Bathrooms and Bathing Suits......

Disclaimer:  If you are male, you probably won’t get/appreciate this as much as the women will.  Feel free to read it anyway if you want to.

Pat and I had signed up for a day trip when our cruise ship docked in Freeport Harbour (details on our cruise in a future blog post).  It included a bus tour of historic sites on Grand Bahama Island, a nature hike, and a guided snorkeling trip.  We arrived at the meeting point early (those of you who know us well are not at all surprised by this!); so, I decide I have plenty of time to go to the bathroom before the tour starts.  I’m wearing a one-piece swim suit with a t-shirt and capri pants over it and tennis shoes.  Oh, and prescription sunglasses.  I’m pleasantly surprised that the bathroom itself looks fairly new and clean; however, neither stall has a working lock.  Not really a problem, it's a really small stall and I’ll just hold the door shut from the inside with my hand.  I’m usually pretty good about checking out the toilet paper situation before I use the toilet; however, this restroom was dark (no lights, just filtered day light through tinted windows) and I couldn’t take off my prescription sunglasses if I wanted to be able to see anything at all.  Anyway, I neglected to check out the TP situation. 

Now the biggest problem with one-piece bathing suits is going to the bathroom.  You can either take your top off (and figure out what the heck to do with it) and then drop both your pants and your swim suit (risking them both ultimately landing on a bathroom floor with who knows what on it) or just pull down your pants (as usual) and hold the crotch of the swim suit to one side with your hand.  I prefer the second method.  So, I use the facility and look around and don’t see any TP.  Remember, now it’s really dark because the door has blocked most of the light and I still have my sunglasses on!  Finally locate it on a shelf behind the toilet.  However, both of my hands are occupied (holding swim suit and holding door); so I stick one foot out to hold the door, and reach around behind me for the TP.  Since my two back surgeries, twisting around is not the easiest thing in the world in best of circumstances.  Of course, I knock the first roll off onto the floor; but do manage to barely snag the second (final) roll with my fingertips.  So now I’ve got one foot holding the door, one hand holding the roll of TP, and the other hand holding my swim suit.  No way to unroll any TP.  Finally stick the roll of TP under my chin and use my now free hand to gingerly unroll it which was difficult because by now I’ve kind of started to laugh as I realize how really ridiculous this is!  So now I’ve used the toilet paper, but still have the roll under my chin, can finally let go of my swim suit and take my foot off the door which then frees up a hand to put the toilet paper back.  By now, I’m flat out laughing.  Do not ask me why I didn’t just let the door swing open; I’m not all that modest and it was just a two stall bathroom.  AND during the entire time, I was the only person in there!  It just never occurred to me.

So I walk out shaking my head and rolling my eyes and Pat’s first question was, “What took you so long?”  I just burst out laughing and continue to laugh every time I think about it!

Cape Canaveral

Do they look chilly?  It's not all that warm today!

We had a nice relaxing few days here.  Unfortunately, the weather did not cooperate, so other than walking on the beach  (and seeing quite a few birds), we didn’t enjoy extensive sun and beach time.  We did take a drive south down Canaveral Island one day and drove by the Kennedy Space Center (decided the $50/per person entry charge and $10 parking fee were not worth a visit by us) on another day.  Also had a great seafood meal at a funky restaurant/bar right on the water just east of the cruise ship docks.

What a great name - "Fishlips"

Speaking of cruise ships:  our campground is right on a jetty bounded on the east by the Atlantic and on the north by the entrance to the Banana River and Port Canaveral.  The beach is beautiful and we can sit in “the 5^th” and watch the cruise ships come in and out of port.  It’s a lot of fun.  The ships blast their horns, play loud party music while the passengers line the decks.  Got us thinking:  maybe a cruise in our near future?

View from "the 5th" of Carnival ship leaving port.

Tomorrow we head north up the coast to St. Augustine, Florida where we plan to spend a month.  During the month, we plan to take a few days and visit Savannah, Georgia and Charleston, South Carolina (and go to a Mavericks concert).  And, we may squeeze in that cruise. 

Practicing for potential cruising!

Disney

End of the Day

Beginning of the day.

We left Homosassa Monday morning and had an easy drive to Orlando where we luckily got the back jack fixed (and covered under warranty!) in about an hour.  We were checked into a great KOA RV park and setup by early afternoon and took it easy for the rest of the day.  Thanks to our daughter, Sara, we had a great game plan for both Epcot and Animal Kingdom, including dinner reservations at Epcot.

