After Carrie leaves

Wednesday-Saturday December 26-29, 2012
Site 6, Oscar Scherer State Park
Osprey, Florida

 

Things come to a SCREACHING HALT the day after Carrie leaves.

 

 

WEDNESDAY

We have been going going going and having fun fun fun and we are both exhausted. 

I do go out running on Wednesday morning.  But beyond that, I hardly move.  I write blogs about our fun times while she was here, finish the last of the 3 Barb Thacker RV travels books and begin my new Barbara Kingsolver novel Flight Behavior.  (thank you Carrie)

David is reading The Yearling on his laptop.  He liked our reading of Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings Cross Creek so well that he downloaded The Yearling version with Andrew Wyeth’s illustrations.  Free!

We hardly have to cook we have so many leftovers.   It’s a lazy day.  I don’t take one photograph.

 

THURSDAY

On Thursday morning, David goes over to Venice to a Lab Corps for his twice monthly blood draws.  In the afternoon it warms up a bit and we decide to go down to Venice Beach.  We’ve been to Siesta Key, Caspersen and Nokomis Beaches but not to Venice.  Time to see it.

Our verdict:  Too urban and today too windy, too cold.

 

 

 

 

So we go back to Venice and walk along the main street, Venice Avenue, enjoying the artistically decorated dolphin and sea turtle statues.  They remind me of the decorated buffalo all over in Custer, S.D.  Here are some of my favorites.
(click on any of them to enlarge, they really are beautiful)

 

 

 

Pedicure and make up anyone?

 

 

 

 

The mosaic work is just amazing.  The pictures do not do it justice.

What painstaking attention to detail.

 

All of the sculptures had a “sponsor” whose plaque was on the base. This one just made me laugh.  Do you see the “ears”

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Wish I’d gotten a close up of his moustache.

 

 

 

 

 

These are just a few of the sculptures lining 4 or 5 blocks of  “downtown” Venice.

 

Next, we stop in for a delicious Peanut butter MALT (I’m in heaven) and a great pizza.  David has a cherry coke at this old fashioned soda fountain.  It’s a great place with metal stools in front of the wooden counter and old fashioned soda machines.  There are too few places like this left anymore.   Way to go Venice!   A real soda fountain!!

 

 

 

 

After lunch, we cross over the boulevard strip and finish walking down the other side of the street window shopping.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The orchid trees are still in bloom.

 

Even the trash cans are decorated in this darling city by the sea.

 

 

FRIDAY

Friday I’m running again in the morning.  There is no rain predicted and we have tickets to visit Historic Spanish Point.  We pack up our lunch and head out to make a day of it.

This is a very interesting 30 acre historic site and it is decorated with lights for what they call “holy days” and have extended hours until 8pm.  We arrive thinking we will see the outside during the daylight, have lunch and enjoy the buildings, exhibits and then the lights after dark.   We have just finished watching the movie inside the Visitor Center, which is located in the original Osprey Elementary School now on the National Register of Historic Places, when all of a sudden the sky opens up and it POURS rain.

I check weather.com on my phone.  They are still saying zero chance of rain.  HA!  It’s pouring outside. 

We wait for a while hoping it is just a quick shower feeling grateful we are not out walking around when the drenching began.  We hang around and chat with the cheerful volunteers for nearly an hour but it becomes apparent that it isn’t going to let up.  They give us a “rain check”.   We head out with plans to come back tomorrow or on Sunday when there is again zero chance of rain.  IF you can believe the weathermen.

Instead David runs some errands.  He is part of the holiday returns crowd.  His rope lights have 2’ that don’t light so he exchanges it.  He finds his FM walking radio doesn’t work well for his purpose and gets a set of FM headphones instead.  I get to do the kind of shopping that I love.  I wait in the car and read.  Perfect!!

 

SATURDAY

It rains continuously all night long and into Saturday.   They’ve changed the forecast and today more rain is predicted so we decide not to return to Historic Spanish Point.  But of course the rain never comes.  By the time we realize this, it’s too late to go to Spanish Point.

Instead David does a half hour of his stretching exercises with the new video he got as a holiday gift and then goes on a brisk walk.   He says he’s turning over a new leaf to up his exercise quotient now that he can.  Probably no running but perhaps some weight lifting in addition to the stretching and walking.  We’ll see how this pans out.

I do an hour’s worth of yoga and then we putter around the coach cleaning the upholstery,  cleaning off the roof and slide toppers, taking off Winnona’s old rear BRAVE decal so we can replace it with a new one curling one that Santa brought to me.  

In the late afternoon, we take a walk over to see the Eagle’s nest.   

 

 

The nest is located on a section of Oscar Scherer’s Green trail and is blocked off at  a long distance.  The tree is visible as is the huge nest but binoculars or a spotting scope is really necessary.  The sun is dropping in the sky making quite a glare.  The nest tree is at the far end of the “road” you can see behind the blockade.

 

Click the photo to read.

 

 

I’m zoomed in quite a bit here.  The nest is in the crook of the tree almost in the center of the picture below.

 

 

 

We set out for home as the sun sets.  Sunset from the scrub on the way home from our Eagle visit.

 

In the past 4 days we haven’t done much of note but the days have been easy and that has been great. 

With this post I am finally caught up just in time to get behind again no doubt.

J