Friends and Family all over South Florida

Ken, Bob and Jeannette

On Saturday, October 22nd, we left the Keys and landed at a Palm Beach County park called John Prince Park in Lake Worth, Florida, north of Boca Raton. The park is over 725 acres big, with lots of walking paths, sports fields and alligator infested ponds. Fun fun. For dinner on Saturday night, we drove to the Prime Catch in Boynton Beach to meet Ken's grade school buddy, Bob, and his lovely wife, Jeannette. We had a wonderful time sitting at a dockside table enjoying great seafood and even better company. Ken hadn't seen Bob and Jeannette in 25 years, so there was much catching up going on.

Burt, Marilyn, Ken, Pam, Joel, and Tina

On Sunday, we took a loooong hike around the park's beautiful walking path....much longer than we intended. This is getting to be a bad habit. (Fortunately, there was no need to call anyone for directions back to the RV....again.)

After a bit of sore foot recovery, we met Ken's cousins, Joel (and his wife, Tina), and Marilyn (and her husband, Burt) for a long lively lunch at Carrabba's in West Palm Beach. Ken hadn't seen Marilyn since 1996 and Joel in several years. It was interesting to compare our limited RV experience with Joel and Tina's 11 years of RV traveling. It seems we have much to learn about bad weather and breakdowns...hmm.

Ken and Monte at the Jetties

Jetties

On Monday, we returned to Venice for some much needed R&R...just kidding...there's been a ton of that. We went to dinner with Monte at Saltwater Cafe in Nokomis. Not bad, not outstanding but they do have some generous happy hour drink specials.

On Tuesday, we spent the day working around the RV and house, and then watched the sunset over the Venice jetties with Monte. Very pretty!

On Wednesday, we drove to Sarasota to meet Mary, our neighbor's mom, who lives on Siesta Key. The beach is gorgeous, with sand that feels like powdered sugar and sounds like crunching snow when you walk on it.

Mailman's tire tracks

In fact, just after I commented on the sand's similarity to snow, the mailman got his truck stuck in a foot of sand right in front of Mary's house. Ken and I shoveled him out and sent him on his way. It seemed more than a little ridiculous to be shoveling someone out of sand. ("Nor rain, nor sleet, nor gloom of night..." Should probably include sand, too.) Mary helpfully offered to throw sand under the mailman's tires for traction. Ha!

Pam and Mary at Big Olaf's

Anyway, we had a nice lunch with Mary and then walked into nearby Siesta Village for some yummy ice cream at Big Olaf's. Let me enthusiastically recommend this place. Yikes. That was some AWESOME ice cream. Ken and I each had the toasted coconut, Mary had the chocolate peanut butter. Yum. Double yum.

On Thursday, Monte had given us directions to Stump Pass Beach near Englewood, where we could expect to find lots of nice shells. After a long detour due to a bridge outage, we found the virtually deserted beach and collected an embarrassing number of shells. After more than an hour, with two heavy pails of shells and no lunch in sight, Ken began to complain a bit, but was his usual good sport about the whole thing. We eventually had lunch at a local restaurant, the Lock and Key. They had very tasty seafood and excellent service.

Monte for Halloween

On Thursday evening, Stacy drove down from North Carolina to round out our foursome. We spent the weekend touring around the area, thrift shopping, eating, lounging, chatting and, eventually, constructing an awesome hippie costume for Monte to wear to work on Halloween Monday.

We had a ball handing out candy to every tiny princess, little skeleton, and short Jedi knight from the greater Venice area. It seemed like they were busing them into the neighborhood. Isn't that cheating?

As we have been eating our way through most of Florida, we both resemble pumpkins...how timely! Happy Halloween!

Big Olaf's...yum!

Lovers on Siesta Beach

Birdies on Siesta Beach