Park #13-Blue Springs State Park

Well, we are now at Blue Springs, in Orange City, Florida. It's about 35 miles north of Orlando and is a really pretty park! The big attraction here is the MANATEES!!! (More about that in a minute.) Anyway, the park is a really popular destination point and is definitely the most crowded park we've been in, at least as far as the "day use" area. The focal point is the Blue Springs themselves, which are gorgeous - BOY, have we seen a lot of springs during this trip! There is a really nice boardwalk that runs alongside the spring run, for probably a quarter mile or so, maybe even longer. There are also two tour boats that run up and down the river (the St Johns River, actually) three times a day - and there are literally busloads of people who come into the park to see the manatees and go on the cruise. In fact, every day there are cars lined up outside of the park waiting to come in - and they can't GET in until other cars LEAVE the park. It's kind of incredible. Since we've been here, there have probably been somewhere between 20 and 40 manatees in the spring run at any given time - and the water is SO crystal clear that you can see them perfectly. Plus there are a jillion fish in the clear waters, as well as turtles and "fishing" birds - and someone said they saw an alligator swimming in the run a couple days ago. (On the other hand, when Brenda and Arnie stopped at this park during their vacation in January, they said there were probably 150 manatees in the springs - but we are certainly NOT complaining about the number here now!) Anyway, there is also a kayak/canoe rental concession which provides us with a perfect spot for launching.
So - what we've done so far: Wednesday we just got settled in, bought some groceries, picked up some movies, etc. It was kind of a rainy day so we were fine with that. On Thursday, Dave took his kayak out fishing for the afternoon and I did the 6.2 mile (10 K) AVA walk that is actually in the park - not really a great walk, to tell the truth. Part of it was on some nice trails, but the majority of it was on kind of boring service roads running along the outer edge of the park - but I got the stamp for my book! On Friday, Dave did the same thing even though he hadn't had any real luck fishing the previous day - but he told me that the river is so pretty to be out on that he didn't really care. I, in the meanwhile, went into the next little town north of here, called DeLand, and did the AVA walk in the town. I had to get the walkbox at the Volusia County Library. And THIS walk was much, much nicer. It was basically a walk through the historic residential area, through the college campus (Stetson University) and along the main downtown street. The city of DeLand has done an excellent job of renovating their downtown and it is very attractive. Plus, there are some great old homes and mansions. The Stetson mansion was owned by the same man who "invented" the stetson hat - and obviously he also founded the university of the same name. Anyway, I had a great walk and was proud to get my FIFTH stamp in less than two weeks.
Saturday was cold, rainy and windy - NOT nice at all. I told Dave I wanted to show him DeLand because I thought it was so nice, so we took a drive into town - and ended up hitting road blocks. Saturday was actually the first day of the Daytona Bike Week (...motorcycles, that is) - and the first "event" of Bike Week is a rally in DeLand. It was SO sad - they set up a great venue - two live bands, tons of food and merchandise booths, and the downtown is so cute, with a large choice of bars and restaurants - but the weather was AWFUL, so they had about five blocks closed off for the event and there were probably barely 100 or so bikes. We walked around with our umbrellas, but got tired of the weather REALLY fast so headed over to the Beef O-Brady's just outside of town. I felt so bad for the city - they obviously put a huge amount of effort into this one day event, and it just rained ALL day long!
So - today - is Sunday and I finally went out in my kayak and paddled around where Dave had already gone twice - OH MY GOD - it was INCREDIBLE! There were manatees swimming all around us. We had one "pod" of four that we just slowly paddled alongside of for a really long distance - and when I say alongside of, I mean they were swimming so close to my kayak (...on both sides of me) that I could have easily reached out and touched them. It was amazing. They swam under my kayak, and under Dave's, and just gently bobbed up and down to get their air. It was SO cool. I tried to take some pictures, but realized almost immediately that the camera can't begin to capture this experience - the pictures are just gray stuff (which is the back of the manatees but you can't really tell), so I just put the camera away and just enjoyed the experience. It was kind of windy and a little bit cool - probably low 60's - but tomorrow is supposed to be beautiful, with no wind and temps in the low 70's. So I plan to spend almost all of the afternoon on the water, with the manatees - what a great experience!
(Just as an aside - I started an online Forensic Accounting class today, through Davenport, the third of four classes I need to take in order to teach for them. It's great that the technology allows me to take a class while on the road, but now I have to find time to read chapters, do case studies, and participate in online discussions - I hope it doesn't cut into my FUN time too much....!)

