A Good Day to Relax

 

Wesley Chapel, Florida  (high 74, low 40)

We had a wonderful Christmas with my Mom and brother. Mom made her special home made pizza for our traditional Christmas Eve dinner.  We modified it to make it almost vegan.  We did sprinkle on a bit of cheese, but no pepperoni. On Christmas Day she made a beef roast.  We had beef for the first time in five months.  We didn’t figure it would kill us.

We decided against an early morning Christmas day trip to the beach and instead did a 4 mile hike at Hillsborough River State Park later that morning.  I guess the Christmas beach tradition was more enjoyable when we lived in Georgia and didn’t get to the beach as much.  We just couldn’t muster the energy to get out of bed early and go.

Today, it looks like it  will be raining most of the day, so it looks like we’re staying home and starting this season of Homeland.  That’s a really good series on Showtime if anyone is looking for something good to watch.  My brother put both seasons on a flash drive for us, so we’re can watch as much or as little as we like and on our schedule.  A few other really great series we enjoy are: Breaking Bad, Dexter, Walking Dead, and Boardwalk Empire.  A lot of these can be found at your local library.

The past few days have been just loads of fun.

First, we had to take our kitty Chatty to the vet on Thursday morning.  He had been throwing up most of the night.  I had big plans for the next two days and didn’t want to deal with any major issues for a while.  The vet didn’t really find anything wrong with him and he seems to be doing better now.  We’re wondering if it was because we’d given him some roast beef the night before.

Yesterday, we finally finished up the last of our medical tests.  For years I had been procrastinating getting a colonoscopy and finally got that done yesterday.   I’m happy to say I passed with flying colors.   I used the Miralax prep mixed with Crystal Light lemonade flavored mix. I have a problem drinking anything medicinal, so I was a tad worried about getting all 64 ounces of the solution down. It tasted like lemonade, and wasn’t loaded with sugar making me sick on an empty stomach.  I’m putting this in the blog so I can remember next time, in 7-10 years when I have to have another one.  I’m going to try to be better next time and do it when it’s expected.  I had visions of them finding something that totally could have been prevented.  I think that would be hard to deal with.

I had never had any surgery or anesthetic, before, so I was a bit nervous about the whole thing, but I have to say being put under was lovely!  I had a couple nice dreams and a really good nap.

When we got home,  I made Al fix my lunch, clean up the mess afterwards, and generally wait on me hand and foot all the rest of the day.  He complained a bit saying it was only a colonoscopy, not major surgery.  I reminded him how many times I’ve taken care of him after surgeries, so he owed me.  He shut up and went to work.  :)  I spent most of the afternoon watching tv/napping. I don’t know if it was missing most of the previous two nights sleep, or due to the anesthesia, but I was really sleepy all day.

Warm up

 

Wesley Chapel, Florida (high 73, low 53)

Hopefully, our cold front is over.  Two cold nights with below freezing temperatures were enough for me.  Saturday  night, the temperature dropped below freezing before 8pm and stayed below freezing all night long. 

Before we went to bed on the coldest night, we set the furnace to kick on when it got down to 55, turned on the electric blankets and were nice and toasty.  We have a little space heater that works quite well, but I am not about to let it run overnight when I’m not keeping an eye on it.  I don’t want to wake up and see a cat standing on a a heater like the Ducks did  here. 

 

In keeping with our motto, of put off for tomorrow what you can do today, we started Christmas shopping Friday.  We don’t buy each other much anymore.  We buy what we want all year long, so we cool it for Christmas.  We just have to pick up a few things for Mom and my brother, but it still takes some time.

Yesterday was spent wrapping presents and getting ready for Christmas, including coloring my hair for the first time in ages.

Today, we have a few more things to  pick up and some errands to run.  We open presents on Christmas eve, along with our traditional home made pizza that Mom makes.  She may be getting older, but she still hasn’t lost her touch on making pizza.

