Our Whirlwind Week is Over, and Successful

We made our way back down to Florida a week ago to get in position for my procedure at the Sarasota hospital bright and early Friday morning.  We drove through the worst weather we have ever experienced in all our years of traveling.  Torrential rain, fog, no visibility, all to be topped off with extraordinary winds that threatened to blow us off the road.  300 miles of constant challenge. We saw many accidents, close calls, and even trees down blocking a lane on the interstate so I can't tell you what a relief it was to arrive at our campground for the week. And we passed a milestone that I usually take a quick pic of, turning 200,000 miles, but I was just a bit too busy to do it:-) 

And speaking of the campground, since there was no room at the inn where we have stayed each winter we chose another place in Bradenton, a bit north of Sarasota proper instead of south.  We are very pleased with our new find, Timberlane RV Park.  It is a smaller park, about 100 sites, very quiet, no activities, although it has a pool.  It is 55 and over, mostly dark, all paved roads with large sites and no park models.  It really impresses us, and the owner could not be nicer.

So after a long 9 hours in the hospital, I was released to go after a successful procedure.

Still kicking

It turned out that coincidentally Jan's sister Karen came into town the same day to get ready for she and Tom to leave, so we were able to get together with them several times and also another treat as we were joined at dinner by our nephew, Walker and Mirasol.  So although we bid good bye to Karen and Tom yesterday, they are going to catch back up with us next week outside of Nashville for a few days before we each part ways on our individual trips.

I have been resting up, but still enjoying going out and around.  Today we went to a place we have been talking about for a long time, Starfish, and since it is near Anna Maria island, and pretty far from Nokomis we hadn't made it.  Now that we are here in Bradenton it is much more convenient.  So even out of season now, the traffic was pretty dense, it took 45 minutes to go the 17 miles.  

The restaurant and seafood market is right on the dock and has been there 100 years!  It is rustic and very crowded.  We talked to a few regulars and it seems that it was kind of a sleepy hole in the wall until the New York Times as well as other media outlets made it famous.  The restaurant part opens at 1130am, and when we got there then, there were already tons of people  milling about.  Someone helped us with the procedure, they have 20 numbers out, you pick whichever one is on top, ours was 17, and then queue in order in line, 1, 2, 3..........  We finally got to order about 1 hour later.  It is cash only, order at the window, then they come out, call your name, and hand you your food, meanwhile you try to snag a table somewhere.  Interesting.

We had a delicious fish chowder, fried scallops, and a grouper sandwich, all were very good, but  exceptional enough for us to go through this whole long procedure again, no, we both decided.  It was great food, but other equally great food is available all over the area.  We were glad we got an opportunity to try it.  In this case my pictures aren't very good:-(

Also, our future plans have changed again.  When we left RCR we indicated we had found another park and we had, made reservations and everything, but we found we really like this place.  It is closer by 10 miles, it is well established, has nice shade, very quiet, and as it turned out they had a couple open sites for the season, we picked one we liked on a pond, and we now have a reservation here for next season:-)

Our new site

Another shot

So today we head north and get on with our travels, unbelievably we will be in Maine in 2 weeks!  Our detour back to Florida messed with our plans a bit, but if it fixed me, it was obviously worth it.  Cheers!