Mardi Gras and AVA

What a busy two days. Yesterday I did my first "event" with the AVA - what FUN! It was at Universal Studios in Orlando - the starting point was a Starbucks outside of the attraction, and the route took us around the outside of Universal and then into the grounds - we walked along the City Walk which goes along the waterways in the park. We walked around the grounds of the two huge hotels and past all of the bars/restaurants - Hard Rock, Margaritaville, etc. I got to Starbucks about 9:30 and ended up walking with two guys - one was named Bill - he was 72 and had been doing walks with Volksmarch for over 40 years, starting with walking in Germany when he was in the service. (I forget the others guy's name - this was his first walk too.) It took about two hours to do the whole thing, and it was a really, really pretty and interesting walk. The people at the registration tables were really nice and gave me all kinds of information and insight into doing AVA walks - they all agreed that, with our RV traveling, these walks are a perfect thing for me to do. I am SO looking forward to doing these on a regular basis (hint: I'll be reporting on my next walk later on!)

So after I got back and showered, Dave and I headed up to Leesburg, about 30 miles northwest of here. We had seen an ad for a local Mardi Gras celebration in a little hospitality magazine and decided to give it a shot - and we were SO glad we did. What fun! We got there about 4:00 - at that time, there was a band playing in a bandshell set up in front of the City Hall in Leesburg, and there were dozens of good, greasy food stands and a beer tent. We got a couple chairs, had a beer, ate some junk food, listened to the music and people-watched until 7:00. Then the PARADE started - I had assumed it would be VERY hokey but cute. But in reality it was a very nice parade - lots of floats with people throwing tons of beads, people on stilts, music and dancing girls. VERY cute! And then, after the hour-long parade, we went back to the town square and listened to the second band, which was excellent. It was a blues band named The Bobbly Blackmon band. We stayed for the first set and then decided to head back home - we got back about 10:00 (which is WAY late for us!). We had a lot of fun and would definitely come again should we find ourselves in the area in another year. We were both pretty tired when we got home - that's a BUSY day for us vacationers!

Today was another really nice day - when I got up around 9:00 it was already nice enough to open the outside door and leave it open. Not a big deal, until you realize this is the VERY first day that's been true since we left home in November! After a quick run to Walmart, Dave was planning on taking a long bike ride and then going out fishing for the afternoon. So I decided to do another AVA run! This time I did the Winter Park walk - it was less than 20 miles away and Bill (who I walked with yesterday) had said it was a really nice walk. And it was. It started at the YMCA and wound its way through the college campus, the downtown area, past the cemetery, through a VERY expensive residential area, and along the side of a couple small lakes. It was a very pretty walk - and I got another stamp in my books! I am LOVING having these walks to do and am so glad I came across this program. And what a nice day it turned out to be - I'm sitting here writing my blog and it's still over 70 degrees outside. Finally!

Nice Week at Wekiwa Springs

It IS kind of nice to be here for 10 days instead of our normal seven. Normally tomorrow would be our last full day at this park, but now we have until Wednesday - cool! We've had a nice week here - the only kind of lousy day was Tuesday - it was cool (low 50's) and quite windy, but we decided to go on a bike ride anyway. There is a bike path running through Orange County, called the West Orange Trail, and we wanted to give it a try. It crosses the main road through Apopka (SR 436) via a pretty elaborate overhead bridge - so we parked by that and headed north, but it ended after about 3 miles. So we turned around and headed back the way we came, crossed over the bridge, and then went about five or six miles further south. There was a "station" (which was really just a small local park) at that point, so we turned around there and came back - RIGHT into a pretty strong headwind. We figured we put somewhere between 16 or 18 miles on the bikes, so we were pretty proud of ourselves that we didn't just sit home and sulk about the less-than-perfect weather.

