Wrapping things up - Tampa, FL

While our time here in Tampa has been extended due to circumstances (Bill's physical therapy), it is finally winding down to a close. It's been a lot of fun and we've made a lot of new friends as well as reconnected with old ones, but we are definitely getting antsy and are ready to move on.

We've had friends over for dinner a few times here at the moho, and luckily the weather cooperated and allowed us to eat outside, especially when there were 8 of us - that would have challenged even our generous space inside. Although on that occasion when we were joined by friends from Tampa and Toronto we did all end up inside after dinner to watch a video, since it got a little chilly for our Florida friends. For anyone who remembers all the gatherings that we used to have at the house in Carol Stream, it's easy to understand that we miss those times and we still love having friends over. So the tradition continues.

St Paddy's Day:

We celebrated St Patrick's Day with friends from the Tampa Bay PH club at Ybor City. The traditional parade is very different from the parades we're used to in Chicago - no marching bands or bagpipes. The parade is all about the different Krewes (social organizations) putting floats together and throwing out beads to the crowd. It didn't really feel like St Patrick's Day (seriously, no bagpipes!) but it was a lot of fun - it had a Mardi Gras feel to it, since the concept of Krewes originated in New Orleans, at least according to Google. Yes, I had to look them up because I didn't know what Krewes were until then. We could barely walk under the weight of all the beads we were wearing by the time the parade was over. Anyone need a few billion beads? Let me know!

Many of the floats were really spectacular.

Thank you to Mary Ann Massengale for the pictures.


Reconnecting with friends:

Last week we caught up with friends Bill and Kris, whom we had met back in December during our stay at the Tiffin plant in Red Bay, Alabama. They are currently in Wauchula, about 2 hours from us, so we met up for lunch in Bartow which is about halfway between. We had a great afternoon exchanging stories, catching up and comparing future travel plans. They brought along friends Jim and Linda and the six of us had a great time. It's great to meet new people and even better to reconnect with them down the road. One of the big perks of the RV livestyle.

The Yard:

Last Saturday we attended a house concert at "The Yard", which is a well known and award winning Tampa home venue for trop-rock music. In this case, it was a bit of a departure from the usual, as the Reverend Billy Wirtz is not a trop-rocker but a blues musician/comedian/entertainer who put on a terrific show. I'm not sure why he's called "the reverend" because he so is NOT - a lot of his stuff is on the raunchy side and definitely not for kids. We had a great time and the Yard experience is not to be missed while in Tampa.

The "Reverend"

Bands and musicians who've played the Yard

Anna Maria Island:

Yesterday we drove out to Anna Maria Island, which is about 60 miles from Bay Bayou. We spent a lovely day at Holmes Beach.

Approach to the island

Toes in the water

Watching the parasailers

The weather has been great most of the time we've spent here, although we've seen the odd rainy and cooler period here and there. Those are the days we catch up on the inside chores. We've had plenty of sunny pool and beach days and good bike riding weather too. On one of our bike rides we came across this little gentleman on the side of the trail:

We spent a morning last week clearing out our storage trays under the moho. Whew! Flashback to clearing out the basement in the house last year...and everyone has heard THOSE stories. I'm sorry to say the missing Malaysian plane was not in there, although for a while I thought it might be since it seemed like an awful lot of stuff had accumulated down there. Lucikly now, it's all organized and we have a lot more storage space...which I'm sure we'll quickly use up.


On a very sad note, our RV park experienced a tragedy this past weekend when a 5th wheel camper a couple of rows from us caught fire. The neighbors saw the smoke and flames and a couple of them broke a window and pulled out the resident inside, a 54 year old man who had been severely burned. The fire department arrived and found the unit totally engulfed. The fire was put out and the victim airlifted to a nearby trauma center but he unfortunately did not survive. The fire remains under investigation and we are all anxious to learn what caused it. There are of course all kinds of rumors but until the investigation is complete there is no telling what happened.

This week we're tying up loose ends and attending to maintenance chores prior to hitting the road on Sunday. We've been here for nearly two months so we want to make sure everything is in order before we head out. We'll be heading up to I-10 and then west towards San Antonio, Texas as a way point since we'll be flying to Chicago on April 8 and I booked our flights from there. After our week in Chicago we'll be heading for Arizona with a stop at Big Bend National Park on the way. So until then...

Way Too Much Fun - Tampa, FL

Yikes, it's been a while. Since we haven't been doing any actual RV travel for the past few weeks I haven't been updating here, but in the interest of making sure everyone knows where we are, here goes.

