Pat and I have just returned from a two week trip to Florida. We spent five
days in the Coco Beach area and then the balance of our time in the Venice area
on the Gulf coast. The trip was a great escape from the winter cold as we left
it was -21 deg and tonight the forecast is once again for -20deg .... ARGH! Oh
well, spring should be here in a couple of months. We were "on our own" while in
Coco Beach and visiting friends in Venice. Thanks to Trudy, Rod and Meridith as
well as other friends that shared their time and homes with us.
We spent considerable time on the beach while in Coco Beach. We saw several
cruise ships each day departing for the Bahamas and elsewhere. One ship had us
confused since we saw it seemingly sailing little. We discovered later that it
was a "gambling ship" and just sailed a minimum of 3 miles out where passengers
could legally gamble ... free coldcuts and treats in hope that you will loose
lots of $$. "Sorry, NOT my cup of tea!" It seemed that there were plenty of
people on shore what would help one get rid of money.
It was funny, once we got back home, Pat was going through some old records.
She discovered that we had stayed across the street from were we stayed in Coco Beach on our June 26-27, 1982 trip to see the Columbia STS4 Space Shuttle
launch. (It was the Columbia that broke apart over Texas on Feb 1, 2003.) We
missed the Florida landing of Atlantis STS122 by less than 8 hrs on this trip.
Many many memories of our 1982 trip while visiting the "Space Coast",very hard
to think about the shuttles having been around for over 25 years and such a
step "backwards" for the future in maned flight for the USA when the shuttle
retires in a short 30 months.
We had a day-trip while in Coco Beach up to the Daytona area to visit a radio friend and while there we took in a tour of the Daytona race track where 4 days earlier Ryan Newman had won the Daytona 500 to open the 2008 NASCAR season. Quite a facility it is. The 31degree banked corners and just the size of the track. Very hard to get a grasp of the speed of these cars until you see the size of the track and knowing that they take a lap in less than 50sec!
Once we moved to Venice and visiting our friends Rod and Meridith we made a trip over to the Myakka river state park. LOTs of people. Florida is in dry period like all of the SE US, so not as much marsh activity as we had seen before but we still saw lots of birds and a few gators. This bird is an Anhinga, drying his wings, a common pose from these guys. The gator was a small fellow, only about 5ft long, sunning in the river.
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