On Wednesday we just stayed in the park for the day - I went on my AVA (American Volksmarch Association) trail again and Dave tried his hand at fishing on the smaller lake on the park property (no luck!). So on Thursday we left again - this time we went to the Central Florida Zoological Park, right outside Sanford (only about 20 miles or so from here, so a quick drive). I noticed that the admission was only $8.95 so I warned Dave that this might be a pretty hokey little zoo - and I was right. But it was cute... a lot of it seems to be geared toward educating children so that's great. There were a number of little school groups being lead through the zoo by zoo employees/volunteers - it was SO cute - they all had their little clipboards and pencils and little "worksheets" so they could get answers to the tough questions like "what does THIS monkey like to do?" (answer: CLIMB). And, yes, we could ALL say the word ENRICHMENT together (that means something we don't NEED but it makes our lives better) - we think the kids were probably in the first grade - adorable. So we spent a few hours there - probably wouldn't recommend it to our friends - except they did have one thing that I thought was pretty cool! They have these "aerial adventure" routes - they consist of ropes and zip lines that you hook up to and then you follow this route through the tree tops - there are ladders and rings and logs and planks and all kinds of things you have to cross as you progress through the route. There was a little one for smaller children - mom and dad could actually walk along with the tykes and zip them in and out - it was probably only four feet off the ground. But the other two were for bigger kids and adults - one is supposed to take 1-1/2 hours and the other one is an hour. They looked like FUN - I can easily see my daughter Brenda and her girls having a RIOT doing these (not Arnie, though!). I never think of myself as too old to do anything, but somehow I wasn't thinking that having a 60 year old grandmother trying to go through the route would be a great idea!

Today was a nicer day - it was in the low 60's with thin high clouds, so we took the kayaks back out into the spring runs again. We went up the Wekiwa Spring run again, but took a left at the "fork" and went up the Rock Spring run a little ways. There was quite a strong current so we didn't go terribly far, but BOY was it pretty. For some reason the water, which is coming out of a spring about seven miles up the run, is quite "orange" in color - the water in some places almost looked RED. This was kind of strange because the water coming out of Wekiwa Springs is crystal clear. Anyway, we floated back down that run and then continued up toward the river a little ways. We got as far as we did on Monday, which was at this landing called Wekiwa Island. What a weird unusual place - but very cool! It's this "party" place right on the edge of the river - they rent kayaks and canoes, and they have a "tiki" bar and all these adirondack chairs set up along the edge of the river where people just come and drink their beer and watch people canoeing. They also have these little cabanas that you can rent - for parties, I guess - with all kinds of things - some have couches, some have TV's - one has a pool table - and they are all out in the open air except for this cabana roof. Crazy. So, of course, we pulled over and sat in the Adirondack chairs and drank a beer and watched the canoers - what else could we do? It was pretty fun! When we got back from kayaking, about 5:00, we went into the big town of Apopka and went to this sports bar called Mug Shots (cute name, huh?) - it was pretty big and turned out to be a hangout for young people - like 20 or so - with lots of video games and stuff. But there were 6 pool tables, so Dave and I played about 4 games. It was fun to shoot some pool again, but it's the strangest feeling to be the "old people" in a place like that - it's like the kids take one glance and realize we're "old" and we basically become invisible. I kind of liked it, because I felt completely comfortable playing pool with other people around - I KNEW no one was watching us! But it's a strange feeling...

So - tomorrow - Saturday - is my son's birthday (...happy birthday, Alan)
and I will be doing my first AVA "event"! There is a 10K walk in Orlando, around the Universal properties, and because it's a one-day event it will be staffed, so I can get my new walker package with my record books and get my first "official" stamp. I'm SO excited (...is this kind of weird???). I'll let you know how I do (me and the six other 75-year-old walkers)....

