Month: March 2020

Today’s adventure has us taking a Lyft to Ybor City, (pronounced EE-bore) aka Cuba Town, known for it’s Cuban cigar making and restaurants.What we didn’t expect is roosters & chickens run free.What’s with that?  Oh those stairs!

I take some interesting photos, don’t you think?We encounter smoke, from where? This cigar, smoke billows from the bottom. Although the sun is shining it is a bit nippy; we want to warm up so pop into The Big Easy.Roosters here too You encounter some strange restrooms.  This, not so clean, bathtub is the sink.

Ybor’s main street 

Wall art!Last camp we learned about alligators.  This one chickens/roosters; didn’t know they could climb trees.

Apparently  it isn’t a fun fact!

My favourite

 

 

 

 

 

So many choices for dinner.  We decide upon the town’s oldest restaurant built on an entire block Columbia Restaurant Allan ordered their signature 1905 Salad (The Columbia’s legendary
salad tossed tableside. Crisp iceberg lettuce* with julienne of baked ham, natural Swiss cheese, tomato, olives, grated Romano cheese, Lea &
Perrins® Worchester sauce and our famous garlic dressing) and Cuban Sandwich (The “Mixto,” as it was known in the beginning, was created in the 1890s for the cigar workers as they walked to and from work. The sandwiches underwent changes as immigrants from different countries
came to Ybor City. The Spanish brought the fine ham, the Sicilians the Genoa salami, the Cubans the mojo-marinated roast pork, the Germans
and Jews the Swiss cheese, pickle and mustard. Put it all together between sliced, freshly baked  Cuban bread). 

I was going to have that too but then the shrimp called me. Shrimp Supreme (large shrimp is wrapped in wafer thin bacon, marinated and fried with yellow rice.)

We walk around a bit more, before heading back stop off at TBBC for a flight.

Waiting for our Lyft, we see Tampa’s skyline Back at the resort we enjoy some live entertainment.  The bass player was entertaining, he twirled the bass-never saw that before.

It’s official!!  The gators won but maybe we’ll prevail here?Travel day to Seffner FL  It’s a 59 m drive but we’ll be stopping at our first Pubix Super Market and Walmart.  Leave at 930a 63,478k

It’s an eventful drive, we thought traffic maybe bad but no so that’s good.  There is a Walmart as well so do the necessities shopping there.   Groceries at the Pubix. 

Head out to LazyDayz RV Park.  This park attached to a dealer, so I didn’t know what to expect.   All good, sites are closer together than we’d like but…Bonus! Free breakfasts at the dealer’s cafeteria every morning  🙂

 

 

We check things out and find the hot tubThere is a restaurant/bar attached to the hot tub/pool area interestingly built around a bus Allan must drive everything!Love the counter top, not only has our name but checkered flags

Last full day here!  We’re going to the exercise class at 9a but first a gator check walk.  We’ve walked by this so often, finally occurred to me to take a photo #Poinsettia growing in a tree.

We’ve never been this early so maybe?? 

Nada!

Back to exercise class, then breakfast, then some work, then get showered up and off we go for another check.  It’s easy getting our 10k/steps with all this gator chasing.  This cutie is checking us out on our way by

Don’t really have to say but nothing again.

In the hot tub we meet a guy who took one trip to the pond and spotted one of the smaller ones.  

Think we know who got the last laugh!

Open the blinds to see these birdsGoogle teaches me they are Great Egret.  

During breakfast we receive a call from an unknown 800 number, we continue eating.  We’re surprised they leave a message.   It’s RBC leaving an automated message, letting us know the only US credit card we have with us has been compromised, the account may be frozen.  The message lists the last few charges, they aren’t ours.  The charge that caused the alert was a Walmart in California for $137.11.  There were also 2 charges of .01 each and a declined movie theatre charge.  We’re happy they caught it but it’s a mystery how they did.  We shop at Walmart and have been travelling so why did that seem like a fraud call.  I would have thought the 2 one cent charges would have been more suspicious.  Allan calls, he wastes at least 2 hours – each call after the recording recaps the charges, says you must wait for the next rep, minutes later – the dreaded recording “we are too busy now, try your call again later”. They hang up.

They did say, may be frozen so we go to the grocery store and purchase a few items.  Yes it’s declined.  Back in Bailey, Allan gets a

Call the number on the back of the card!!  He gets a live person within minutes.  They will send a replacement card to our campground so we should have a new card by Monday!   Fingers crossed!

Next! Today’s gator check

Still nothing 

Try again in the afternoon, still nothing  How can he be such a good hider?

We head out for our walk to find alligators, again!  They say, where there is water there is an alligator.  Allan keeps hoping we’ll see the resident alligator, it’s supposed to be 6 feet long. You’d think it would be easy to spot.

The ground shuffleboard area is empty so we decide to give it a go.  We don’t know the rules, scoring or which side of the disc is up.  We each attempt using the 4 discs – woohoo I get +10; Allan -10.  We decide we should read the rules.

Onwards we go,Still no sightings 🙁

Today’s highlight!  We move sites from A15 to A18.

A18 is a nicer site in that we look out at grass not the very close neighbour’s stinky slinky.To make this minor, move over change, we still must put everything away, close the slides and retract the jacks.  We carry the Traeger, stand and chairs. We drive round the block and into our new spot.  Now have to unpack the dishes, open the slides, drop the jacks.  It took about 50 minutes.

Allan is determined to see an alligator, so off on our daily walk to the pond’s lookout.

None here

Nor here

Alligator fun facts that will amaze.  Allan has decided if he has to come back as an animal he’d choose an alligator.

Lesson of the day!  Our neighbours arrive with their “toad”.  A vehicle that is “towed” behind an RV.  He detaches the toad and walks to the front of his RV not noticing the toad starts rolling back.  We weren’t at our site so missed it but we’re told it started off very slowly then gained momentum and crashed into a pick up parked across the street.  Issue?  When you tow the vehicle must be in neutral, he forgot to put it in park.  His wife was none to impressed as it is her vehicle and it’s still new.

Cramped spaces but a picturesque park.

They say, in Florida, where there is water there are gators.

Allan on patrol

Gators = zero    Fancy birds = galore

We are learning a thing in these parks are jams, so we’ll go

Tropic Star was Rock & Roll, this one more country.  Not a country fan, hot tub here we come.

Travel day!   Wake up to frost Goodbye Cottondale.   Goodbye to Bobour favourite Love’s

287 mile, 4h drive time, starting mileage 63,007km, leave at 848a

Hello Bushnell!  and the Paradise Oak Resort

Hum, a little more like a parking lot than a resort…

Console ourselves with