We’re planning on getting up early and making our traditional run to the beach on Christmas morning.   We didn’t get to do it last year because we were leaving for the Keys the day after Christmas.  It’s always nice to be at the beach in the early morning.

Baxter has been an extremely bad boy lately, and I’m not sure Santa is bringing him anything.

First, every morning he  runs in the bedroom, (usually about 5: am) jumps on the dresser and  then scratches on the window shades.  It’s just a quick scratch, and just a game for attention.  He gets sprayed with water,  jumps down, runs off,  and does it again in a minute.  This continues a dozen or so times until we finally get up.  Al has started arming himself with a pistil grip sprayer filled with water and they play a game on who’s faster.  He tries to get on the dresser, do a quick scratch and jump down before Al shoots him.  He usually is soaking wet by the time we get up.  I have to admit, we end up laughing by the time it’s over.

Yesterday, Baxter got “dirty pants” after a visit to the kitty pan.  He has long bloomers and sometimes “stuff” sticks.  He was extremely upset at his predicament, and was doing the kitty version of the moon walk, trying to remove the offending turd.  Thank goodness we have no carpet.    I try to keep him trimmed back there but he is a holy terror trying to trim mats or excess hair.   He is so big and strong that it’s a real challenge.  I had to enlist Al’s help and between the two of us, we still had a devil of a time.  After being scolded a few times, we were finally able to clip and clean off the mess.  He was one po’d cat…and mama wasn’t too happy either!   I seriously considered throwing him in his cage and letting him deal with it himself.   He has a mat on his chest that I really need to cut off, but I need to regain my strength and save that for another day.  Maybe I need kitty drugs!

Merry Christmas to you all.  I hope Santa brings you everything you want  and you enjoy the holiday.  I know he already brought Rick and Paulette what they wanted!

Time to Head South?

 

Wesley Chapel, Florida  (low 27, high 63)

The predicted cold front arrived in Florida yesterday.  We are a little bit north of Tampa, so it’s a bit colder than in Tampa.

In anticipation of the cold weather, we went to the storage shed yesterday and got the electric blankets.  We have one for the bed and the one for the couch (for the kitties).  Yeah, I know they have fur coats, but you should see how pitiful they look when it gets cold.  Hey…they’re Florida kitties!

We were certainly glad we had the electric blankets last night because sometime around 4am, I heard the living room heat pump making an unusual noise.  I got up to investigate and soon it was making a terrible racket and then it shut down.  Uh-oh.  No fan, no noise, nothing. 

We have never been in this motor home when it got that cold and we didn’t know exactly what temperature the heat pump quit.  We had seen it work when it was 37 degrees.

We turned off the front heat pump and switched on the bedroom one.  It ran fine, but no heat came out.  The fan worked fine and it didn’t make any noise.  We didn’t leave it on long because we can’t stand either the a/c or the heat cycling on and off right over our heads.  It wasn’t warm anyway, so it didn’t matter.

We decided to start up the furnace for a little while and make sure it worked.  It was the first time we’ve used it, and it worked fine.  The airflow was so powerful that it was extremely noisy.  Merikay made a comment yesterday that she and Craig preferred their furnace to the heat pumps because of the noise, but ours was the opposite.  It warmed up the house in just minutes though.

We shut it down, cranked up the electric blankets another notch, covered up the kitties and snuggled back in bed.  

We have a thermometer with an outside sensor.  Here is what it read somewhere after 5am.  

Mr. Baxter is the furriest cat I’ve even seen, and he never gets chilly….until last night.

Here he is laying on top of our bed on the electric blanket.  He still looked cold, so I covered him up….and there he stayed.

We decided to stay under the covers until the outside temp got up to 35 degrees. 

Once we got up, we opened the shades to let some of that wonderful Florida sunshine warm us up.   We should have one more cold night and then it’s going to warm back up.  Thank goodness.  I had forgotten, but I HATE cold weather. 

