Cocoa Beach New Year's Eve

We cut across Florida to St. Augustine and then took highway 1A1 down the coast to Cocoa Beach. Lulu got her first sight of the Atlantic ocean. It was a little chilly.
It is kind of a amazing to drive for miles along the beach with old life oaks and palms and pine trees on one side and condos on the other. I would have like to have seen it 40 years ago.

We are at the Best Western at Cocoa Beach. We are with our friends from Oregon. (See the previous post) The internet service is pretty bad.

I think we are going to BBQ in the back yard. The plan was to hang out on our balcony and watch fireworks but we don't have quite the view as described by Orbitz. Nor are our rooms quite as close as we thought.

Also, Duck Dynasty should boycott Cracker Barrel because Cracker Barrel is kind of nasty. "Cheeze" grits and turnip greens don't really turn a Denny's into soul food. Although antiques on wall always makes it feel like home.

Anyway, got to get the daughter to the beach! Happy Nude Year!!!

Saw a pelican.

Christmas in the Pine Woods

We left internet access Christmas Eve. It is not so much that we are deep in the Pine Woods of Florida.

With the Robertsons...

But rather we spent Christmas with some friends who don't have wireless internet broadcast throughout the house.

Many years ago I worked for a farmer in Florida. I baled straw. Why I would go from one end of the USA to the other to bale wheat straw has been a much debated point in my life. Perhaps it had something to do with my affection for girls with southern accents, perhaps it is the boil peanuts and fried chicken, or it could have been that I baled straw 50 miles from Panama City Beach, the redneck rivera... Very nice folks. I would make more comments but they may read the blog and I don't want them to get "big heads" until I'm gone.

Our last stop in "civilization" was a synagogue in St. Petersburg which features a stained glass window which MuddyValley spent a year of his life making.
We made a few affectionate jokes about Mr. MuddyValley being somewhat meticulous. I must say a photograph does not do it justice!
I suggest clicking on the photo to enlarge it.

I'm posting from the McDonald's in Blountstown, FL.
Drinking sweet tea.
We are heading to Cocoa Beach with Mr. Robertson as pictured above.  with friends. It was his parents and family we spent Christmas with. We have been friends for many years. That may change when he reads this blog...
Happy New Year!
I have no corn photos.

To Tallahassee

We were going to Tarpon Springs...
Daughter had a rough night.
Yesterday was good. I called a friend who is a nurse and found out what we were doing wrong. She has spent every winter in FL, (except this one of course) She said to drag Lulu down to the pool or the beach and the sea air would clear her out and cool her down. She was right.
We sat at the pool and watched the local sunbathers. I like the old leathery ones who chain smoke. Like a dried up strip of gater jerky with perfect boobies bolted on three-quarters of the way down.
But...they are usually friendly.
We got rid of any asprin. You would not believe how many over the counter medications have asprin and you do not want to kid a kid with a fever asprin.
We bought night time nyquil cause "It's the good stuff, It's like Whiskey and helps you sleep"
We forgot about the possibility of freaky dreams that come from Nyquil induced sleep.
It all started around 11 p.m.
Headache and fever....and coughing
So we went to washcloths on the forehead.
I'd get her cooled down and she would sleep and then wake up.
Sometime though my wife took over, (bless her heart and I crashed)
There was a bit of a storm this morning which I missed.
There are clouds and wind and a little rain.
It is kind of nice.
There have been a few more items dropped from todays plans.
1. most likely we will not extensively tour Muddy Valley's life work
2. most likely not going to tarpon springs

But, we are coming back with our friends after Christmas.
Lulu is feeling better this morning.

The world looks different at 9 a.m. than it does at 3 a.m.

Yesterday evening mildly annoyed at the drunk people yelling and the Bob Marley oldies guy at our hotel bar and his war of the oldies with the one-man-band next door. I started to write a blog about it. Apparently I was at the "push send" stage when the daughter started really coughing.
She developed a fever and started shaking.
I got a bucket of ice and wife got wash cloths and we took turns cooling her down. We thought it was going to be ok at 11 and wife went after more supplies.
It was the worst from 3 a.m. to 5 a.m.
We started wondering how things were at the ER room at the St. Petersburg Beach hospital.
It is 9 a.m. and things are better.
For those of you who are the praying sort, this would be a good time for that.
We may not make it to see MuddyValley's life work in stained glass today or and melting clocks today.
Glad we are NOT camping.

