Yikes!!! It's bloody HOT and Humid here, oh well such is life. I must say the change is quite a shock to your system but I will adjust shortly.
We made extremely good time traveling back south after an early morning start. I never sleep the night before traveling for some reason. I have so much on my mine with closing up the cabin and winterizing it for this coming cold months until we open it up again usually in late May or early June. We had spent the better part of the week packing, cleaning and storing for the up coming close up. We did have a very nice day on Thursday and then the last half of Friday was nice as well. When we left at 4 in the morning the stars and moon was out and the temp was nearly 60 degrees. That was a shock in and of itself as the past couple of weeks we barely saw it that warm for the high of day, let alone to start out the day.
We got in a final hike around lunch time on Friday and saw no one on top of the mountain. The views were hazy off in the distance as we nearly reached 70 by the afternoon. We stopped over for a brief visit with our "mountain mom" Helen as she was under the wether with a bug so we didn't tarry as we said good-bye. We drove around the mountain for the first time this year and saw where one of the residents at the foot of our mountain is setting up to sell spring water to some major water company. There were 3 huge tank trailers parked waiting to be filled from this spring. We sure hope he doesn't cause our wells to go dry out in that area or there will be another lawsuit as he a couple years ago set a lawn mower racing venue on his property which created very loud noises on Saturday nights. It took a court order for him to disband that operation.
We encountered very little traffic as we headed south and with a few rain showers in the Charlotte area it was great conditions all the way. We stopped every hour and a half for a brief walk as well as to eat and fuel up at 1.82 a gallon in S.Carolina. When we got close to the Tampa area it was a scene right from California with heavy traffic despite it being a Saturday. We only saw a few idiots weaving in and out of traffic and of course a few driving slow in the left lane with traffic backed up. When we backed into our driveway we noticed a car quickly entered ahead of us and it was our friends and neighbor The Botbyl's and The Tracy's. They had been out together and saw us arrive so we had a quick reunion and then made plans to join them later at the Bone Fish Grille in Largo.
We got busy and unpacked what we could before heading out and enjoyed a sumptuous meal of rainbow trout and a spicy Thai shrimp dish for me. We had a good time and caught up on all that's happening since our California trip in September. We made plans to join them for church in the morning at a new venue since we won't be going back to Element Church in Tampa. Bobby our son is no longer there and its nearly a hundred miles round trip as well. We will miss those who stayed the course at Element and who over the years have become family. We wish them well and hope some time in the future they can get another pastor. We will try to find a church over here in Pinellas County to plug into, LATER