We had a blast!!!  We were at Epcot when it opened at 9 a.m., and didn’t leave until the evening fireworks ended at 9:15 p.m.  I have to say we were exhausted and sore (feet, legs, etc. - remember, we are old, retired people!).  We did everything and some things more than once.  We floated over California in the awesome, beautiful, “Soarin” ride, designed our own race car and then zoomed around the track at 70 mph on “Test Track”.   

We took a trip into space on the green (lite) version of “Mission SPACE”, decided it was too tame, and turned right around and jacked it up to the orange (more intense) version on a second tour.  We took a breather and chilled with “The Seas with Nemo & Friends”.  THEN we tried out “The Sum of All Thrills”.  This is an attraction where you design your own thrill ride.  You decide if your ride is on a bobsled, a roller coaster, or a jet plane and then design the ride.  Well, of course, we picked the jet plane and designed a really cool ride.  The ride is entered into a computer and then you get in a simulator that lets you experience your ride including video and motion (you go upside down, etc.).  It was SO cool.  For those of you who don’t know, I am the ultimate mega-ride person.  The faster, the more turns, the more upside-downs, the better!  Even though Pat had his pilot’s license before his driver’s license, before he met me, he wasn’t much of a ride guy.  He didn’t “do” Ferris Wheels!  I have to say that he’s really evolved since then.  He enjoyed every ride and we both loved the “The Sum of All Thrills” ride so much that we decided to go back after lunch and do it again.  We decided to really go for it and designed a jet ride that included double barrel rolls a huge dive and massive turns.  The simulated ride was the best one of the day!

We had lunch in Morocco, bought pastries in France, had a glass of wine in Italy, ate a great dinner in Mexico, and watched the spectacular day-ending fireworks show while enjoying a last glass of wine.  We left sore and exhausted; but very happy and satisfied with the day.  I do love all types of lights on water.

On Safari

Beautiful

We got up bright and early the next day and headed for Animal Kingdom.  Went on Safari twice and to the top of Mt. Everest twice and several other rides and well as foot Treks through other animal features. 

                        

Another fun-filled day that ended, fortunately, earlier than the day before.  We were back at “the 5^th” before 5 p.m. with our sore feet up on our recliners, resting (as I said, we are old, retired, people)!  We are headed for Cape Canaveral on the Atlantic coast from here to enjoy a couple of days of beach time and relaxation before heading to St. Augustine for a month.

 

Florida Gulf Coast

Florida Woods

Florida Bayou

Soooo, here we are on the gulf coast of Florida.  The RV park is nice; however, there are a lot of older, retired folks here.  They play a version of miniature golf on the park roads (it’s kinda annoying when you are actually trying to drive on said roads!).  Pat "accidentally" drove over one of their golf balls.  Of course, "Big Bertha" squashed it flat.  Oh well, at least they had a marker to spot the new ball!  On the upside, we feel like young spring chickens here.

I guess we needed to go a little further south for those beautiful white sand beaches.  The beaches in this area are kind of few and far between (the nearest one to us is a thirty mile round trip) and not that big or beautiful.  The coast here is marshy and filled with a lot of wildlife and fish.  We did manage to avoid the freezing cold weather that hit the panhandle and northern Florida although we had some cool nights and rainy days.

Still the Best

We headed south to the Tampa/Clearwater area, saw a Willie Nelson concert, and spent the night.  We wandered our way around the bay area, took a neat bridge from Clearwater over to Tampa, drove around the bay and took a really awesome bridge back over to the Clearwater peninsula and then drove over to the gulf islands and drove north as far as possible before heading home.

Awesome!

We have found some great seafood here.  A Tiki Bar on the river that looks like a real dive serves wonderful mussels and shrimp.  Another one was right on the Homosassa River with a view to Monkey Island.

Homosassa River

Monkey Island

Right down the road from our RV park is a Florida State Wildlife Park.  Had a really nice time there seeing lots of Florida’s birds and animals.

Flamingos

Owls

We also visited the ruins of an old sugar plantation. We had planned to stay here for two weeks; but there really isn’t that much to interest us here.  One of the back jacks on “the 5^th” needs to be repaired. 



So, we changed our plans.  We are watching the Super Bowl and packing up to leave tomorrow and head to Orlando.   

Big Broncos Fan

           
We will stay there for three days, get the jack fixed, and explore Epcot and Animal Kingdom before heading to Cape Canaveral on the Atlantic coast where we will spend another three days.  Another example of the new flexible, relaxed, retired, Pat & Elaine!

Happy Guy