February 29, 2008 (Fri)
Lake Kissimmee SP, FL to Plant City, FL (112/2718 miles)
Today was one of those days that just didn't seem to go right. It started almost as soon as we got up. Sometime before we got under way at 9:00 (sunny 53°) Mark's glasses fell apart in his hands - the temple broken. So we would need to hunt up a Pearle Vision store. Hildene found one in Brandon, a few miles beyond Plant City. Posted gas prices as we started out ranged from $3.15 to $3.35 a gallon so when we saw a sign showing $3.13 we stopped - even though we really didn't need to. When the tank was near full, Mark discovered that the pump showed that the price was $3.17. It turned out that $3.13 was the cash and proprietary credit card price. If we won't talk about the difficulty we had getting turned around on busy Brandon Blvd, the stop at Pearle Vision was entirely successful. Costco was our next stop and by then it was lunch time. A Steak and Shake across the street seemed a good choice. It wasn't! The food was OK but the bill got screwed up. Among other things, they charged us full price for the discount burgers we'd bought. Then the waitress/cashier couldn't figure out how to make the correction in the cash register. Instead, she gave us coupons good only in Steak and Shake restaurants in Florida. We probably won't use them!
Finding a library with a high speed internet connection was our next job. One "library" turned out to be the offices for Tampa area library administers. An other was a recreation park - not much more that a building with a few tight parking spaces - without a hint of a WiFi signal. We knew that Plant City had a library but Hildene didn't. We stopped at a visitor's center and asked directions. Although connected to the internet in the library, Mark could neither send nor receive email. He was able to update our financial data though. One small step.
We got to Ruth and Gordy's about 2:30pm - and found we hadn't needed to hunt up a library at all. They had DSL and a neighbor's WiFi signal was strong enough to use.
March 1, 2008 (Sat) Plant City, FL (2) - Alafia River State Park is a park we've considered staying in but never have. It has hiking (and biking and horseback riding) trails and was our day trip destination today. Ruth and Gordy like to hike and have checked out several of the parks in the area to do so but had not been there. Apparently the main attraction of this park is its mountain bike trails. The place was overrun with colorful spandex outfits. The trails for the bikers were graded as to difficulty and looked interesting but too challenging for us. Fortunately the walking and multipurpose trails were more suitable for us older folks. The trail we chose to take first was shown on the maps to be a 3/4 mile loop but we must have missed a turn somewhere because we ended up walking much further than that.
Q042535 Parked (x2)
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March 2, 2008 (Sun)
Plant City, FL to Lake Manatee SP, Bradenton, FL (74/2792 miles)
Plant City is the home of Florida's annual week long Strawberry Festival. This was the week. There would be some, many perhaps, who would think that being so close and missing it demonstrates some kind of character flaw. Well so be it. Actually we didn't miss it by much. We got off from Ruth and Gordy's at about 11.15 (sunny 74°) and went in search of a Publix Supermarket. Hildene suggested several. We chose the closest south of where we were at the time. We should have been suspicious when she turned us North but we (Mark anyway) tend to trust her directions. We ended up driving right by the main(?) entrance to the festival - along with everyone else in the state. Much fun!
March 3, 2008 (Mon) Lake Manatee State Park (2) - We think this is the park where Bob and Pat stayed a month or so ago. (If so, Frau Tinka must have moved on, Bob). It's a beautiful park with both high and low vegetation separating the moderately spaced sites. We thought for a while this morning that the sound of power boats on the lake might be a problem - it was as if they were trying to make as much noise as possible while not going anywhere. But it didn't last.
At about 10:00 Joy's sister called and suggested that she come up and take her back to her mother's while Mark waited for Q's appointment in Sarasota - he was having have his refrigerator looked at. Joy agreed and at 11:30 took off leaving Mark to fend for himself. Joy had a great time. Mark just hung out.
Lake Manatee State Park #10 e/w $17.00 A+
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March 4,2008 (Tue)
Lake Manatee SP to Englewood, FL (71/2863 miles)
Q's appointment was for 10:30 so there was no hurry getting off. At about 9:30 (overcast 74°) Mark and Q pulled away from the holding tank dump station and headed West on SR64 toward Bradenton, then South on I-75.
Mobil Service Inc., just North of the Sarasota/Bradenton International Airport, is probably one of the best RV repair there is. They were able to diagnose and repair a refrigerator problem in Concourse Q (Q1) that other facilities had charged many dollars to guess at without fixing. When the refrigerator in Destiny Q (Q2) developed a similar problem - apparently a chronic problem with Domenic refrigerators - that's where we took him for the 30 minute circuit board replacement. We knew the cut and paste (literally) repair we'd had done in Miami was temporary. There was never any doubt that Mobil Service would be the place to place that knew what was going on and how to fix it. The owner(?) took one quick look and determined at once that it was part of the "recall" package we'd installed before we left home. Domenic should have know what that part was!! It took him 45 minutes on the phone with Domenic to first explain what the part was, what the problem was and to get the authorization to install (free to us) a new recall package. The fellow who actually did the work looked in the compartment and said, "What a hack job." Not only had the service people at home (Risco, Ed) done a poor job - installing some improvised parts instead of those supplied by Domenic and installing others, including the blown thermal fuse, improperly - but broke the 120v connection to the cooling unit and covered it up by bending the broken part in such a way as to allow the ends of the broken wire to connect. He couldn't believe the refrigerator actually worked while on shore power. We had to buy a new cooling unit and have it installed! While there, Q also had a new water intake check valve installed and the TV antenna fixed - it wouldn't rotate.
Mark drove into Englewood at about 3:00 sans lunch and very hungry. Joy fixed him a reuben.
Q042680 SunTrust Bank parking lot (parked)
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