March 19 - Tues. Happy Birthday Richard!

Yes today is Richard's birthday. After a rain storm last night, this morning was overcast. We decided to take a ride to the Everglades. It was not what we expected there is a highway right through it. There was a place that was giving airboat rides through the Everglades, but the next boat was leaving in about 1/2hr and the sky was clouding up again. So we decided not to go. We started back to the campsite which was about 2 hrs away. We had planned to go out to supper for Richard's birthday. Several people had told us about a restaurant with great baby-back ribs not far from the campsite. Well they were right! The ribs were delicious, fell right off the bone and had a great sauce. The service was great also, very friendly. It was not a chain,but a family owned restaurant. I told the waitress, we were celebrating Richard's B/D and they came over to our table & sang Happy Birthday (ha -ha ) & the owner brought over cookies & cream ice-cream with a lit candle. After we got back to the RV, we took a 2mile bike ride ( to work off our delicious meal!)

March 18 - Mon.

Where oh where is sunny Florida??? The day started out a little overcast, but we decided to go to the beach anyway in hopes that the sun will come out by afternoon. We went to Lovers Key State Park to the beach which had the trolley from the parking lot down to the beach. Well the sun did come out for a couple of hours, then it started to cloud up. A lot of people on the beach started to pack up and head for the trolley, as did we. By the time we got to the car and started out of the park, it started pouring. At least we had a little peek of the sun for about two hrs. I relaxed and watched the waves and Richard found 21cents with his metal detecting, and got in a little nap. It pretty much rained for the rest of the afternoon and evening. We have been in FL for over a mt now and the weather certainly has not been warm & sunny very often! Oh we'll, maybe the next six weeks it will warm up! We have been enjoying ourselves anyway, but we really like beach time.

March 16 & 17 - Sat & Sun.

Sat was "lazy" day. We stayed around the campsite. Laundry had to be done - what fun! It would have been a good "beach day" it was a warm,sunny day, but being that we were down to our our last towel & underwear, laundry took priority. Afterward we took a ride around the surrounding area. We were sightseeing &talking and Richard looked at the gas gauge &we were almost on empty. We were out in the "boonies" & I remembered that I heard a ding a while back , but I thought it was on the IPad which we had with us. Actually we realized it must have been the gas warning light. There was nothing but forest around us. We were getting a little nervous ( I was a lot nervous!) Richard was trying to save gas by accelerating & coasting. We finally came to a town and saw a gas station, just in time! Our car has a 12gal tank &it took 11.71 gals!!! I guess the Praying I was doing paid off!!! We went to 5:00 mass and came back &had a cookout.

Sun. Happy St Paddy's Day! The morning we spent grocery shopping for supplies. There was a NASCAR race on t.v., so of course Richard had to watch it! I sat outside relaxing, reading, and watching the boats go by on the water, some large ones.The church we were going to, which is just a small, but very pretty church was having a corned beef / cabbage supper, so we had planned to go. It was a super delicious meal with strawberry shortcake for dessert! Yummy!! The people we were sitting by were very friendly, &made us feel welcome.

March 13,14,15 - Wed,Thurs,Fri

Wed & Thurs were twin days as far as weather goes. It was chilly & very windy. We'd we decided to do some sight seeing. We checked out some other campgrounds we saw (but it's hard to beat the one we are at now) We also found some other beaches. Besides the more popular beaches, FL has a lot of other beaches. Parking was great by the beaches because of the weather, they were pretty empty. On a warm day I'm sure the lots are full, you have to get there early to get a close spot. The closest beach to our campsite is about 1 1/2 hrs away in Naples and Bonita Vista.

Thurs we packed a lunch and took a ride to St Lucie where one of our reserved sites is. We found that there are several beaches about 1/2 hr from that site. One that we went to is in Stuart called if I remember, Jenson beach. It is in a very nice neighborhood. The parking lot is close to the walkway to the beach. Again because of the weather we got a close spot. We walked to the beach but it was extremely windy, the waves were very strong. We ate our lunch by our car in the parking lot where the wind wasn't as strong. We talked to a couple from New York, but also have a home here in Palm City. They gave us a lot of information. We were about 3hrs from our RV, so we had a long drive. On the way at a wayside in Moore Haven, Richard spotted an old style generating compressor, so of course we had to stop so he could examine it (see pic).