Dueling Pathetic One Man Bands at St. Pete Beach-the post I forgot to publish at 10 p.m. Sunday Evening

So...
I was heavily lobbying for camping. We were looking at Ft. DeSoto park. Beachfront camping spots for $35. We even bought a tent. We were trying to figure out how to brew coffee without spending too much money on camping supplies.
Then everyone got sick.
So we scrubbed travel and adventure for a comfortable hotel room. We are back at the Howard Johnson at St. Pete Beach. Went shopping at Publix cause we couldn't find a Piggly-Wiggly.
However, my brain is about to explode from 1. Thumpy Bass Music, 2. Dueling mediocre one man bands. 3. Dueling mediocre one man bands and 20 something males whooping. 4. Middle aged morons revving their fake Harley's.
The beach is nice.
We are still coughing.
I will be well tomorrow.
Things that I can deal with, Freezing cold hotel room, roasting hotel room, bugs in the drawers, being sick, getting lost, traffic jams...

St. Pete again

We are at the Postcard Inn at Saint Petersburg Beach.
St. Pete is neat little town. Everyone tells us things have built up a lot and the problem with Florida is all the Northerners that have moved down here.
All the waitstaff are from other places, we found that out right away, they just pick up the accent after like six months.
There are a lot of old buildings from the 1960's-1970's. It is a lot cleaner than I remember Florida from the 1980's. It is cheaper to buy a house here than in Oregon.
I have a CDL, I could drive a dump truck here.
The Postcard Inn is old. It appears to have been recently renovated. Our room is straight out of Crate & Barrel. It looks nice. The beds are good, bathroom in in good shape, (other than one serious issue I will discuss at the end) and it is clean.

Hotel is set up so there is a big internal courtyard. There are nice comfy seats setting around. They have a fire pit and a ping pong table.
We did not try the cafe. There is a restaurant in the lobby which looks cool but we used up our budget for this week and we didn't try it.
Now here is the problem and it is the problem with most resort/beach hotels I've stayed in. On both coasts.
There is always something wrong.
In this case it was that the A/C seemed to be stuck on 60 degrees. This was not what we wanted when sick.
When we walked down the row of rooms to room 267 we noticed the doors were open on quite a few rooms. When we passed those rooms we could actually feel the cold air flowing out.
We did meet some nice local people who were in the process of getting smashed. They had even spent time in Oregon. We had a nice conversation. They had skied Bachelor.
They said if we called the front desk they would bring us a heater.
The phone was busy.
I went to the desk. I wish they would have been just a little more cheerful. I like places where the front desk people are happy.
They were out of heaters. After a half hour or so we got extra blankets. Two hours later they called an offered a heater.
I think they did care.
Since we are all a little grumpy I will reserve judgement. We are moving back to the Howard Johnson tomorrow. They had a beach front room available and it is a lot better to be sick when you can actually see the ocean.
I would stay here again, if the Howard Johnson was full.

Now here is some important/essential info on the Postcard Inn that you won't read in any guidebooks. It is not suitable for younger readers and somewhat embarrassing. However, if you are a guy of reasonable dimensions, beware of the toilets.
The distance between the seat and the water level in the toilet is such that if you adopt the classic thinker pose you can have a rather unpleasant experience, if you know what I mean. Being a rather fastidious person it was quite the traumatic situation for me. Being in the company of women I was unable to explain why I was screaming in the restroom. I said I saw a spider. But then they wanted to know why I needed someone to slide the packet of wet wipes under the door.

Sanibel Island

Yesterday we stood in front of the milepost 0 sign at Sanibel Island. We looked for seashells. It was hot. The wind was blowing. The German tourists looked like they were really having a good time.
We sat down.
After a brief discussion we came to the discussion that we felt like crap and beautiful as it was, there was no point in setting in the hot sun to the point that we were going to end up stuck in rush hour on I-75.
So we gave our parking pass to a nice elderly couple from Minnesota, who were trying to figure out how the parking pass vending machine actually worked, and we hit the road.
We are all sick at this point. A lot of deep coughing, aching joints, tired, but hey! -we are at the Beach!