We  decided to turn on the front heat pump and see what happened.  It ran fine, put out plenty of heat and was quiet.  I guess the loud racket it made last night was it struggling to keep working in the very cold weather?    It worries me though because the bedroom one didn’t make that noise when we turned it on for a few minutes when the temperature was very low.

Yesterday we started our Christmas shopping.  Yeah, yeah I know….we’re late!   Guess what we’re doing today?

Cold Front

 

Wesley Chapel, Florida (high 80, low 50)

 

The coldest weather of the season is predicted to arrive in Florida tomorrow night.  They are saying we could get into the high 20’s to low 30’s.  brrrrr

We have never needed to use the furnace on this coach. So far our heat pump has done a wonderful job even with temps down into the upper 30’s.  We know it won’t work when the temps get too low, so we need to make sure we don’t run out of propane.

Several years ago, we bought an “extend a stay” propane kit for use on the old motor home.  It allows you to attach a spare propane tank to your system via a connection.  Since the propane tank on a motor home  is not removable, you have to pack up and move in order to fill your propane tank.  That’s a bit of pain, so this extend a stay kit will allow you to attach another propane tank and run off of that. When the extra tank is empty, you can easily get that filled and save the onboard propane for a back up.  If you have to run your propane furnace, the you burn up a lot of propane.

It looks something like this when attached.

and like this when you get it. Sorry for the grainy pictures.  I borrowed them from the internet.

Hopefully, Al can find our old extend a stay kit.  I’m hoping he remembered to remove it from the old motor home.  

 

Computer:

I ended up getting a Samsung laptop.  It has the i5 processor like Rick advised.  It has 6gb memory and 750 hard drive (if I remember correctly)  It also has a numeric keypad, which was something I had to have.

Rick gave me some suggestions on what to look for and recommended a Dell computer.  I really wanted to get a Dell, but I couldn’t find one with the numeric keypad,with the right processor and  right memory, and with a 15.6 inch screen.  Plus it would have been two weeks arriving.  I really can’t  be without a laptop that long.

So….I decided to look at Sam’s Club.  Since my previous laptop lasted just over a year, I wanted to buy an extended warranty this time.  I remembered Sam’s Club offers reasonably priced extended warranties, and I felt they would probably still be in business a few years down the road, as opposed to some of these electronics stores that are dropping all the time.

Anyway…. Samsung was not my first choice, but I understand the main components are all made by the same companies anyway, so hopefully it will be okay. One thing I really like is that it has a matte finish display. You can rarely find the matte screens anymore,  and since we live in a motor home with lots of windows, there is always glare.  I also like to take my laptop outside where there is even more glare.  A matte finish works well for me.

I paid $499 for the laptop and $39.85 for a 3 year extended warranty.  Since we’re “plus” members, we get an additional year warranty.  I hope this will take care of me  for a few years.  It’s a real pain setting up a new laptop how you had your old one.

Right now, I am dealing with Windows Live Writer.  I always write my blog on Live Writer and since I’ve installed it to the new laptop, it’s not right.  It doesn’t look right.  The icons are not where they were.  I can’t find the little gadget that asked me what size of a picture I wanted.  My word count thingy is gone.   What’s a girl to do?   Oh….where is my smiley face thingy?    Crap!

I hope the blog will post.

Windows 8

Rick likes the new Windows 8 operating system, so I decided to give it a try.  Actually, I decided to give it a try also because that’s about all you find out there.  I was prepared to have a big learning curve….and I did.    There is no start button.  You have to figure out how to get the “charms” to appear in order to find a button that will eventually allow you to do a shut down.  It’s not where I would expect it to be either, so that’s a pain.  You can go back to a version of your old screen, but still there is no start button. 

There are a few other things I’m missing as well, but I guess I’ll get used to it.  I understand there are some really great things about Windows 8 under the hood, but so far I am not a fan.

Catch Up

 

Wesley Chapel, Florida  (high 80, low 61)

When we left the Keys, our plan was to spend 2 nights in Naples,at Collier Seminole State park.  The weather in Florida made us change our mind and extend our stay two additional days.  There was some really ugly weather in central Florida and even a few tornados and we saw no sense traveling or arriving in that.

