Ocala and just the two of us

After a couple months on the road and visiting friends and family, we headed to north/central Florida to stay in my parents place in Ocala....alone.  We watched a ridiculous amount of movies, read quite a bit, visited the local farmers market, the bowling alley, local parks and took some day trips.  On one particular day we met up with Andy (who we had scene in Louisiana, Mi, NM, and now FL) and picked some grapefruits at his friends place.

More grapefruits than we could possibly pick and eat in a few week span.  They are SO tasty!

Andy and I.  We drove to a unique little restaurant near Crystal Bay, famous for Manatee.

We had a lot of good weather with some beautiful skies both day and night.

At the local community center we played some billiards.

Then we had a taste of real Florida...bingo!  80% of the people there had white hair.  We were the youngest there by about 30 years.  Eva is the one who helped us as the the games weren't just simple bingo, but games like "picnic table" "american flag"  "four corners" and all you could win in different stages of each game.  When the man called 22, everyone would yell "toot, toot" like a train.  55, they would say "five, five" loud and drawn out.  This would go on with a handfull of other numbers.  It was good we did have help by those around us because we wouldn't have known half of what we were doing.  And due to the fact that they generally had bad hearing, they would explain to us very loudly.

Bingo wasn't just a game for these people, but a way of life.  It really was quite an experience and a hell of a Friday night if I do say so myself.

While in Florida, we made the most of the new purchased convertible...especially while driving along the coast.  Since we drove highway 1 in California, we figured since we were so close we should drive along the 1A1.  We took it from Daytona Beach up to St. Augustine.

We also visited the other coast of FL from Clearwater up to Tarpon Springs (a small greek town).
Happily, we managed to get Sari Saks into two more locations in FL.

Andy and Vanessa sharing a walker (don't ask), as we enjoyed the sunset.

Hey, that is my move!

We had a great time during the rest of our stay in FL and took off early a couple days ago for our 14 hour drive to Houston, TX...where there was frost on the windows and people were wearing winter coats.