We are driving through the hill country of West Texas this morning and there is road kill everywhere. To distract me from flat Bambi and other carnage, I thought I would write about our days in the little towns of Dunedin and Ozona.
Chris and Cheryl live in Ozona which is a little unincorporated area along the shoreline adjacent to Palm Harbor. They let us move in, familiarized us with all the local hot spots and promptly took off for a trade show in Vegas. They left us in charge of their dog, Holly Raisin who made us feel right at home in their little Ozona oasis. When they arrived home, Coach Worx had not even started on our bus repairs so we just stayed and stayed and had a marvelous time. I'm including some pictures of our home away from home. We don't have pictures of our time spent playing cribbage, enjoying Cheryl's home cooking, or competing on Final Jeopardy and Cash Cab; times that will undoubtedly become favorite memories.
The Pinellas Trail is just a few yards from Chris and Chery'ls driveway. It is a paved 26 mile path that runs north and south along the length of Pinellas County. Many of the old railroad bridges were left intact making the trail a pleasure for both bikers and pedestrians. It is perhaps one of the best uses of a former railroad right-of- way that we've ever seen and consequently gets a lot of use. Not by us, we just photographed it so you could see it.
We've included a few pictures of oranges painted on the walls of businesses in downtown Dunedin. Why, you ask? According to local folklore, these paintings are the work of an unnamed artist and they simply appear at dawn's early light. Unlike most places, shop owners here arrive each morning hoping they have been hit by orange graffiti overnight.
Dunedin is the Spring training home of the Toronto Blue Jays so we enjoyed a baseball game one afternoon. Based on the sheer volume of photos, Fred watched the entire game through the lens of his camera. He especially liked this action shot of the pitcher.
We spent Fat Tuesday at Dunedin's Mardi Gras party. I explored the United Methodist church which is smack dab in the middle of town. They gave me some beads, a schedule of services and then Fred lured me out with a big beer and the promise of meeting new friends shown here.
The beach is one of Fred's favorite places so we spent quite a bit of time exploring, snapping pictures and playing with the pelicans.
We and the four Noell's went to Tarpon Springs, a Greek sponge fishing village and ate Greek food. Duh. We went to Jenny Noell's Treasure Island Fun Center and played unlimited skee ball. We went to the movies, golfed and shopped, and as you all saw, I fed some alligators and waved to a few more. Robert had just started a garden while we were there and by the time we left he was eating home grown radishes and the corn was six inches high. We saw thousands of worms on their own silk swinging from the oak trees and hundreds of baby grasshoppers planning their attack on the tasty garden treats. At night all the critters were singing like I have never experienced in Phoenix. Cheryl said the bullfrogs were announcing impending rain and sure enough, the rain came the next day. I rocked, fed and cuddled Jenny's baby, Brady, and took him for his first dip in the hot tub. We met our newest grand nephew, Baron Lloyd. Fred worked part of every day and some days all day but even that was fun....for him. He loves his work and it does make all this adventure possible.
We are coming up on a rest stop so I am on kitchen duty and off blog duty. Two tunas on wheat coming up.
We've got a bunch more pictures: click here to see them...
From the road:
-robin
No comments:
Post a Comment