As it turned out, there was another big storm front in the Naples area and we got some heavy rain for two days.  Of course all that rain gave our site number 116 some nice dirt and mud.  When we finally got outside, we discovered our power pedestal was in a foot of water.

After the 3rd night and the weather still iffy, so we decided to stay one more night.  Unfortunately our site was booked for that last night, so we had to move. 

The good news on that move was that we went to site number 89, which was a real nice long pull through site.  We had wonderful privacy and nice views out our windows.  The site was much drier as well, so less dirt being tracked in.

The bad news, was that it was on a real curvy loop of the campground that we were going to have to navigate when we left.  We also had two palm trees right by the front end that we had to negotiate when we pulled forward and made a sharp left turn.  Karen, the worrier, spent 24 hours worrying if we were going to be able to first get out of the site with the two palm trees in front, and second, negotiate the curvy roads.

Al thought we were going to be fine, but I even got him a little worried.  I can’t help it.  I’m a worrier.  Of course I was already worried about the weather, so it was not a fun few days.

Anyway, we got out of the campsite fine, following “Barney at Lazy Days” method.

The curvy campground road with trees and site markers on each side was another story.  There were obstacles on both side of the curvy road and we didn’t go far enough to the right due to some campsite number signs and, we ended up  stuck between a rock and a hard place.   A palm tree was touching the awning slide topper (no damage)  and we had a site number sign right outside our back bumper.  Uh oh.

Al got out and looked at the situation and went right over and pulled up the offending site marker.  No problem.  He then turned the wheel the opposite way to get away from the palm tree and then maneuvered a bit and got out safely.  (not before removing another site number sign though)   Once we got out, he put the signs back in their places and we were off.

I’m not sure we’ll go back there again.  We had two days of rain, and once that quit the trails were muddy, so we didn’t really get to enjoy any of the park amenities.  There are some nice trails and even a kayak trail, but we didn’t get much exploring in.  We never saw any bear or panther.

There are two separate loops.  The one we were in has a section they call motorhome row, which was where we started at site 116.  It’s fine for a night on the way, but the sites are not private and mostly not level.  There is another loop that had mostly tents.  The ranger never even mentioned those sites.  There were some very nice sites there and the main road was less curvy and probably easier to negotiate than the one we went on.

I took a few pictures mainly for Sherry and David.  Nice, big sites with lots of privacy.

site 17

Site 2

 

Once we finally got out of the campground loop, we had a safe trip back to Tampa and arrived at our site at Quail Run.  Oh, was it nice to be level and on a concrete (no mud) slab.

On the way back to Tampa, my 12 1/2 month old laptop died.  Of course it had a one year warranty. The consensus is a motherboard failure and not worth the cost to repair.

With a little help from our friend Rick, I went laptop shopping yesterday and got another machine.  Unfortunately, I’m having to add all my programs to this one and it appears the Live Writer program I use for my blog isn’t set up like it was.  My new laptop has Windows 8 installed and I can say right now, I a not a fan.  It will be nice for the new touch screen systems, but mine is not a touch screen and I hate hunting for everything I need.  grrrr

Collier Seminole State Park

Naples, Florida  (high 84, low 70)

After leaving the Keys, we arrived Sunday afternoon at Collier Seminole  State Park.  It’s on the southern gulf coast of Florida and right off of highway 41.

We arrived at Collier Seminole  without making any reservations. That’s not always the wisest thing to do in Florida in winter, but I had checked Reserve America the day before and saw that they had plenty of longer sites.

We drove through the campground and finally chose site 116.  Once we got into it, we realized it wasn’t very level.  We’ve learned it’s a lot harder leveling a 41 foot motor home than it was to level our 32 footer.  What looks level to they eye, isn’t always level to the motor home.  We decided to live with it, and since our satellite signal locked right on, Al was happy.  He was itching to watch the second half of the Bucs football game.  Unfortunately, they lost.

