February 19 - March 14. Myakka
River Motorcoach Resort - Port Charlotte, FL
With very heavy hearts, we
are leaving Myakka River Motorcoach Resort (MRMR) and Port Charlotte, FL. We truly enjoyed our time there and made so
many new friends that we're wishing we could stay longer but we have other
places to go and people to see. We were
actually able to squeeze out a sort of bonus day because we planned to leave on
Thurs (3/13) but there were 20-25 mph winds with gusts even higher. Driving a motorhome in that kind of wind is
no fun and actually quite dangerous so we just dug in and stayed another day. When we pulled out, there were several osprey flying overhead as if to say, "goodbye".
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| A pair of Osprey near MRMR |
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| A frequent friend @ the MRMR Office |
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During the past few weeks,
we've grown attached to the water aerobics classes and our instructor,
Scott. We really feel good when we leave
the pool after the 1 hour class and it gets the day off to a good start.
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| Scott teaching aerobics |
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| What a cast of characters ! |
On Februay 22nd, the resort held a Murder Mystery play. Some people were actors and some were observers. Everyone enjoyed trying to
figure out which our neighbors had committed the murder. Lots of creativity in costumes and
improvisation with the script.
Jan has
done several craft classes and Bob has attended a couple of photography
classes. Our final Wednesday before
leaving, the craft was to make party decorations for a surprise party to be
held on Friday evening (3/14) as part of the weekly meet-n-greet. The party was to celebrate our resort owner's
upcoming wedding. So sorry we had to miss the big party, but our
best wishes go out to Amber & Ralf. They
are wonderful people and a lovely couple!
We've had time to make some
improvements & customize our coach to better fit our needs. We've done a few minor repairs and gotten our
network router mounted to be more efficient.
It's such a big help to pin down where we store items and how things are
laid out in our home.
We made a trip to the
Miromar Outlets which are only about 40 minutes away in Estero for some
shopping, an additional trip to Anna Maria Island,
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| Jan @ the pier on Anna Maria Island |
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| Our favorite restaurant on Anna Maria Island |
a trip to Stump Pass Beach
park (only about 20 minutes from MRMR)
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| Stump Pass Beach State Park |
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| Neat blue heron |
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and a couple of more trips to Boca
Grande.
Boca Grande is the best place
ever to look for shells, walk in the sand & surf, plus watch people and
birds. Another bonus is that a trip to
Boca Grande wouldn't be complete without lunch at the South Beach
restaurant that's right on the gulf and has delicious seafood dishes.
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| Bob @ Boca Grande |
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| Jan @ Boca Grande |
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| A brown pelican in flight |
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| Cute sandpiper |
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| A view from Boca Grande into the Gulf of Mexico |
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| The view from our table at South Beach Restaurant |
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| Red-tailed hawk | |
We did a little exploring
around Punta Gorda since it's so close and enjoyed some good seafood
there. While in Punta Gorda, we couldn't
pass up another visit to the Peace
River Wildlife Center ... the red-tailed hawk and the
eagle are our favorites.
The Venice Area Audubon
Rookery warranted another visit and this time we saw several nests (mostly blue
heron and egrets) with baby birds. The
chicks seemed to squabble and wrestle like small children.
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| An egret away from the nest for a few minutes |
We also found the Cape Haze bike
& hiking trail along the road to Boca Grande where we could hike to observe
an eagles nest with 2 eaglets. Along the
trail, we crossed a bridge that gave us the opportunity to watch mullet (fish)
jumping out of the water. Pretty
fascinating. They apparently do that to
take in some oxygen. Who knew fish
needed oxygen?!?
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| Mama eagle watching over the little ones |
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A heron watching the mullet
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| Most of our kayaking group |
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| Getting everyone set to go |
We joined 4 of our MRMR neighbor
friends and 3 additional people for a kayaking trip through a mangrove tunnel
and out to Don Pedro barrier island. While we've kayaked before, this was our fist
time using sit-upon kayaks rather than sit-in kayaks. Much different experience and lots of fun. Our guide traveled on a stand up paddle
board. With the help of the guide, we were able to
see a star fish, sponges, ink fish &
upside down jellyfish. After a nice
lunch, we kayaked back to our starting point hoping to see dolphins or manatees,
but it wasn't meant to be on that afternoon.
Since the Tampa Bay Ray's
spring training facility is only about 10 minutes from MRMR, we spent a
beautiful afternoon watching Tampa
Bay play against the
Philadelphia Phillies. The Phillies
lost, but as we were watching the game, we heard from our daughter in PA that
they were getting snow. For us, it was
80 degrees and sunny.
Mexican Train is a popular
game with the people at MRMR and we learned some different rules for the
game. We're convinced that there must be
hundreds of ways to play the game and all of them are fun. We just need to establish one set of rules
for whichever group we join.
On February 28th, we had a
potluck dinner with an amazing selection of great dishes. We took a taco salad that's one of our
favorites. There were probably about 60
people in attendance. It was a great
evening of eating and visiting.
One of the reasons for our
extended stay at MRMR (like we needed
more justification), was that we were able to celebrate our birthdays
there. We treated ourselves to dinner at
a nice seafood restaurant near the resort. If you get the impression that we
enjoy seafood, you're right on target.
YUM !!! Our daughter sent us
chocolate covered strawberries and called to facetime chat. We also had a terrific facetime phone call
from our son, daughter-in-law and two grandkids. We had beautiful blown kisses from the
little guys and only wish we could have felt those little boy hugs they like to
give.
Speaking of boys ...
while walking one evening just before we left MRMR, we found friends (Mike and Bernie) racing
their boats on one of the lakes. What
fun!!
