Sunday Drive

Aric spent his vacation with us, so we had the pleasure of having his company for this past week.  This is the most time that we have had with him since we left Clermont, so it was a real treat that he did choose to spend the time here.  He went back home on Sunday so we headed out for a Sunday drive afterwards.

Arcadia ended up being our final destination and there was plenty to see along the way.

Special Sunday Drive

I haven't been blogging due to an unfortunate laptop and hard drive death that has me grieving for a few days and then working hard to get my new laptop set up the way I want it for several more days.  I did grab the camera yesterday and determined to blog our Sunday drive.

This one was extra special because Nathan got to pick what he wanted to do in honor of his 46th birthday that is happening in a few days.

We headed out bright and early and started out towards a new destination.  New to us at least.  We stopped at our local raw honey supplier first.

We encountered a neat little plane that flew right in front of us, very low to the ground.  Since we were in the country and there were no cars, Nathan stopped long enough for him to do another pass in front of us.

Then we passed one of FPL's power plants.

We passed the really neat Railroad Museum that the guys took the kids on the hobo train ride while Diana and I did scrapbooking together.

If anyone who knows this area has not figured out where we were going yet, the next few clues should give it away.  We went on a very cool bridge.  That is even cooler when driving with the convertible top down.

And we landed here:

We spent the whole day there, visiting the Sunken Gardens, eating a special dinner and then heading over to Fort De Soto county park.  We some some really special things while at the park, but I'll have to share that later because I have far too many pictures and words to fit them all in one blog post.  We had a great Sunday drive and Nathan said his pre-birthday celebration day was wonderful.

Sunday Drive #2

Even though this is almost a week old by now, I still wanted to share another one of our Sunday drives.  This one we kept pretty local, circling in a radius of about 20 miles and seeing exactly what is here.  We headed down to Arcadia where we saw our old campground, which is also named Peace River.

 

 We have a lot of good memories of our time there.  We had no idea when we first started hanging out there that it was a part of our journey to become full timers.  Now I feel even more warm and fuzzy towards the place knowing it was a key part of getting us from there to here.

We saw a local country club near Ona.  Really snooty looking place, isn't it?

We saw many other cool buildings, and another snooty looking pub named Charlotte's Web.

 We saw lots of animals. A cactus.  A lumberyard. 

 And my personal favorite from this week, an old barn.

Living the life in Sunny Florida!

Sunday Drive

A few years ago when we were in California, I wrote about how we took a Sunday drive and that I would like to start doing that more often.  For various reasons, that just did not happen though.  Fuel cost and usage for a huge truck like ours makes tooling around just to see the scenery not a very practical idea.  When you are traveling as a way of life, tooling around and seeing the scenery happens often enough that you don't really need Sunday as a reason to do it.  To be honest, when we traveled all the time we never knew what day it was so we wouldn't have been able to consistently pin down when Sunday was!  So although we did not end up making it a part of our lives as a regular thing, I was ok with that.

For the past year, we have not traveled as much as we have desired so we have tried to figure out new ways to satisfy the travel itch we suffer from.  So for the past few weeks, we have taken Sunday drives.  And I'm loving every minute of these trips.  I have enjoyed seeing the area surrounding where we are temporarily planted at.  I have enjoyed the gorgeous weather we have been experiencing.  I have enjoyed baby calves and horses.

And I have enjoyed snapping shots out the window that are what I call my drive by shootings where the car is moving too fast to get a great shot, but I still love seeing what I captured when I get home.

There are some really neat things to see even in the middle of Nowhere, Florida.  I think we will stick with Sunday drives until we start hauling our house around the country again.

Living the life in sunny Florida!