The initial plan was to spend two nights here, before heading back to the Tampa area.

We wanted to do some hiking and see if we could spot either the Florida Panther or Black bear that live in this area.  We haven’t had any luck with finding either animal. 

Monday morning, we did some hiking in the park, but it was so foggy it was hard to see much of anything.   That afternoon, there were some scattered showers, so we decided to go down to  Marco Island.

We have always wanted to visit Marco Island, because it’s supposed to be a beautiful place.  We were very disappointed.  It would probably have been a wonderful place, years ago,before they filled it in with concrete.  Now, all we saw were  row after row of high rise condo’s.  There was very little of anything natural left.  Even though it is an island, we only saw the water one time, and then it was just a dirty marina.  They built the condo’s so close together (to keep the rif-raf out, I guess)  that you would never have known there was an ocean right there.  We will not go back to Marco Island.

However…..we did find a very nice Beall’s Outlet and managed to pick up some shorts and shirts for both of us, and at very reasonable prices.

We got back to the motorhome and it started to rain.  There is a big weather front forming out in the Gulf and feeding on the warm gulf waters. It just keeps coming, and coming.   It rained pretty hard at times all night long and this morning we had some pretty loud and scary thunder.  I am a real coward when it comes to bad weather.   There is  no way I can sleep when the weather is bad, so I was up most of the night listing to weather alerts and watching the radar on my Droid phone app.   I was afraid there would be some tornados’ spun up from the storm, so I was worried about that.    I did hear there were some tornados in Tampa and the Daytona Beach area, so we were glad we didn’t try to get back to Tampa yesterday.

The rain stopped mid morning , Tuesday, and we finally got outside to survey the damage.  There were a lot of very wet sites and one poor group of Amish people had been in a tent site in what looked like a lake.  The poor people were wringing out all their stuff and moving to another site which was on a little higher ground.   

We decided to extend our stay here until the two weather fronts make their way through Florida. It looks like it won’t be safe to leave until Thursday, so we extended our stay two more nights. 

Unfortunately, our current site is taken for Wednesday night, so we’re moving to site 89 tomorrow. It’s a pull through site, so it should be a quick move.

No one ever said living full time in an Rv is always fun, and this has definitely not been our best few days.

Leaving the Florida Keys

Naples, Florida (high 83, low 68)

We were hoping to get in one more day of kayaking on our last day in the Keys, but when we woke up, we could tell it wasn’t going to happen.  There were patches of rain forming all around us.

Soon, this was the view from our windows.

It didn’t rain all day.  There were patches of sun, then two minutes later it would rain.

On to plan B.

We took a drive to Marathon for a few groceries and then checked out one of the places to view the Christmas boat parade that was to be that night.

We saw this pretty bougainvillea bush that was framing the garage. 

Since kayaking was out, we did some sightseeing and ended up heading back down towards Big Pine Key. 

In the Keys, a lot of motorcyclist and bicyclists ride the Overseas Highway, which can be up to 100 miles.   On the week-ends especially you will see lots of bicycles and often in large groups. We saw quite a few of them on Saturday, despite the patchy rain.

This was the first time we’ve seen a unicycle before.  Do you think this guy rode the unicycle all the way from Key Largo?

Not too long after we saw the unicycle, it looked like this.

It rained so hard that as soon as we got off of the bridge, we pulled over until the storm passed.  We sure felt sorry for all the bicyclists.

Five minutes later the weather cleared up, so we went over to Bahia Honda state park.

A few lucky people got some lovely waterfront campsites.

We walked up on the old Bahia Honda bridge. It was built over the old railroad that was built in the early 1900’s.

 

We had some lovely views from the top.

 

When we went back home, we expected the campground to have been flooded from all the rain, but apparently, we didn’t get any rain in Sunshine Key.

On our last night in the Keys (for a while) we didn’t know if we should go back to the Sunset Grill  or go up the way and watch the lighted Christmas boat parade.

