Warming Trend?

OK - they are PROMISING us that a warming trend is on its way. Yesterday we had a high of 38 degrees during the middle of the day! OMG! But now the extended forecast is saying gradually warmer each day and actually up to 70 degrees by next weekend. What a wonderful treat that would be. In the meanwhile we continue to find things to do. Friday we went back into Gainesville again - this time we went to the Florida Museum of Natural History, which is located on the campus of the University of Florida. It's actually quite a nice little museum, especially considering that it is free. They also have a supposedly very nice butterfly exhibit that you do pay separately for - it's a big screened in building with big palm trees and other plants and thousands of butterflies flying free. However, guess what? IT'S TOO COLD for the butterflies so they are not flying - thankfully the kid at the counter told us that when I tried to buy two tickets for the exhibit. After we left the museum we stopped at this little bar in Trenton, about 15 miles outside of Gainesville. We had noticed it coming home from the game the night before and decided to stop in. It was called The Mad Italian and was run by this 65 year old guy and his wife. He was very friendly and boy did he tell us his whole life story - "my life in restaurants" - they are originally from New York, and have owned a series of these restaurants. He keeps them for about five years then sells them - but not the name - just the building and the equipment. But then he got started on the whole issue of "government control" and "big brother" and that's when it was time to go - whew! We love stopping in to these little places and meeting the weird people in this country.
Yesterday the high point of our day was going to the laundromat. Not much excitement there, you say? Well, you haven't been to the laudromat in Chiefland, Florida. Quite the motley crew there, believe me. And right next door was this really big flea market - the kind where there's a big roof top covering everthing but under that is total chaos. What a bunch of JUNK - but they had movies for 50 cents so I bought another dozen for our collection. And there was one spot where they were selling pets - there was an adorable black puppy with white feet and a white bib. And amazingly, he had an American Eskimo father and a miniature Australian sheepherder for a mother. What a little DOLL he was - my heart was stolen. But Dave and I talked about it and agreed that, even if we are willing to take on a puppy (rather than an adult dog) we certainly can't do it in the RV. But it makes me convinced that, when we get home, we will be looking for another dog - not to replace Foster, but to fill the empty spot in our little family that needs to be filled with a dog. When we got home we bundled up and went for a nice walk through the park - it really is quite pretty here - we saw a little bit of a few manatees and some really big fish swimming up the spring run (the short waterway that connects the springs to the river itself). And yesterday when we were driving out we had a big gray fox run across the street in front of us. When you're camping like we are you love to see the different types of wildlife.
Today we are going to take another run out to Cedar Key - we like it there and it's probably our last trip out - it looks like we will not be kayaking around the Key, which we had definitely hoped to do, because of the weather, but it is certainly on the list for the next time we're in this area. Got to run - it's supposed to get up to 45 today! Yippee! (Also, I'll attach a couple pictures related to the previous post.)