PS - I'm also attaching a picture of our little Olympic athlete - she is a contender in the "dash-boarding" competition and is doing SO well. It seems like each time we move from one park to the next, Vixen is getting braver and braver about sitting up on the dash board for the first few miles - it is SO cute!

Park #12-Wekiwa Springs State Park

Yesterday (Sunday) we moved from Silver River down to Wekiwa Springs. Wekiwa is about 60 miles south of Silver River, in Apopka (so, yes, we backtracked a little, which is sort of against our religion!). We kept busy the last couple days at Silver River, in spite of the fact that it never did really warm up very much - probably topped out in the upper 50's. On Friday, we went to this huge flea market - called the Marion Market (named after the county it's in). It was absolutely pouring all day, but there were still a jillion people at the market - it's under a roof, so was probably one of the only things for people to do on such a lousy day. Knowing us, nobody will be surprised that we didn't buy much - but Dave did buy a big thick yellow tow rope. The package said it was 14 feet, which is exactly what he needed to more securely tie down the front of the kayaks to the front bumper of the car. But when he went to attach it (the next day) it turned out to only be 12 feet long - so we assumed that's why it was at the flea market, and for only $5!!! (PS - made in China!) By Saturday morning it had stopped raining, so we took a trip over to Rainbow Springs State Park, just to check it out. What a nice surprise - it was SO pretty! It was a beautiful clear springs, surrounded by gorgeous landscaping - lots of flowering bushes, with some man-made waterfalls and stuff - we had no idea what this whole thing was all about (because state parks are NEVER this "fancy") - but then we found out that it actually used to be a private "attraction" back in the early part of the 1900's. They had some really cute examples of postcards and brochures from back when it was a big tourist attraction. The state of Florida ended up buying it in the 1970's (...I think, anyway) and turned it into a state park. We spent about two hours just walking around in it - it was very cool. The campground is actually located about six miles away and we somehow missed the turnoff but decided not to go back. I was disappointed that I hadn't brought my camera - but we had just intended to do a quick "check" on the park and I wasn't expecting it to be someplace we'd spend so much time at. Anyway, when we got back to our park, we went down and got the kayaks - WHAT a long haul to pull them back up to the parking lot - not sure we'd do this again, at least not without some type of cart or something for pulling them. Then we went out to Sonny's Bar-B-Que for our big Valentine's dinner - actually, we both really like this local franchise - they have EXCELLENT pulled pork and barbecued chicken. Then it was good-bye to park #11 and on to park #12.

So Sunday morning we packed up and made the 70 mile drive down here to Wekiwa. It was actually quite pleasant and very sunny, so an easy day for driving. I had some concerns about whether this was going to be a nice park, especially since we are staying here for 10 (rather than our normal 7) days. But now we think it's going to be great! The park is based around another of the beautiful springs that are so common here in central Florida (our next park is Blue Springs, and then we'll be done with springs for this trip!). There is an excellent canoe/kayak launching area and it is NOT a half-mile trip from the parking lot (which is a relief!). In fact, that's what we did today - we went out onto the springs run for about 2 to 2-1/2 hours - VERY pretty! We saw two alligators and also two otters, which are really fun to see out in the wild. Because it was President's Day (so no school) there were a LOT of kids and families out on the water. We don't mind this, of course, but we agreed that it'll be fun to go back out in a couple days when the river is a little quieter! It was actually VERY nice today - YAY - in the mid-70's and really sunny and clear until late afternoon (then it clouded over and rained just a little). In the morning (before our kayak ride) I went out for a hike on one of the trails and Dave went on an hour-and-a-half bike ride. The trails here are EXCELLENT - in fact, one of them is a Volksmarch trail so I plan to do that one and get my stamp! For anyone not familiar with this, Volksmarch is a non-profit organization that originated in Europe years and years ago and is intended to promote walking events for health and family enjoyment - there are hundreds of AVA (American Volkssport Association) walks across the county and throughout the whole world. You can either join a chapter or just walk in any of the events on your own - and you can either just walk them for free, or you can pay a small registration fee and then get a stamp to put into your record log. Once you reach a certain number of events and/or a certain number of miles, you can "trade up" to a more advanced record log, get awards and patches, etc. It's just for fun, but it kind of gives you another reason to go for walks in places you wouldn't normally go. Some of the events are date-specific, but many are year-round, i.e. the trail or route is just there and you can do it whenever you want (this is how the trail here is set up). Most of the trails are 10 kilometers, which is 6.2 miles, but many of them also have a 5K option available. Some of the walks are in places like state parks, but a lot of them are a walking route through a town or city - in fact, there was a Volksmarch event during Art Prize in Grand Rapids! I know there is a chapter in Holland and I'm seriously thinking about joining it when I get home! (Anyone interested???) So, we're looking forward to the rest of our time here and are THRILLED to see that it's supposed to get up into the 70's in a couple days and supposedly STAY there - but we'll see!