We ended up back at the Sunset and got lucky to see the boats preparing to go to the parade.

It was another beautiful night watching the sun set over the Atlantic ocean.  We sure are going to miss that place!

Okay, to all of you who corrected my previous blog when I didn’t know what day it was. Actually, Al had already mentioned my mistake, but when I went to correct the blog, my internet was down.

Anyway, I almost never know what day it is, and it rarely has anything to do with the number of drinks I’ve had the night before.

Reluctantly, we packed up and left the Keys on Sunday morning.

Travel day was less than 200 miles, and we arrived safely at Collier Seminole State Park, in Naples, Florida.

We have a nice, but pretty un-level site.   We’re going to stay at least two nights.  We’re on a Florida Panther and bear hunt while we’re here. 

More on that later.

Looking for Three Hole Harry

Sunshine Key Resort, Florida

Finally, on our second to last day here, the winds died down enough for us to get the kayaks out.

We launched the kayaks here at Sunshine Key, in search of  “Three Hole Harry.”   To read about him, click here.  

This is a picture from last April, of Harry and Al.  He is a 5-6 foot nurse shark.

Yesterday, the water was not quite as clear, and unfortunately, we never did find Harry.   I did find a ledge where there was something that resembled a tail of a large fish, but I couldn’t get a good enough view to tell for sure. 

We stayed in this area for quite a while, looking for ledges and tropical fish.  Al spotted a few lobster, including one dead one, and I spotted a juvenile French Angle fish.  Cool!

This was the Bay side of the island and once the slack tide started, we decided to head under the bridge and go into the Atlantic side.

Al spotted a few more small lobsters, but he didn’t go in after them.  (the water is a bit chilly)

We puttered around for a while, then decided we needed to stretch our legs.  We found this pretty little beach area between Bahia Honda State Park and Sunshine Key.

There was a pretty mangrove tunnel.

I found this cute little hermit crab.  Can you see his little eyes?

and a nice area to beach the kayaks.

I hung the camera from a branch, set the timer and took a pretty ugly picture of us, my hat hair, dive booties and all…..but at least the back ground looked good.

We planned on paddling around the whole island, but then we started noticing some dark skies.  I checked the radar on my trusty Droid phone and we decided to head back to the marina at Sunshine Key. 

We paddled back under another bridge and into the marina.

We ended up giving up paddling for the day, although the rain never came, there were a lot of storm clouds on the horizon.

 

We did find this friendly fella at the marina.

Evidently,  Manatees living in salt water really like a drink of fresh water.  These people had a garden hose and were giving the Manatee a drink.

A face only a mother could love?

Probably not the best idea, but she said when the boaters rinse their motors out, the manatee will get behind them and drink the fresh water.

We went back home, then decided we’d go back to the Sunset Bar and Raw Bar for happy hour. 

We had a pretty good sunset, but the cloud bank threatened to ruin our view.

Around sunset what we thought was a few guys in a band playing music and singing.  It turned out to just be one guy.  He was terrific.  Of course he played some Jimmy Buffet songs.  When he sang something by Willie Nelson, I had to check to make sure Willie wasn’t there.

We usually leave right after sunset so we don’t have to drive home in the dark (its an old age thing I guess), but last night we stayed.

We were rewarded by the beautiful changing colors of the swimming pool.

You can see here where it’s turquoise.  Also, notice in the ocean the green lights?  Those are underwater lights by the boat dock.

the pool then starts to change to  pink/purple color.

then, my favorite, a deep ocean blue, which reminds me of the time we went across the Gulf Stream on a dive boat.  We all got out and snorkeled in water just about this same color.  It was 2000 feet deep, crystal clear and deep blue.  It was incredible.

Al says if we go back, I will be limited to two drinks.  Apparently, I don’t handle three very well.

On the way out we decided to  walk down to the lower level and walk out on the dock. 

Once we got down on the dock, it was a whole different experience.

