Meeting Mermaids and New Friends, then heading home

Thursday

Up early (for us) this morning and headed East about 80 miles.  Destination was Weeki Wachee Springs State Park.  This is the home of the world famous mermaid show.  It used to be privately owned but now the state owes it and the mermaids are state employees.  This place has been here for 65 years.  I will let the pictures tell the story.

We arrived in time to cruise the river before the first show

Injection molding machine these were popular when I was a kid

 They I found this concrete Mermaid but I wanted to meet a live one.

First mermaid

On the boat, the water is crystal clear

These are school kids, the school brings them out to the river to learn to paddle and learn ecology

Lots of spanish moss in this cypress tree

This is a 4 year old Bald Eagles nest

Back to the dock

Time for the first mermaid show which showed us how they breath and how they train.

Caught this guy sneeking a peak

Bonnie flattened some more pennies

Then we had a little lunch and looked around the park, look what I found.

Yep a real live Mermaid

My favorite Mermaid

 Then we headed for the second show about the little mermaid who wanted legs

The under water pictures are hard to capture without the proper lighting but there they are real mermaids.  While we were at the show I got an email from John and Kathy Huggins.  We have listened to their podcast about Living the RV Dream for several years.  Seems they are in Florida and not very far away.  We called them and made plans to meet them for supper.

But first Bonnie wanted to see the West coast of Florida and the ocean.  So we headed west.

Lots of marsh grass

We are headed for those palm trees

Bonnie spotted this Bald Eagle on the way

We made it to the ocean!

Then we headed to the Cracker Barrel to meet John and Kathy.  We had a nice dinner together and then went out on the porch to continue talking.  While we were chatting two horses and riders showed up and rode right between us, I got the girl to turn around and I snapped a picture.

Never seen this at Cracker Barrel before.

 Before we knew it 4 hours had passed by and we were still chatting away.  Besides having RVing in common John and I were both ETs in the Navy.  Bonnie and Kathy did not run out of things to talk about either, but John and I were starting to yawn so reluctantly we called it a night.
John an Kathy have been full timers for many years now and have lots of experiences to share.  They have also just published a new book So you want to be an RVer
Thanks John for letting us know you were close by.

Bonnie received a beautiful beaded bracelet from Kathy, she really likes and appreciated the gift.

It takes Kathy two days to make one of these lots of work and love go into each one.

We made it back to the condo a little after 11 and I guess I better get some sleep as its almost 1am.  Today is our last day before we fly home on Saturday.

Friday

Today is our last full day in Florida.  Bonnie started the wash, I checked in online for the flights.  I need to head up to the front office and print out our boarding passes and we will be all set for the trip home.  We have no real plans for today so not sure what we will do.

So we have worked on packing and wrapping things up today.  I got the boarding passes printed.  Later just after a thunderstorm went through Bonnie went up to the spa for a tour and to pickup a free gift.  Then back to the condo.

A little TV tonight and then off to bed.

Saturday

Up at 6am, getting ready to fly home.

The trip to the airport went off without a hitch.  Our flights to Baltimore and continuing on to Buffalo left on time and arrived early.  For once the baggage came quickly and Elizabeth was there to pick us up.

Once home I was busy for a while.  Started the boiler so we would have hot water, plugged in the water softener, and turned on the breakers.  The breaker for the softener was bad so I had to replace that with a spare I had.  Then I hauled up the suitcases to the house.

Replaced the breaker and all buttoned up again, all is working

Then I checked the outside bays on the coach.  I had set 3 mouse traps, all three were tripped, two had caught mice.  Cleaned them out and reset them.

About that time Bonnie's mom, dad, and sister pulled in the driveway.  They were on their way home from Apple Umpkin, a local craft fair and fun time.  Carol had the clippers with her and I got my ears lowered, Bonnie was starting to call me shaggy.  After that we visited for a while and then after they left we had a bite to eat, finished unpacking and finally got to relax a little.

We went from the 90's to the 50's trying to stay warm now and had to turn the heat on in the house.

Sunday

Forgot to mention yesterday that we found this when we got home yesterday.

Nice and clean ditch

Next I need to cover the pipe with stone, fabric and then enough dirt to eliminate the ditch enough to be able to mow this area.

So today we were up and off to church.  It was good to be back at church and we had a good time and heard a good sermon.  Elizabeth had a gas leak at her house and the gas company turned off the gas.  So we picked up Alexus on the way.  The gas company came back and found the valves on her old gas stove leaking.  So they disconnected it and capped the line.  So she contacted the landlord and now has a new stove.  Bonnie and her are even doing some canning now, what a day.

I stayed home so I could work on some catching up.  I also spent a couple hours up at court and somewhat caught up.

Now I am going to catch up on a little TV.  I did see that the Bills lost as well as the USA lost the Ryder Cup.

Going to post this now and call it a night.  Thanks For Checking In.