Not a Good Start to Our Day

Zephyrhills, Florida

The plan yesterday, was to leave Fort Myers by 9:00 am in order to get home in plenty of time for Al to watch the Bucs play at 1:00 pm. 

While I was running the engine to air up the airbags, Baxter decided to sit on the steering wheel, which is one of his favorite places.  Of course with the engine running, the horn was working and he managed to toot the horn a few times before I could get to him.  I moved the wheel to the drive position, but he got right back up there, and blared the horn again!  Wake up Fort Myers!

We had gotten most everything done the day before so we were right on schedule……until….

Al was disconnecting the sewer hose and raised up and hit his head on the slide out.  He got a 3/4 inch long cut on his head and it bled a good bit.  That darn slide out is dangerous.  We decided he would live, so we got back to work. 

We pulled out and parked on the road right outside the campground to hook up the toad and discovered a problem with the locking mechanism for the bike rack.  We needed to remove the lock.  Long story, short, it took a while but we got the lock off, then discovered we couldn’t get the bar back into the hole that secures the bike rack.  We fought with it a while before deciding a trip to Depot would be in order.

But during our struggles trying to get the lock undone, I heard Al say (in a very serious voice), “Karen, don’t move.”  Of course I knew that meant frog alert, and I moved!   I came face to face with a small tree frog, which sent me screaming like a girl, and running away.

Al caught the frog very  quickly, and took it into the woods to release it.  When he went into the woods, he must have frightened a small bunny, and that bunny headed out right towards me.  I was still in fright mode from the frog and the cute little bunny scared me for a moment until I realized what it was.  Off  I went screaming again! 

We finally got on the road about 11:30 and had a short and uneventful trip back to our winter home base near Tampa. 

We were a bit worried about getting the rig back into the campsite.   When we got there a month ago, we were able to pull in forward by going through the site behind us.  Fortunately, the site behind us was still vacant and we pulled right in again.  If that site had been occupied, we would have had to back down the street and back into the site, which has a fence to our right side.  It will be a little tricky and I’m sure that is what we’ll have to do next month, when we get back from the Keys. 

So, we’re settled back in for two weeks until we’re off to the Keys.  Al got to watch end end of the Bucs game, and they lost! 

When we go to the Keys after Christmas, we’re  going to split the trip up and stay a night a little over half way down.  Can anybody recommend a campground in south Florida on either Highway 41, or I-75  (alligator alley)?  There are a few that don’t allow reservations.  We prefer to have a reservation so that we know we’ll have a place to stay.  Once you hit Key Largo, the driving gets a little slow and we want to be fresh when driving through the Keys.   Plus, it’s so pretty traveling on the “overseas highway”, that we want to be able to enjoy the view.  There aren’t too many campgrounds that far south, so any suggestions will be appreciated.

 

the Overseas Highway

We haven’t been to the Keys for years and we’re really looking forward to the drive.  We’ve should have a really good view from the motor home.