Park #11-Silver River State Park

I know no one from Michigan or Ohio will feel sorry for us, but we continue to be disappointed by the weather this year. This trip will definitely go on record as the lousiest weather year for us! We are now at Silver River State Park, which is right outside of Ocala, Fl. The park is gorgeous - just as we remembered from being here two years ago. The sites here are about the biggest sites we've ever seen - Dave thinks our site is probably almost an acre of ground - and they're really nice, with a nice level gravel pad for parking the rig. We're here from last Sunday to this Sunday. We had an easy 70 mile run up to here, from Lake Louisa, and watched the SuperBowl (after fiddling with the satellite for a while). The Saints won - YAY! Monday was still a pretty nice day - close to 70 with sunny skies. The park is right outside this Ocala National Forest, which is a huge tract of land (383,000 acres!) with numerous lakes (600 according to the brochure!). We picked a nice lake to spend the day at - Half Moon Lake. When we were here two years ago, we visited quite a few of the lakes so had a pretty good idea what to expect. The lake itself was very pretty, but we had to go forever down this long, very bumpy road to get to the boat ramp. We spent the afternoon paddling (me) and fishing (Dave), and we built a nice fire when we got back to the site since Tuesday was supposed to be rainy. And BOY were they right - it poured almost all afternoon. We kind of killed the day with running around - we took a drive up to Salt Springs, in the national forest, to check out the campground (...not!). Then we went into Ocala and picked up a bunch of movies and stopped at one of our favorite bars - the Beef O'Brady (which is a franchise down here). We sat at the bar and got talking to this nice couple who live around here. They have 14 year old twins and were a wealth of information about the local and surrounding areas - they knew a lot about the whole "nature coast" over by Crystal River and Cedar Key. We will definitely be going back there on our next trip down this way! Anyway - it was kind of fun to just sit and chat with people - we always enjoy that.