Friday was a great day! We finally got a warm day for the beach! We decided to go back to the one that had the tram ride from the parking lot. It is in Lover's Key State Park. I enjoyed sitting and soaking up the sun and Richard did his metal detecting. He fine today was $1.68, a zipper, a bolt and a fish hook!

M arch 12 - Tues.

Today was a chilly, rainy day. Definitely not a beach day! We decided to take a ride to Marco island. Along the way we stopped at a huge market we heard about called Sun Harvest Citrus. They had a window where you could watch how they process the oranges to make orange juice. Besides the usual o.j., they had several other varieties of o.j. And free samples of each. The cranberry/orange & strawberry/ orange were delicious. There was specialty wines,honey,etc. and a wonderful bakery. They also had ice-cream. Richard had a vanilla/orange cone & I had chocolate/key lime, yummy!! While we were sitting eating our cones we talked to a lady who lived in the area. She told us about Wiggins Park where there was a nice sand beach. So, of course we had to go check it out. It was nice, we are going to go there the next warm day ( whenever that is!) we made it to Marco island. And that certainly is my kind of area. It had beautiful homes & motels. The public beach had a parking lot with a boardwalk to the beach (distance about a block) it was raining so we didn't walk it. We saw an RV park not far from there, so we stopped to inquire. Boy did we get a shock, the sites were $60.00 a day!! ( a little, rather A LOT out of our price range!) we usually pay $11 - $20 a day. But as pretty as the area was, we decided it would be too far to drive there every day from our campsite & too far for us "seniors" to lug all our beach gear from the parking lot. We did a lot of driving today. We put over two hundred miles on our car!

March 8 - 11 - Fri - Mon.

Fri - We arrived at our next site, Ortuna campground in LaBelle, Fł. It is a super nice campground, extremely well maintained. It is a Core of Enginers park, and their parks are usually kept up very well and are almost always by water. Our site is concrete, which is great for keeping the RV level & it is right next to the waterway by the locks. So we see a lot of pleasure boats going by. It is a good thing we had reservations, because the park is filled. We spent Sat & Sun getting familiar with the area since we will be here 2weeks. We found a church and went to Sat evening mass. The one draw-back to this park is that it is out in the "boonies" the nearest town to LaBelle (which is very small) is Clewston which is also very small.

Mon. - It was a very nice morning, clear blue sky, about low 70's we decided to check out some beaches. We drove to Ft Myers about 1hr away. Well it is spring break &the traffic was terrible! We knew we would never get a close parking spot and there were people EVERWHERE!! In the area near the beach. That is not for us, Ft Myers for all it's hype did not impress us. So we went a little farther south to Sanibel Island which we also heard a lot about. Parking also is terrible, but there were areas along the beach road where you can park right by the water, which we did. We put down our chairs and had the lunch we packed, but it was more of a fishing beach. Sooooooo, we got back in the car and headed to Bonita Beach but we were told it was more of a shell beach than sand beach but were told "Lover's Key state park" had a sand beach. Soooooo off we went again! From the parking lot they had a free tram which took you to the beach which otherwise was about a half mile walk. Needless to say we took the tram, but it was already about 3:30 and the last tram from the beach was 4:30, so we had about 45min to spend on the beach (because we were not about to walk back to the parking lot) it was a nice sand/shell beach. I sat and enjoyed watching the waves &Richard did some metal detecting. He found 42 cents! It was an interesting day!

THurs.

Today is our last day at the "J&J Resort". The morning was spent doing "fun" things like laundry, and cleaning. Even an RV needs housecleaning. Then some grocery shopping to stock up the RV. RIchard checked the tires on the RV and made sure everything was set for the drive tomorrow. We were going to go for a boat ride, but it still was chilly, so we decided to go for a bike ride around the lake. Then we played a rousing game of croquet. They have a huge backyard, so it was a distance between loops. It was fun and of course Richard won. We had another delicious last meal of chicken & rice. Jan had made an angel food cake for dessert. It looked great when she took it out of the oven, but when we got back from our bike ride the cake had cooled and flopped! We had a good laugh at that. But she salvaged it by making it into a delicious dessert with strawberries &cool whip. We ended the evening with a game of spades which Jack won. We had a great 4days with Jack & Jan and we thank them for their hospitality.