Day 10 in Tampa/St Petersburg

 

Today was a day of relaxation (once again) desperately needed with the heat & humidity.  We are at the KOA in St Petersburg, it is an enormous park, but very pretty and right on the waters of Long Bayou, with great bird life.

This afternoon our friend of 40 years, Vee and her fiance, Greg, came and fetched us to go out for an early supper.  It was a time of catching up and a bit of reminiscing.  It is always great to get together with Vee. We just take off from where we left off the last time we saw each other, it could be a year or a couple of years, but that  is how a good friendship works.

On the road again tomorrow.

Day 9 Tampa/st Petersburg

After a pleasant drive with lots of showers we arrived in a very wet st Peterburg. The weather cleared later but the humidity is a killer. We obviously forgot what Durban was like in summer...

Day 8 Travel to Lake City Campground

We had a pleasant 250 Mile trip that started in heavy rain but eased later. 215 Miles on the excellent I10 interstate, great road system... Now for a beer or 2...

Day 7 Paradise Lost

And the seagull's name was Nelson.... We woke to the steady patter of rain on the roof so a sleep-in was called for.. While drizzling we made a trip to the local Walmart to restock our dwindling supplies before we embark on the next leg of our journey. This afternoon when the sun reappeared we decided to take our final dip in the Gulf of Mexico. Well this calm water had turned into a monster... not so pleasant. Tthat's all folks until next time, cheers.

Day 6 Another day in paradise

Morning and afternoon swims in the bay.....

Day 5 Glorious day at Topsail

Today can only be described as a glorious day.  Henry assured us that this resort was fantastic, well he wasn't wrong.  Henry, it is everything you said it would be and more.  We had our morning walk to the beach.  I didn't know beaches like this still existed, white, white sand, not crowded with people and very calm water.  We took the tram back to camp and after doing some necessary housework, we caught the tram back to the beach for an afternoon swim.  Dirk is not normally the one for swimming, but today he thoroughly enjoyed his swim, even he was surprised.

The "tram" is a trailer with seating pulled by a small truck.  It leaves on the hour, every hour from 9.00 am to 6.00 pm  this is for folks like us who do not ride bikes or are too lazy to walk.  Walking during the day is not fun with the Florida heat and humidity.  The people that come her regularly have got themselves really organised.  You will see the whole family going to the beach on bicycles, Mom, children and Dad bring up the rear, pulling a cart behind the bike with all the necessary towels, drinks etc for a morning on the beach.

The picture of the beer cans on the pavement, was apparently someone who lost his cooler box off the back of the tram.  They were all lying in the middle of the road when we got there, Dirk did his good deed for the day and moved them onto the curb.  Someone else came up from the beach and loaded them into his cool box.

Luckily we have a few more days here before moving on, so we will definitely be doing more exploring and swimming.

Day 4 Topsail Hill Preserve

I must start off by apologizing for the delay in posting Day 4's blog on Day 5. Will explain later.

As you can see by the Track log we did our longest journey of this trip so far.  We left Birmingham at 8.20am, taking the advice of Henry who has traveled this road before and arrived at Topsail Hill Reserve at about 3.00 pm, that was after making the obligatory stop at Walmart on the way.

Topsail is a Florida State park, with all the necessary requirements to make our stay comfortable.  It is a beach park, as yet we still have to get to the beach, more of that later. The thought did cross my mind that if ever we go missing on our journeys, our credit card should be checked to see which was the last Walmart we stopped at..... it seems that we have to stop at, at least one Walmart per day.

The journey was quite uneventful, except for the continuous discussion between 2 GPS' , 2 occupants and trying to remember what Henry told us during casual discussions before we left, about the best road to take.  The bridge over the waterway to get to the beach front area was quite spectacular, see the pictures.

Talking about pictures, that is the reason this blog is late.  Dirk's main lens stopped working yesterday, so after supper of 2 delicious fillets done on the fire, a couple of beers and the usual Red Wine, he decided to repair the lens(Google is your friend). Photo describes it all. There were a couple of tense hours but the end result was a successful repair, as the last pic shows. The mad scientist does it again!!!

We are in this camp until Monday morning, so we are now off to explore the beach.