It wasn't raining on Wednesday, but it was pretty cool - like mid-50's. We ran errands - found the Toyota dealership and got the oil changed, found a petstore and got catfood and kitty litter - all kinds of fun stuff like that (...do we have an exciting life down here or WHAT?). When we got back here we dragged the kayaks down to the landing on the Silver River so we could go for a paddle on Thursday. And when I say dragged, I mean it - the landing on the river is a good half mile from the parking area. Whew! This is the only thing we don't care for about this park - there isn't an easy way to get your boats in. We could have driven down to the public launching area, but then we would have had to load the kayaks back up - plus we wanted to paddle up into the actual springs and the state park landing is the half way point (i.e. if we put in at the public launch we'd have to paddle all the way up to the state park and then about the same distance again to get into the springs). So we dragged them! Anyway - today (Thursday) we spent the whole afternoon out on the river - and it was well worth the effort. What a beautiful river - it is crystal clear and there was no wind at all (compared to yesterday). It was still cool - again in the mid-50's - so we were kind of bundled up, but what a nice paddle. It's kind of different, because the springs are in the Silver Springs Nature Preserve Park, which is a commercial park that people pay admission to get into - we did this two years ago and it was very nice. There are glass-bottomed tour boats that take people all around the springs and everything, plus there are a couple of rides and lots of animals in cages to look at. The park and the springs are quite interesting - a number of movies and TV shows were filmed here, including a bunch of the old Tarzan movies and the Sea Hunt TV shows with Lloyd Bridges (doesn't that date us???). As I said, the park is a commercial enterprise - but they don't own the actual WATER - so people can come up the river in boats and stuff and paddle around and there's nothing they can do about it. It's so weird - you're paddling around inside of this park and there are all these tour boats in the river with you, with tourists all over the place - and there you are in your litttle kayak. Kind of funny! Anyway - the springs are really beautiful, deep and clear and a gorgeous turquoise color - I'm attaching a picture and I hope some of the color comes through. And FISH - oh my God, there were hundreds and hundreds of fish and we could see them like we were sitting on top of an aquarium - SO cool! We saw lots of turtles just swimming around underneath us and all kinds of different fish, including some really big alligator gars. There were also tons of birds, but we didn't see any alligators this time - probably too cold - nor did we see any monkeys. (There is a "colony" of wild monkeys along this river - they were accidentally turned loose in the woods years and years ago and populated like crazy. When we were down here two years ago we saw dozens of them, but I think they must be downriver from where we were today). Anyway - we went out onto the river before 1:00 and didn't get back to the landing until after 5:00 - we were pretty chilly but had a wonderful afternoon. I'm proud of us that we just keep finding stuff to do even though the weather is less than ideal - we just keep reminding ourselves that we're in Florida, it is sunny, and there isn't any snow! We have a few more days here, then we move on to park #12 - unreal!

Park #10-Lake Louisa State Park

Well, it's already time to leave our 10th park. We're at Lake Louisa State Park, in Clermont. The park is about 25 miles straight west of Orlando - it was about a 100 mile drive to get here from Fort DeSoto. We got here on Wednesday and only stayed four days - normally we stay either 7 or 14 days at each park, but I had a little scheduling trouble with the next couple parks so had to piece together a slightly different pattern. Florida state parks allow you to make reservations eleven months in advance, and for some parks if you don't get your reservations in that early you're going to have trouble getting in. It's crazy! So - anyway - we were here at Lake Louisa two years ago and weren't overly fond of the park for some reason - this was when Florida was having drought conditions so the lakes here were really low and we weren't able to use the kayaks and Dave wasn't able to fish from the docks. Plus, it seemed like there were a jillion rangers just riding around and around so we had to be VERY careful about letting Foster outside without his leash on (which we sometimes were kind of "casual" about since he was SUCH a good dog). So I booked us in here as a short "filler" in between other parks - but to our surprise we have really enjoyed our time here this year! The water levels are back up, so the lakes were much nicer, and Dave had good luck with fishing. The park is really large - 4,500 acres! - and the campground is almost 3 miles back from the main entrance, so Dave was able to get in long, hard bike rides every day. Plus there are over 23 miles of trails so I got in hours of hiking (which is still weird for me without Foster, especially since I hiked a lot of the trails two years ago WITH him). There are six lakes within the park, plus lots of smaller "ponds", and there are lots of rolling hills and many different types of habitat - it is a REALLY pretty park. For some reason I didn't take any pictures - I think maybe because it's so big that there isn't a single shot that would begin to capture the "whole". The campground is also very nice - large open lots and a gorgeous bathroom (...it's amazing how you become a very critical judge of bathrooms on these trips - it's one of the first things we report back to each other on when we get into a new park). Because there were so many things to do in the park, we didn't really do any "day trips" out of the park at all, other than to drive back to Plant City today to pick up my new glasses (...I can SEE again!). One other thing happened here - there's a guy here who has a beautiful Samoyed that he walks every day (a Samoyed is virtually identical to an American Eskimo, just a little bigger). The second day I went out and asked the guy if I could pet his dog - she was a 51 pound female and was really sweet - she was five years old and just loved being petted. She stood there and leaned up against me while I petted her. I stood there for about 15 minutes, talking to the guy - he was quite nice - and of course told him about losing Foster. After about 15 minutes I found myself starting to tear up and told him that I was going to go now, and have myself a little cry. He was very sympathetic and totally understood - he actually has always had Samoyeds and his last one just died about a year ago at the age of 12. It was so nice to just crouch down and hug her and pet her, and I think it was good for me overall. I'm kind of amazed by how painful Foster's death still is for us - we lost him on January 2nd, so it's been just over a month. OK - back to the park... We had quite good weather these last four days other than it being quite windy, so we just enjoyed the heck out of being outside in the sun - I'm actually get a LITTLE bit of tan on my arms - YAY! Dave, of course, is brown as an Indian. So tomorrow (SuperBowl!) we leave this park and go about 75 miles north to Silver River State Park, another one of our favorites from two years ago. We plan to get there early in the afternoon, make a run out for junk food (which we almost NEVER do!) and then have our own two-person SuperBowl party - I'm pulling for New Orleans and Dave's for the Indianapolis Colts, so it should be fun. The next update will be from park #11 already!

