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!