Here is the transportation of someone who came for happy hour.  I hope he didn’t have three drinks!

These are those pretty green lights you can see from the upper deck. They attract fish and there were a lot of Snook swimming around.

Here is one I took of Al on the dock.  I used my flash so the other lights didn’t show up.

This is a picture of the beautiful tree next to me where we sit.  It reminded me of North Carolina.  To the left is the dining room.

They also have a huge tv screen downstairs for the football games they show.

It’s a lovely place.

Even the parking lot was festive.

We sure love this place, as you can probably tell.

The plan for today (Sunday) was to spend it kayaking.  It was supposed to be calm, and sunny, but we awoke to clouds and scattered rain showers all around us.  I guess we’ll have to go to plan b and see if it clears up.  I sure hope so, since today is our last day in the Keys.  

Sunset Watch, Florida Keys Style

Sunshine Key Rv Resort, Florida (high 80, low 69)

Yesterday was another windy day,  and again with small fast moving storms popping up off and on all day.  We ended up staying home most of the day, reading.  I finished a very good book called, Shanghai Girls.  I hated for it to end, but when I checked on the library, I found they had the next book that picked right up where this one ended.  I downloaded it to my Sony e-reader, so I’m good to go.

Later in the afternoon, we made a trip back to Curry Hammock, still looking for the perfect picture of “Bob.”  Apparently, he was tucked away for the evening because we didn’t see him or any of his friends.

The water was very calm and there were a few folks kayaking.  You can see the ugly rain clouds right over their heads though.

We walked around the campground a bit, trying to get a photo of site 17 for Gin and Syl.  They were lucky enough to reserve that site next fall.  Sorry, I couldn’t get a picture of the site.  There was a 5th wheel in it and the people were sitting outside.  I didn’t want to start snapping pictures with them there.  However…..I can say, I think you may have the best site there for a ocean view.   If you back in, you’ll have a nice ocean view from your patio side.  If you pull in forward, you’ll have a wonderful ocean front view from your front windshield.    It looks like the water and electricity is where it’s supposed to be and I didn’t see any issues there, but it was hard to tell with the rig there.  You’ll need extra power and hoses if you decide to pull in forward.  We’ll be going back,  so I’ll try again to get a picture for you but….good job on snagging that site!

We decided to go back to the Sunset Grill for happy hour and to watch the sunset.  There are other real popular places here that offer $.25 shrimp and wings, but in my opinion, there is nowhere better than the Sunset Grill.

We decided to sit on the upper deck again.  The view is the best and we had a roof over our heads, which was good since it was sprinkling when we got there.  We later figured out that if you sit by the pool, you get plastic cups, and we got real glass upstairs.  The only problem with the upper deck is you have to sit on high stools, and I prefer chairs.

The view was incredible.  You can see the 7 Mile Bridge in the background.  Once you go over the bridge, our campground is right there on the right, or bay side.   The Sunset Grill is on the Atlantic side.

I took way too many pictures, as usual.

It was still pretty early when we go there so it was light outside. 

In the next picture, you can see the hump of the 7 Mile Bridge.

There were a few people swimming in the heated pool.  That’s the first restaurant/bar I’ve been to that has had a pool for their guests.  Only in the Keys.

I kept snapping pictures as the sun kept getting lower..

Will we see the “green flash?”

Al got a treat when two couples sat down in the bar right below us. One young lady had big pushed up boobs and a very low cut dress.  Al kept telling me he wasn’t looking, but I’m not so sure!

This is her in the bottom right of the next picture, but, sorry, it’s a silhouette shot, so no boobs.

 

No green flash. I guess we’ll have to try again tonight.

Even though the sun had sunk below the horizon, it was still beautiful.

As it got darker, you could see the green lights out in the water and the light reflections in the pool.

It was even pretty on the ride home.

Trouble was, once we got home, it was dark, we had had a few drinks and some appetizers.  We were sleepy and ready for bed, but it was only 6:30!   I hate these short days!!