Anna Marie Island

So yesterday (Sunday) we went back into the Sarasota/Bradenton area, as we had planned. The weather was supposed to be cloudy all day, so we decided to go to Anna Marie Island and take our bikes along and go for a nice long ride up the length of the island - this is one of our favorite bike rides anyway. It actually turned out to be a nice sunny day (...they never get the cloudy vs sunny thing right!) but VERY "breezy" - that's what they called it...we called it WINDY! It got pretty warm during the day - probably in the upper 70's, but a nice day for biking...at least when we were going WITH the wind. We parked at the lower end of Coquina Beach and rode our bikes to the far northern end of Anna Marie Island - probably somewhere between 8 and 10 miles. It's a fun ride, because you're right by the Gulf most of the time and the island is so pretty, with all the tropical trees and plants and the cool resort-type houses, all in pinks and corals and turquoises and greens. Very tropical. We stopped at Holmes Beach on the way up the island and had a drink and listened to a really good duet - a girl and a guy, who played the guitar. They both had really good voices and played the type of stuff we like - some Elvis, some Willie, etc. That's where I snapped these two pictures. Then we continued up the island and went out to the Island Pier for a light lunch - I had crabcakes - delicious. The Pier is a cool place to hang out for a little while - it was built in 1910, so we were thinking they'd probably have some type of 100-year birthday event sometime this year. But, BOY, was it windy out there. So THEN it was time to head back. And, of course, we were headed right into the wind - but it wasn't too awful bad - we just took it slow and kept pedaling! But about halfway there all of a sudden I heard a "whooshing" sound and just like that I had a flat tire on my bike. There was really no choice of what to do - Dave kept biking, to go back and get the car to pick me up, and I just kept walking the bike to try to get as far along as possible. We had already decided to stop at the Drift Inn in Cortez before we left the island, so by the time Dave got back to me I was almost at the circle turnaround in Cortez. He pulled over and we loaded my bike up and went back north a little bit to find a place to turn around to come back to the bar. When we parked in Cortez, I got my purse out of the car so I could exchange my sunglasses for my plain glasses and I suddenly remembered that when we loaded up my bike I had taken my camera and my glasses case out of my bike bag and laid them on the trunk deck of the car so I would have them with me. OH NO!!!! I had left them ON the trunk deck...! I went to the back of the car and by some MIRACLE my digital camera was still on the trunk - it was kind of stuck against the strap of the bike rack. But my glasses were gone - so now all I had was my prescription sunglasses! Dave and I both backtracked the whole route to see if we could spot my glasses case, but no luck. Fortunately, at the last minute before we left home last winter I had put my older pair of glasses in the RV as an emergency back-up, so I knew I'd have regular glasses when we got back to the RV. Thank God - otherwise I would have had nothing but sunglasses until I could get a replacement pair! (My old ones will get me by, but they are an old prescription so they give me kind of a headache, plus they are so scratched up that it's like looking through a fog!)

So today we went into the Walmart in Plant City and ordered me some new glasses (...about a $400 "oops" on my part!), but because of how strong my prescription is it will take almost two weeks to get them. Fortunately, since I had gotten my last ones at Walmart they have my prescription on the computer so were able to immediately order me some new ones - and, since we will have moved by the time they arrive, they'll call me and then send them to the nearest Walmart to wherever we are - a BIG advantage of having gotten them from Walmart. I actually had never gotten glasses from there in my life, until this last pair and now I am so glad I did. Dave, bless his heart, didn't say one single word about my carelessness. Oh well, we ALWAYS expect to have a few unexpected surprises on our trips and, compared to losing Foster, this isn't even a hiccup. Today was a little cooler - probably high of 70 - so a good day to do laundry with all the migrant workers (...we were the only "white" people in the laundromat and the TVs were all tuned to Spanish-speaking stations), go to McDonalds for a quick bite, and spend the day in the park. Dave is out fishing as I write this - I hope he gets something since this will be his second park to get "skunked" at if he doesn't. Tomorrow is our last day here, and then Wednesday we head over to DeSoto County Park by St. Petersburg, which should be really nice!