Upper Tampa Bay Park

Wesley Chapel, Florida (high 89, low 73)

We got up, and out the door early yesterday morning.  The county was offering free shredding of important paperwork, .  We felt it was a good time to get rid of some old tax records.  

It was efficient and very fast….maybe a little too fast.  We drove up to the designated place and before we knew it someone was opening the car, pulling out stuff!  

Hey….leave my stuff alone!!!

You full timers out there know that our cars are used as “garages” and are usually full of important stuff!

It’s a good thing there wasn’t anything valuable in the back seat of the Honda,  or it would have been gone.  I wasn’t real happy about that, but I guess they were trying to get a lot of people through the line in a hurry. 

The local tv stations were there and were filming as Al jumped out of the car to rescue any valuables we didn’t want shredded.  I had the door open and probably had a look of terror on my face as they started yanking stuff out of the car the minute we stopped.

We watched the news last night and fortunately didn’t see ourselves….but we did see our stuff!   We recognized the big green tub we brought!   The rest of the footage is likely on the cutting room floor.

 

After the shredding project, we decided to head down to the Upper Tampa Bay Park.   It’s a nice park on Tampa Bay.

We had been there years ago, but  it’s changed a lot since then.

The local residents of this area fought a long, hard battle to keep progress from the beautiful wetland area.  It appears they lost, as this is what we saw on the road leading to the park.

This is a huge hole in the ground.  We think maybe an apartment complex is being built.  It used to be a beautiful tree filled area, full of wildlife.  I wonder what happened to all the animals?

They have made a lot of improvements to the park since we were there last, adding trails, kayak  launch, picnic areas and a nature center.

Along the main road I spotted something interesting.

The bird house looked strange.

Once we got closer and checked it out, we found it was full of Honeybees.

I hope there were no baby birds inside when they started to build this hive.

Al (the bug man) warned me to be careful photographing this hive because they could be “Africanized” and dangerous.   They didn’t seem bothered by me, and of course I used my “stalker” zoom to capture the close ups.  Many people don’t like bees, but they are a very important part of food growth.

It was pretty interesting.

We did a short hike on the Eagle Trail.

You can’t go too far because it ends here.

There were a few small boats out fishing in the bay water.

There is a nice kayak launch also.

There are nice mangroves for fishing, but you really have to watch the mosquitos.

We visited the Nature center where you could learn a lot about the area.  There were some aquariums there with all sorts of local marine life.

We have seen all these things a million times, so it wasn’t of too much interest to us, but it was a very nice center.

On the way home, we passed by this beautiful large house.  In the driveway was this truck.

I saw it…and didn’t believe what I saw, so I made Al back up so that I could get a picture.

Here is what what I saw on the truck sitting in the driveway of this extremely nice house.

I guess business is good.

 

Kind of tacky, huh?

We went back home and were lazy the rest of the day.  About 7:30 last night he gets a call from a very good customer, and friend.  It seems his elderly mother claimed she had “clumps” of fleas all over her house.   So……off we went to spray her house.     I went with him to keep him company.    He wasn’t in the best mood having to do this, but she is elderly and fortunately doesn’t live too far away.    grrrrr.   He didn’t see any fleas.

The good thing, is the granddaughter Jaime, gave us a dozen fresh eggs from her chickens.  A few of them are a light green!

I finally got some photos of the campground and I’ll try to get them posted tomorrow.