We came to Florida thinking that we would spend the lower end of a few weeks supporting Mike’s parents through some health issues and then head out for short stints around Florida. Well… best laid plans.
Mike’s parents live in The Villages and it is a little like living in Disney World, but grown up. Everything is manicured, there are golf courses and golf carts everywhere, and there are themed downtown areas. The houses are incredibly close together and with their health care needs, Mike’s parents had people coming into their house pretty much every day. What a difference! All of a sudden our world changed from being pretty much on our own in nature to being in the middle of a very close community with people everywhere. We had to empty out a lot of the trailer (Florida humidity) and put it in storage as there was no way we could keep it at Barry and Maureen’s. It was pretty hard to say goodbye to Scarlet for a while.
A few weeks turned into two months as Maureen’s health and future needs were up in the air. Mike and I cleaned and organized their house and I cooked up a storm. Mike began working 20-30 hours a week and started his new work life in a home office with wi-fi. We left The Villages so seldom during this time, but the highlights of our few trips to the surrounding environs were a hike and a visit to the coast while a SpaceX rocket went up.
Slowly things improved for Maureen and we started to finally look at travelling again. We planned our first real time out was going to a place we had been before and loved – Fort De Soto, near St. Petersburg. We had really enjoyed our time there before – big white sand beaches and sand bars you could swim to, surprisingly private campsites with lush plants all around. Because our time table had been so up in the air, I couldn’t plan too far a head, so I was only able to book one night in the campground, but we planned on paddle boarding out to Shell Key where we could do dispersed camping for a couple of nights after that.
Then the truck wouldn’t start. After a tow, a pick-up and another break-down, we left the truck at a mechanic’s for the weekend and packed all of our gear into Barry’s convertible (with a couple of trips to the truck and the trailer on different sides of town).
We headed to Fort Desoto in sun and cool weather, but the weather didn’t cooperate much after we got there. It was quite windy, the sun started to disappear and the temperature stayed in the fifties. During daylight, we enjoyed a few patches of sun and found some semi-sheltered places to wander and sit on the beach. Once night hit, we wound up sheltering behind the car to eat dinner and then I quickly moved into the tent to read.
The wind and cold scared us away from our planned key camping, so we packed up and took a leisurely route back to The Villages… two days early. We stopped at the Gizelle Kopsick Palm Arboretum and had a surprisingly good time looking at so many varieties of palms from all around the world. We wandered through dappled sun picking our favorites, learning about palm bisexuality, and realizing gaps in our geographic knowledge.
And then we stopped for lunch at Mid Peninsula Seafood Market. We decided to skip any sides and just go for the good – a pound of scallops and a half pound of cracked conch. We ate and ate and still had a ton left.
The last time we came through this area we stopped at the Florida Botanical Gardens and decided to do so again. It was late March the last time we were there and saw tons of things in bloom. This time, things were not nearly as colorful, but it was still lovely to wander through. Despite Mike’s constant look-out for alligators, we did not see any.