A FEW MORE THINGS TO DO BEFORE HEADING NORTH

Each year we stop in Tampa on our way from Sarasota to Gainesville to get some annual maintenance completed on the motorhome. While in Tampa we took a tour of the Cigar City Brewing Company.  We enjoyed their Jai Alai IPA at several restaurants in the Sarasota area during the last few months and thought we should see where this great beer is brewed.  Last summer we caught the craft beer bug while in the Portland area, where we toured several craft breweries. 

The tour was good but the beer was better.  A nice refreshing treat on a warm spring day.

Paul also went to the Hogtown (former name of Gainesville) Craft Beer Festival in early April with our son-in-law, John.  There were about 75 craft breweries represented, with the home town brewery, Swamp Head, pictured below.  We were given 2 oz. samples at any of the brewers we stopped to see.  John and I enjoyed our fair share of various varieties of beer.  We did it right and had a designated driver take us home once we had sampled all the beer we wanted.  

Can you spot the camera drone above the Swamp Head canopy?  The drone was cruising the crowd for some video to be used for promotional purposes.

While daughter Laura and husband John enjoyed a few days of adult away time, we took on the babysitting duties with grandsons Jack and Henry.  The boys enjoy visits to the park and especially like to eat lunch there.  You can see by their faces that they are enjoying this Saturday activity with Grandma and Grandpop.
 

 
After our picnic, we had another surprise for the boys.  We took them to a horse farm north of Gainesville where older horses are accepted as a welcome place to live their retirement days.  Admission is 2 carrots per person.  We brought a 2 lb. bag of carrots with us to the farm.  Below, Henry is feeding one of the horses while Jack looks on.  The boys were excited to have the horses eat the carrots right out of their hands.  Henry would often scream in delight when the horse took his carrot.  Luckily, the horses were very tame and were not spooked by Henry's screams. 

We also took a quick trip to New Orleans in April.  The purpose of the trip was to bring back a nice table and chairs given to Laura and John by John's dad Jim and his wife Carol.  With such a generous offer for new furniture, we decided to volunteer to drive our truck there and take a break from packing for our summer trip.

While heading that direction, we took a detour to make an overnight fun stop in Pensacola.  While in Pensacola, we visited one of the craft breweries that we learned about at the Hogtown Craft Beer Festival.  For a good craft beer on tap, there is no better reason to pull off the highway for a break.

Well, baseball for Paul is another really good reason to take a break from driving.  Several years ago we visited the Pensacola ballpark by the bay.  It was a chilly April evening, but we enjoyed watching minor league players trying to impress the scouts and team executives in attendance.

We got to New Orleans the next afternoon, where we were invited to spend the night with Jim and Carol.  Since the weather was threatening, we decided that we needed to get the truck loaded immediately.  

We strategized on the best way for us to move the furniture and get it into the truck bed.  The table was so heavy and bulky that we decided to roll it down an outside staircase to the truck, and the method worked!.  How do you put a 48" table in a truck that is 44" between the wheel wells?  We carefully put the upside down table over the one wheel well.  We lashed down the table and four chairs with rope and multiple bungee cords along with lots of padding around all the pieces of furniture.  We then covered the furniture with two tarps because we knew we were going to be driving into rain as we headed east towards Gainesville.

After the work was done we enjoyed a nice seafood dinner with Jim and Carol at a local New Orleans restaurant.  We thoroughly enjoyed the hospitality extended to us by Jim and Carol.  

The next morning we headed east to Gainesville, driving through rain the last several hundred miles.  It was a long trip but a successful one.  When we unpacked the table and chairs at John and Laura's house later that evening, all the pieces were dry and undamaged.
 

Our checklist of chores was completed, while we found time to have some fun with friends and family.  It was time to pack up the motorhome and begin our journey to the Blue Ridge Mountains.