Florida is humid! The weather has done a 180 on us and changed from sunny, crisp and cool to warm (80s), damp, cloudy, rainy and windy. Today there was a tornado warning in one of the neighboring counties. The ranger told us not to worry about it but we did.....a little. We were leaving Dude behind in the 5th wheel and we wanted to be sure that he wasn't in danger!

Yesterday we traveled down the Florida Cracker Trail highway towards the west coast of Florida. We have some history on what the Cracker Trail is but it will have to wait until tomorrow's blog. The Cracker Museum was not open today but will be tomorrow and we will go see what it's all about. Yesterday, though.....yesterday we were going to visit the Busch Gardens in Tampa. We WERE going to visit Busch Gardens until we started reading the brochure a little more thoroughly and decided that Epcot Center had fulfilled our needs for amusement park thrills for at least a year or so. We had another brochure on Florida's Indian Heritage which appealed more to us so we programmed our GPS to take us to DeSoto National Memorial in Manatee County south of Tampa. There we found the most delightful trail that wandered thru a coastal preserve area. Once in awhile the trail veered out towards the water of a little inlet off Tampa Bay. The water was so clear and colored like turquoise near the shore. Dude enjoyed chasing wavelets and submerged leaves. He would put his snout right down into the water a couple of inches to try to catch them and then come up snorting to blow the water from his nostrils. After about a half hour of walking thru the coastal grove we came upon the exhibits of the historical site. The area had been one of DeSoto's camps as he explored, plundered and killed natives throughout Florida, Georgia, Arkansas, Alabama, Mississippi and Louisiana. It's really a shame how the early explorers and even, later, the Spanish priests treated the natives they found in this land. We read about how that for the native tribes, the day the Spanish explorers set foot on this continent was the beginning of the end of their way of life.

After spending a couple of hours enjoying ourselves in the sunshine, we head north to St. Petersburg by crossing a long graceful bridge across the mouth of Tampa Bay. It was really neat how right along the freeway on both sides there was a one lane road that could be accessed by offramps where people were fishing, wading, and relaxing in the sun. We drove off on one and wished that we had suits in the truck so that we could take advantage of the warm day. In St. Pete we drove to the pier area, parked and found a harborside restaurant with a patio where Dude could sit with us while we ate. We gorged on seafood gumbo with shrimp, crawfish, and sausage, salmon caesar salad, and garlic mussels!! Oh, and a couple of key lime martinis and white russians. Sorry, Dude, you can't have any!! We did walk for about a half hour along the pier after our meal to work it off and let Dude run off some energy.

We set off for home (the 5th wheel) by setting Madge (our Magellan GPS) to the "shortest distance" setting and let her guide us home along the back roads to avoid the freeway congestion. Along the way we saw a huge nest on a tall pole and either a bald eagle or osprey flying into it. A little further on, we spotted an owl sitting on a telephone wire. It's amazing that we ever get where we're going because of all the stops we make to "see" stuff! On the way thru rural central Florida to home, we passed oranges groves, cattle ranges, and phosphate processing plants. There is a lot going on in Florida that we never think about!!

Today we were going to visit the Cracker Museum to find out the story behind the Florida Cracker Trail and it was for some unknown reason closed but we were reassured that it would be open tomorrow. We always have a backup plan so we put that into action and reprogrammed for Solomon's Castle instead. We had no idea what this was. I found the listing in the GPS which is not always reliable. We let Madge give us directions and (not for the first time) she led us into the middle of nowhere with directions from her to turn on a nonexistent street. Well, we've learned patience and kept driving when....lo and behold!...there was a sign pointing down a street which was the same name as the street that Madge had wanted us to turn on a couple miles back. Funny thing was, Madge wasn't happy with this street and kept telling us to "make a U-turn". That's when I turned her off! Solomon's Castle turned out to be one of those really unique places that you're happy that you found. It was created by an eccentric Russian emigrant who built a "castle" out of cast-off old newspaper printing plates. They're light and flexible and still have the "old news" printed on the underside. The plates make the castle all silver and it has stained glass windows that Howard Solomon created. He's an artist, a carver, a writer and mostly a tinkerer. Most of the decorations inside are created by him and he's still alive and still tinkering. We saw him working away in his workshop which he apparently does most days. After our tour of the castle we decided to eat lunch in the Boat In The Moat Restaurant which he also built. The restaurant was started by his son and wife and the whole place is run mostly by family and friends. The food is all home-made and was absolutely delicious right down to the walnut pie (we shared!). To work off the meal we took off on the nature trail that wound around the castle next to a little creek and then over the bridge made by Solomon back into the yard area.

When we left the Castle and headed back to the RV Park we stopped in again to see if the Cracker Museum was open (it was not) and found an animal sanctuary instead. For a small donation we walked around the sanctuary and saw ostriches, a mountain lion, a bear, 3 fox, horned owl, deer, turtles and....alligators. The most interesting animal encounters, however, were not the ones we saw in cages. All around the sanctuary were black vultures. These are quite different-looking from the red-headed turkey vultures. They were perched in the trees and on the walkway railings. I walked up slow, talking to them and trying to make friends. They seemed to wait a little longer each time before they flew off. The closing of the sanctuary was the only thing that prevented me from bringing home a black vulture as a pet. A cat that looked a lot like our Spike, sleeping in a net covering over the otter cage, was the other non-captive animal we encountered. We actually didn't see the otters and I, according to Ed, missed seeing the cute little raccoons all curled up together but luckily, he got a picture!