Time to Leave Fort DeSoto

It's Tuesday night - tomorrow we leave for Lake Louisa. Other than somewhat disappointing weather, our stay at Fort DeSoto has been just great. We really like it here and will definitely return at some point in the future. To go back a couple days - Sunday was predicted to be kind of rainy and cooler, so we kept our plans pretty low key. There was a street Art Fair out on St. Pete's Beach so we went there in the afternoon. We had been looking for some nice wind chimes recently and ended up finding a nice set at the fair - they were hand-made (or should I say assembled?) by a woman from Minnesota. We ended up chatting with her and her husband for a little while, and after we bought the chimes she had to give us each a big hug - apparently she is a VERY "huggy" type of person! Then we stopped at a billiards hall named "Stix" and played pool for a couple of hours. This was the first time we ever played at a hall like this, and it was actually pretty fun! There were 12 tables there, and only one other one was being used, so it was nice and private.

Monday was also not supposed to be very nice, so we just hung out at the park most of the day - Dave went fishing, while I went for a nice long walk and did some reading. Later in the afternoon we went back to Billy's-on-the-Water and had dinner. It was fun to just sit there for a while and watch the sunset and chat with our waitress (who was from Flint).

Today was really fun - we went into Tampa and spent the afternoon at the Lowry Park Zoo. I kind of picked it because there was a chance of scattered rain and I thought the zoo would be a good way to spend an "iffy" afternoon - I wasn't expecting too much because I could tell the zoo was pretty old. But, boy, it was REALLY nice. And because the weather was kind of cool and overcast there were hardly any people there at all! We spent about four hours just strolling around, enjoying the exhibits. There were a number of babies, which are always fun to watch. There was an adorable baby hippo with its mother. There were elephants, giraffes, rhinos, white tigers, etc. The exhibits were pretty cool, especially the Asian and African sections. We both enjoy seeing different kinds of birds - and there was one really different bird that we didn't remember ever seeing before. Dave asked one of the attendants what it was and he told us it was a Shoebill - and that there are only about 11 or 12 of them in the country. The last section we went through was the monkeys and apes - and the last exhibit we saw was the orangutans (...not sure if that's how it's spelled!). While we were looking at the mother one, holding its little baby in her arms, a zookeeper walked by us and the mother orangutan grabbed a couple handsful of POOP and threw it at us - hard! It was pretty funny - Dave was jumping around trying to avoid it. We asked the zookeeper what THAT was all about and he said that they normally only throw stuff at the zookeepers, so we agreed that in the future we should avoid standing by one of them! On our way back to the park we agreed that this was one of the nicer zoos we've visited (and we REALLY like going to zoos) and we would definitely come back here again. On the way back, crossing over all the bridges and seeing all of the water, we kind of said "good-bye" to the Gulf - we'll be leaving early tomorrow morning and will be heading to the center of the state. It was nice to spend time in this area and on one of our next trips we'll probably try to come back here and probably spend two weeks the next time - and we'll hope for better weather the next time!