January 17, 2013

Tampa and St. Petersburg, Florida

We are moving up the western side of Florida along the Gulf side, traveling from Naples to St. Petersburg last Friday, January 11. Until today, the weather this week has been in the high 70s, and even up to 88 degrees yesterday. No rain until today -- and 63 degrees.

Taken out of the motorhome window as we traveled 
over the Sunshine Skyway Bridge 15 miles south of
St. Petersburg, Florida on I-275.

Coming into St. Petersburg, Florida

We spent the week at the Robert's Mobile Home & RV Resort with close to 650 sites. The one thing we can definitely say about this park is that the 50 amp electricity is excellent.  Just to take a walk around the place takes 30 minutes, and we covered nearly 1 1/2 miles doing so a few times. Walking (and for Jerry, running) now has to be our primary exercise method as we gave away our bikes to neighbors in Naples. Why? Because we have been hauling them around and haven't been riding them for quite sometime.

Here are some pictures we took around St. Petersburg.

Pelicans

Boats racing in the background

Blue Heron with the Sunshine Skyway Bridge in the background


Still can't believe the white fine powder
on these Florida beaches.

On Sunday, we took in the traveling Titanic Artifact Exhibition at the Mahaffey Theater in Tampa. Hard to believe that the Titanic was the length of nearly three football fields.

 Picture of the Titanic outside of the Exhibition.
We were not allowed to take pictures of the
actual items recovered from the sunken ship.

When we "boarded," we were each given a Boarding Pass of an actual person who boarded the Titanic on April 10, 1912. I was Mrs. Benjamin Hart. I could use my husband's name because he was traveling with me. If I were alone, I would have had to use my maiden name (Esther Bloomfield). Notice the fact that she was troubled by a fear that some kind of catastrophe would hit the ship -- something I know a little bit about and with which I can identify.

As we exited the Exhibit, we could check the list of survivors and deaths. Esther survived, but her husband and child did not. Jerry's person (Colonel John Weir) also did not survive.

Our Boarding Passes at the Titanic Exhibition

We were reminded of facts which compounded the problem -- such as the fact that the nearest ship saw the flares sent up by the Titanic crew but, since they were white flares, thought that they were fireworks from a celebration on the ship (now flares must be colored) and that there were only 20 life boats because additional life boats would clutter the first class passengers decks.

While we were at the Mahaffey Theater area, there was an Elvis impersonator show going on and classic cars. 


At the Mahaffey Theater

The Dali Museum

We took a picture of this unique building while we were in the area but didn't know what we were photographing until we left the area. Had we known, we would have visited the Museum and are sorry we missed it. Will have to visit it the next time we are in the area.

We also attended a Prevost RV Show and the Tampa RV Show this week just to look at more RVs.

At the Tampa Bay RV Show yesterday.

The next two days will be long driving days as we make our way out of Florida and into Alabama. 

Have a great holiday weekend, everyone!

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