maybe that’s a bad thing?

Onto this evening, being away from home it was only right that I took Lyn out for a slap up romantic dinner, so planning began in earnest a couple of days ago. Unfortunately, the plans died at an early stage as the place was fully booked :-(. However fate must have been on our side as, due to a cancellation (separation??) two seats became available. Now the place wasn’t cheap, but when the price for two added up to exactly $14 for a February 14th dinner it had to be worth it!!, so at 6PM, we left the trailer and made our way to the venue, luckily it wasn’t too far away so we could walk.

Five minutes later we arrived at the clubhouse with about 120 other campers and sat down for a meal of chicken (fried), potatoes (mashed) corn and bread!!!!

Actually, the meal was pretty good, followed by cake and a fruit salad. Once the meal was finished, some of the more talented campers put on a series of comedy sketches, which were pretty good. Not a bad night for $14!

… so we did nothing!

Although somebody did have the audacity to move in next to us.