First week of our tour

While we were in Ocala we had a bus tour.  This is one of the places we stopped.  It use to be an amusement park and the state of Florida took it over and are making it back into a natural park. 

We saw a gator on the bank of the springs.  It just looked at us.

This palm tree is suppose to be good luck if you get your picture made in the crook.  Yeah right.

We also visited a horse farm and had a wagon ride. This is the second wagon with Libby and Luke a matched pair of Percherons I thank that's how its spelt.

 This is our wagon and our Driver Kimmi.

The area around here is full of horse farms.  And the horses are very interested in our wagons.

Look at his braids.

Half of our pair.

Yesterday we took a bus ride to see a bunch of  Tampa and the area. We are in Tampa until tomorrow.  Here we are on a sponge boat in Tarpon Springs.  The diver is dressed the way they dove for sponges 50 years ago.  Now they use scuba gear. 

This "camp" is for sale.  WOW

The view of Tampa across the bay.  It was raining and cold but you could see the city.

Some more of us on the boat.  It took the diver about 20 minutes to get dressed with the help of two other men.

He looks uncomfortable.

The suit weighs a total of 172 pounds with the helmet plus his body weight to be able to walk on the sea bed.

Over the side he goes.

Now we are in Ybor (ebor) City.  It use to be the place where they made Cuban cigars.

There was suppose to be a fiesta yesterday but it rained so hard a lot of it wasn't even opened.  I felt so sorry for them.  This was planned for a year for just one day.

 

 

 

I'm so excited.  I finally figured out the picture thing.  I had to do my happy dance.  There will be more pictures next week.

 

 

Love, Mom and Dad 

Start of the Southern Exposure

this is getting frustrating!!!!!  I guess I'll have to start a new blog when I've got time.  But here's what we've done since I lasted posted.

We spent three days in Mississippi during Mardi Gras.  We drove into Biloxi on Fat Tuesday and got caught up in a parade set-up.  So we drove on into Pascagoula to avoid the parade proper.  We wondered around and had lunch etc.figuring we'd miss it all together.  Ha on the way back we drove right beside it.  It was a hoot.  The trash along the road was full of beads and junk.  The poor sanitation had to clean it all up.

We're in Pensacola now.  We went to the commissary and are doing laundry today getting ready to start our tour this afternoon.  We head out for Tallahassee on Tuesday.  Will let you know more later.

Love Mom and Dad

Still no go on photos, so I'll just tell you what we've done.  I really didn't take any pictures anyway.  We're in Bay St. Louis, Mississippi.  You wouldn't believe all the Mardi Gras stuff in this part of the world.  It's very big! We are watching a parade on TV as we speak.  (Kinda cool.) The Mardi Gras celebrations started while we were in the Houston area.

We went down to Galveston to see how much had been repaired since the Hurricane.  And we saw ads for their Parades on the weekend.  Glad we missed it. It seems that every little town has a Mardi Gras parade. We were celebrating your dad's birthday.  We drove the whole island's Sea Wall Dr.  It's a nice tourist spot.

From Houston and the noisy RV park (right on the I-10) to Lafayette, Louisiana where we were way out in the country.  Nice and quiet!   From there we went to Avery Island to the Tabasco factory.  Then we went to the Konriko Rice mill.  Of course, in the two days we were there we ate lots of yummy Cajun food. Crawdads are in season now.  We had a good time there .  The people are really friendly.

We got rain last night (boy Howdy) and the Robins are in huge flocks eating bugs etc. in the grass.  It's still 37 degrees and it's 10:20 am.  After awhile we might drive into Biloxi to view the Gulf some more.  It surely is pretty down here.  

Our first week

We're having a bit of trouble with our blog.  We can't get the pictures to up load.  I think the blog program has been changed.  I need to figure it out.  So no photos this week. 

We are in San Antonio until Tuesday morning.  We went to The Alamo today and walked around on the River walk.  This time we took a tour on a river barge.  It was fun. 

I'll try again next week with the pictures.

Love. Mom and Dad

Bryce Canyon

The scenery up there is amazing.

You can see forever.

This is Goblin Valley about thirty miles from Capitol Reef. We sat up at the vista point and ate lunch.  Doesn't look all that big.

But look how big they are with us standing next to the "Goblins."

Today we hooked up with a bunch of friends from our Alaska RV tour.  We piled into a car and a pick-up and went to see Arches.  Had a blast.

The arches are the same we saw years ago.  Beautiful!

North and South Windows

Double Arches

A trail between two rock fins.  It was a bit muddy.  We had a pretty good day before the thunder storm started.  We all got back into the cars just before the rain started.  The lightning was a lot brighter and more noisy than at home.  But we had a good time.  Your dad and I came back into Moab to the post office to get our mail and had to go through a huge mud flood in town.  Glad we left the park when we did.  This evening we went back into town for dinner with our friends and where the floods were was just muddy roads and parking lots.  Ick

 

We finally have 4G here on the phone so I could sent a bunch of photos.  But I don't remember all the places we've visited in the last two weeks and I'm too lazy to look up in my pictures.  Besides we're having too much fun to stop that long and look up things.  And let me tell you I've taken about 75 pictures a day. It  would take all night to go through them all. 

 

Tomorrow we are all going to Canyon Land with everyone.  Most of our friends leave Wednesday morning, but we stay one more day.  We're not sure where we're going but there is still tons of stuff to see here in the Moab area.  That's all for tonight.

Love, Mom and Dad   

We haven't had good wifi here in rural Utah so no pictures this time.  We went to Bryce Canyon and I took 78 pictures on the first day we were there.  We stayed at Ruby's Inn for three nights.  Nice place.  From there we went to came up Utah 12 to Torrey.  Here we went to Capitol Reef and Goblin Valley.  We're leaving for Moab in the morning.  Maybe in Moab we'll have better luck with pictures.  Love Ya, Mom and Dad

Idaho

We visited the World Center for Birds of Prey while in Boise.  This is a gyrfalcon.  Who's watching who?

They have a live show every day.  This was a bird that will be in a free-flying show in October.  Very interesting.

We walked down on that trail overlooking the Snake River.  There is a golf course down there.

Another view

This bridge use to be the tallest bridge in the country.  It is over 400 feet tall.

We drove over to Shoshone Falls.  It is just a trickle this year.  They are doing some construction work and have diverted the falls for a while.  I'll bet it is beautiful when running full force.

This is the opposite direction.

Your dad looking into the sun.

And me looking into the sun.

 

The weather here has been coolish this week.  Last night it got down to about 45. The warmest today was 60.  So of course we needed sweaters.  We leave in the morning for Arco.  More later

Love, Mom and Dad