Bye Bye Carrie, RPod neighbors & more beach

Thursday May 3, & Friday May 4, 2012
Oscar Scherer State Park  site 95

 

Thursday is a Blue Day here.

We have to take Carrie up to the Sarasota Airport and put her on the plane for home.  It’s so wonderful to have an adult child that you truly consider a good friend with whom you share confidences, whom you admire and respect and with whom have a GREAT time. 

Carrie you are THE world’s BEST daughter! 
So say we both!!

No pictures of departure.  Hate those.  But love this one.
It’s a keeper; so is she!
(I miss you when you go)

 

After that sad chore, we come back and do a bunch of yucky business associated with the medical side of life.  Then we drown our blues in a great vegan pizza wishing our girl were here to help us eat it.

 

Friday morning it is time to break down and do the laundry.

Oscar Scherer has 4 bathrooms for its 90 campsites and two of those have one washer and one dryer each.  Not good numbers in the height of winter I wouldn’t think but since you can only stay 2 weeks at a State Park perhaps it doesn’t get difficult.

In any case, I am there at 7a.m. so I claim the washer for 4 loads.  Good thing we’ve been here before and noticed that they only have a cold water hose going into the machine.  Cold Water Tide fixes us up.
The machines are probably the most reasonably priced I’ve seen on the road.  This fact I also remembered which is another reason to do the laundry here.  $1.25 for 35 min wash or $1.50 for a 45 minute “super wash”.  $1.25 for FIFTY minutes of drying.  Sounds great but the dryer blows luke warm air in keeping with the no hot theme of the place.  So it takes more than one run to get a thick towel dry. 

Notice in my ‘off to the laundry’ picture below my so cool laundry cart with wheels compliments of our friends Dan & Tricia.  Dan made Tricia a bigger, better, nicer one (they think) and so they gifted us with this one which is PERFECT for us and saves me the lugging.  It folds up nice and tidy.  Just perfect for slipping into our basement.  Thanks again Dan & Tricia for not needing this and for giving it to us.  We (well I) LOVE it.

 

Last night I notice that we have a new neighbor. A little R Pod pulls in beside us. 

Carrie is on my mind and I wish she could be here to see this little camper and meet her owner Lois who comes by looking for channel lock pliers which we have to loan.  I tell her how I think  RPods are so cute and ask if I can get a tour on Friday.   She says sure, so after laundry duty today, I see Lois outside and head on over.

 

 

Lois tells me that this is a brand new RPod which she bought just down the road.  She lives close to the park and is bringing it out on its maiden voyage to test everything including putting up the screened in “porch”.  isn’t that GREAT!  Especially good for the buggy south.

 

Here’s Lois inside sitting on the sofa of her new Rig.  Bed to her right.
She looks mighty proud and happy with her Pod.

There’s a complete kitchen and a full bath.
Pretty slick for 17’.  She tells me hers is the RPod 175

 

 

Now how likely is this?  

Another RPod pulls in on the other side of Lois so off Lois and I  go to meet Daphne and her crew.

 

 

Daphne’s RPod is the 181.  It is longer and heavier than the 175 and has a different floor plan as well as this outside entertainment center that Daphne really loves.

She was just getting set up so the center had a number of things stored in it for the trip but she shows us the sink and speakers and other features like the hanging storage net she’s demonstrating.  There is even an outside hook up for the little indoor TV.  Now that’s a riot?  Although I wonder if I could even see it from a chair sitting in front of the entertainment center.   LOL

 

 

I really enjoy my tours and hearing the inside RPod talk of two owners.  I’m wondering if a single could full time in one of those like RV Sue does in her Casita.  Probably so if you really simplify!  They sure can fit into any campsite anywhere.  And that’s a real PLUS.

I stop with Lois back at her site and give her my card with the blog address so she can see the pictures I’ve taken.  Hope she’ll comment on how things are going or drop me an email.  I’d  like to keep in touch.

 

 

I realize I hadn’t given Daphne the blog address so she could look at it but when I went back over she was already gone.  Hope I’ll see her before we leave.

 

Warning to those who’ve seen quite enough Beach Blogs thank you. 

 

There is another one coming up and I’ll try to make it short but that is what we do with our afternoon.   We think about going back up to fine sugar sand Siesta Key but it’s over twice as far as Nokomis and the ice cream shop with Almond Joy is on the road to Nokomis so…….

We’re back on the beach at Nokomis.

 

David, who sadly isn’t getting any vacation from back pain this “vacation” week, sits in his antigravity chair in the warm sun and reads the Patient and Caregiver Transplant Guide:  Autologous Transplant, which turns out to be among the scariest 164 pages ever printed in 8 1/2 X 11” format.

 

 

Lucky me….I play in the water.   Since I traded early running for the early laundry run, I swim out to the buoy and back for the exercise.  And it is that.  I can hardly see that thing from the shore.

 

When I come back, I sit under the TIBU and look around at umbrellas to see if anyone has found anything close to our late World’s Best.  The folks underneath them are pretty interesting too.

 

 

This is my favorite – people shot that is.

 

David finishes as much as he can manage of the guide to his future
.Here’s his reaction.

 

And then there is the ice cream.

On the way home I do run into Bentley’s Ice Cream and grab a pint of Almond Joy.  Note to Bill:  this is “almost” as good as Jamaica-me-crazy.

 

We hear there is to be a “super moon” tomorrow night and we plan to be on the beach for it. 

So tonight we look outside Winnona for the day before version which is so close to full I can’t tell the difference.

Somehow I can never, with any camera I’ve ever had, take good moon pictures so if you have some advice, please comment and share it.

It really looked fantastic but you can’t tell it from this. The moon looks SO much smaller than it did with my eyes.