A Few More Notes from the Road

(Mid-Afternoon)

Naples, FL heading out of town on I-75 east. Rob is working to start some Call FM translator stations in Naples and he comes over to this side a lot; he promises that the time remaining is no more than 2 hours.

We stopped last night in Brooksville, Florida, which is just north of Bushnell, which is just north of Tampa. We didn't have to come to the west coast of Florida, but we wanted to break the long drive up some and thought it would be a nice place to find some extra stops.

Venice Beach is supposedly the Shark Tooth World Capital. We stopped by and dug around a little, but only found some nice shells. Caleb seemed scared of the moving water at first, but after he saw a bigger boy walking through the surf, he decided he wanted to get his feet wet.

Seeing the open ocean (or gulf in this case), always makes me reflective. It's kind of amazing - really we only went to visit relatives, but we saw such a wide spectrum of weather and terrain. There was snow in Ohio, bitter dry cold in Arkansas, and today it was warm enough to walk barefoot in water. There were mountains in West Virginia, caves in Kentucky, plains in Tennessee, and ocean views in Florida. We went through 4 tunnels - two through mountains in West Virginia, one underwater in Mobile, Alabama, and one that went under buildings in Cincinnati.

And even though travelling with little ones is difficult, I think it has improved parts of our trip. We always see signs of state parks or museums I'd like to visit and, now that we really need to stop every few hours, it's nice to have something interesting to look forward to. Before the drive was just a mad dash to get from point A to B in the least amount of time.

Rob and Caleb collecting shells on Venice Beach
...but no shark teeth.

The pier on Venice Beach.
Walking in water
Do I even need to say I got my shoes wet too?

And believe it or not (Meredith) there IS Sonic in Florida! We ate lunch at one in Venice, but the "Southernmost" Sonic is in Naples.
Caleb enjoys some tots.

Now our van is sandy, dirty, trashy, french fry-y, and stuffed with new toys and dirty clothes. It's time to go home :)