We finally left the SKP park in Bushnell, Florida, this morning. Ten days in one place is a long time for us and we’re feeling restless. So we decide to stop at two museums on our way south today.
The first one was the Citrus History Museum in Dade City, Florida.
If you look closely you can see the theater marquee to the right of the building. And that’s as close a look as you are going to get. See the fence between us and the museum? It goes all the way around the place and the only gates we found were firmly closed with signs saying “Private Property” on them. We could see some of the displays through the fence. We could see part of the sight-seeing tour tram through the fence. But we couldn’t see a way to get us on the other side of the fence.
Now, I know what you are thinking. How often have we arrived at a museum outside of the hours it is open? But their website says the tours are Tues-Sat at 10, 12, 2 and 4. Today is Tuesday and it’s a little after 11 Why can’t we go in? We’re in Florida; we want to learn about citrus here. Whine.
So we left Dade City. As we did so a sister RV beeped a hello to us. We were too slow to respond in kind so I posted a message on the owners’ group saying, “Beep, beep.” I hope they get it.
I saw a muffler man. Do you remember the muffler men statues we saw along Route 66? We’re pretty far from that route but we still see an occasional muffler man. This one was at a repair shop so he was holding a wrench.
We stopped at Cracker Barrel for lunch. I really like their roast beef. It was a little early for us to be stopping but we wanted to be fed before arriving at our second musem today. So I have lots of leftovers. And Dave ordered a huge hamburger with huge onion rings so even he has some leftovers today.
I saw a sign from a realty that said, “Drop Dead Gorgeous 3 Bed Pool.” What a thing to do–put three beds in a pool so people will sleep there then tell them to drop dead. They will if they try to sleep underwater.
In Tarpon Springs, Florida, we arrived at our second museum of the day, The Sponge Factory. This place apparently is primarily a store with some displays and a movie about the sponge industry inside it. That’s OK with us. Cracker Barrel is essentially a store with a restaurant inside it but that doesn’t keep us from going there. So we headed for the Sponge Factory’s parking lot. Not so fast there. There was a craft fair in the parking lot and they were charging admittance. OK. Three dollars to park to see what the in-store museum has to offer. Except they want $10 from us because we are driving an RV. More than half the parking lot is empty so we object. They tell us if we spend at least $20 in the sponge store they will refund our parking fee. Well, at least $3 of it. The parking attendant doesn’t think they’ll go the whole $10 for an RV. We now feel ripped off so we leave without seeing the inside of this museum either. There’s more than one type of fence.
So now we are in Largo, Florida, at Lee’s Travel Park. We’ll be here two nights. We won’t be here two days, though. We’ll spend tomorrow in Tampa getting service on our Sprinter and shopping at the Apple Store and Best Buy and maybe having a really good steak dinner at a place one of my blog readers told us about depending on how much time and money we spend at the Dodge dealer. And the next day we’ll be on the road early; check out time here is 10 a.m.
TTYL,
Linda