We spent nearly two weeks down in the British Virgin Islands in mid-February. We've been going down there for the last 10 years but this was the first time we stayed on land rather than on a sailboat. How did it compare? I would say pretty well, in our situation. For first (or even second or third) time visitors, there is no better way to get to know the BVI than on a sailboat since there are so many little islands, bays, anchorages and great spots that are only accessible that way. Staying on land obviously limits you, although there are numerous day sails available to get you to some of the highlights. Don't even think about a cruise ship - that is absolutely not the way to experience these islands. For us, since we are frequent visitors the land based stay worked out just fine, and gave us plenty of time to reconnect with old friends down there.

For the first week, we stayed at Grand K Suites in Cane Garden Bay, Tortola. This is a three unit building up the road behind Myett's, just off the beach. We had a full kitchen, living area, balcony, bedroom with king size bed and a full bath plus powder room so space was not an issue. The owner, Sandman, is also a part owner of Myett's along with his brother and sister-in-law, Kareem and Valerie. You quickly learn that everyone in Cane Garden Bay is related - they're all Rhymers, up and down the beach. Along with us, our friends Jack and Patti were also at Sandman's place, in an adjoining unit. Other friends Mike and Karen stayed at Myett's,

The six of us had a great week. One day we did a day sail on White Squall over to Norman Island where we snorkeled the caves and then had lunch on the Willy T. The rest of the time we spent pretty much vegging on the beach every day, dancing at happy hour at Myett's every afternoon and going to dinner at a different place each night. There are five bars/restaurants in Cane Garden Bay that we could get to just by walking down the beach. One evening we decided to cab it over to the next Bay and had dinner at Brandywine, which was absolutely fabulous.

The second week, Karen and Mike sadly left us to return home. The remaining four of us took the ferry over to Jost Van Dyke where we had a three day stay booked at the Perfect Pineapple, a little cabin just behind White Bay. The view from our front porch:

White Bay is my special happy place:

Every year when we visit White Bay we take an updated "tree picture". The tree sits in front of our favorite bar, One Love. This year's installment:

A drink menu from one of the funky little bars:

I'll have the "cup of shut the f..." well, never mind.

We had a great couple of weeks in the islands, and coming "home" to Tampa wasn't nearly as painful as it had to be for the rest of our group, who were all returning home to Chicago. Brrr...

We didn't have time to let the grass grow under our feet, since just a week after we got back to Tampa the next event was Music on the Bay. This is a large scale event put on by several of the central Florida Parrothead Clubs as a joint venture. A lot of really big names in trop-rock played the event, but best of all for us, 38 members of our Chicago club came down for the event (a few missed the group photo op).

It felt like we had the band back together! Sharon and Bob stayed with us in the moho - and while you have to be pretty good friends to share tight living accomodations (with only one bathroom!), we did just fine.

MOTB was a fantastic event and we all had a spectacular time. Besides all the club members from Chicago, Illinois was represented by the Boat Drunks, who headlined on Saturday and then our very own good friends Todd Donnelly and Pirate Greg who along with the whole Mr Myers band played on Sunday. That was sort of the culmination of the whole weekend, with all of us up by the stage while the boys played our favorite songs...it was like Christmas morning for this girl.

There were highlights:

.

And low lights:

Ewwww, said Cheryl and Dee!

By the way, thanks to Ron Horne and Carol Echelberger for some of the pictures I stole.

So MOTB behind us, we said a sad "till I see you again" (I refuse to ever say goodbye) to all our hometown friends. But on to the next weekend where the ride continued.

Our friend and favorite Trop-rocker, Brian Neale was in town after playing MOTB and he had a couple of gigs lined up in Ft Myers and Punta Gorda for the weekend after so we headed down there to see him with some of the Tampa Bay folks that we've become friends with. We also had the opportunity to meet up with New Hampshire transplant and friend John, who came out to Hurricane Charley's to see Brian and join us also. 







So it's been a bit of a whirlwind here. In the next week we're looking forward to meeting up with several of our new local friends. Meanwhile, we've been attending to the day to day business of life such as a doctor appointment here and getting the car serviced there - our trusty old Honda has close to 200,000 miles and still runs great but does need a little TLC now and then. We've been riding our bikes on the great Tampa bike trails too. Our plan is to stay in Tampa until around the beginning of April (when Bill should be done with his physical therapy) and then head out. We will be leaving the moho behind somewhere (TBD) while we fly into Chicago for a week in mid-April, then continue west. Till then!