Made it to Florida!

Well, I have actually made it to Florida, which will be a great relief to my niece Meg and nephew Walt.

I was headed for O'Lena State Park.  But, I took a couple of hours off on the way to listen to the UK - Alabama women's b-ball game (yet another win for our girls despite some sloppy ball-handling in the second half); and when I was about 15 miles north of the park and called, they told me they were locking up.  It was sundown and one of my rules is to not go into a back-in camping site after dark with no one to help me back in.  Lucky for me, I virtually immediately spotted Casey Jones RV Park, where they welcomed me and promptly put me on a most homely, but drive-through, corner site with full amenities. It's just off I-75; but the wind must be different here (as compared to the Chattanooga Camper's Word campground), because I have my windows open and can barely hear the road (although, this might, of course, be a combination of exhaustion and my increasingly frustrating hardness of hearing).

It was  VERY good to cross the Florida line, over 700 miles from Lawrenceburg, KY.  And though I am still in the north, I have seen plenty of Spanish moss (which started up in Georgia) and an increasing number of palm trees.  Tomorrow, as I head for Sarasota, I hope to start seeing some cranes along the way --  my very favorite thing about driving south in Florida. (Although I do love the pheasants along our road at home at least as much.)

I hope tomorrow to get to Myakka River State Park for the better part of a week.  This park comes highly recommended by our friend, Sue Strong.  I plan to sleep the first day or so, then get around the park on my sweet little 1984 Honda Gyro -- a three-wheeled scooter that they made for just a couple of years in the mid-1980s.  I will post a picture of it tomorrow, riding on the back of the buggy.  It's hard to imagine a cuter scooter.  Just ask my sister, Eileen, who keeps hoping I will give it to her, since it's too slow for me to use it safely to go to town in L'burg (although it was perfect in Lexington).  I'm looking forward to Myakka -- I feel like I've been working much too hard since leaving KY Thursday.  (I do, of course, have a vague recollection of when I would have done this all in one swoop . . .)

After that, I'll backtrack north to Tampa, where I plan to stay in a more urban campground in the hope that I'll be able to do some things around Tampa on the bike.  And then I'll be a couple of days around the University of South Florida.

After that, it's south again to Ft. Meyers to meet up with Jen and our friends Janet and Mead for a week in a women's resort there. It is called Carefree, and we mean this to be our celebration of Jennifer's conclusion of the better part of a year of fairly rough treatment for inflammatory breast cancer.  We were, in fact, in FL with Mead and Janet last year at this time when Jennifer arrived with unmistakable symptoms.  So, this is a celebratory closure for us, who remain more relieved than we could ever say at her treatment going so well.  We most look forward to bird watching with Janet, who is an expert and a FABULOUS wildlife photographer.

After that, I will head north, skipping the Keys this year since I can already tell I'll be happy to be heading home after Ft. Meyers.  Still, I do plan to loiter a bit on the Florida panhandle.  I have wanted for years and years to go to Apalachicola.  I have no good reason for this (I am the same way about St. John's Newfoundland) and I greatly look forward to it -- like scratching an itch . . . .