Moving from Three Lakes

The time has come to start our trek home.  We are about 3 months from when we actually will leave Texas and head north, but everything from now on is considered heading for home.  Even though we are houseless we still call Manitoba home.  This morning I got the drone out to do some photos for some of the group.   Almost everyone in Three Lakes has solar so it makes for interesting air photos.  Some have just had their solar installed and are still quite proud of it, while the rest of us have just learned to live with it.   Everyone showed up for morning happy hour and to see us off.

When we headed out we blew the horn at all of our Elk friends lined up giving the salute.  We will miss each one of them, and hope that our paths will cross somewhere down the road!

This is the route we will take today.

We headed over to Plant City first to meet up with our friends, Jim and Dee, and Ed and Lessie for lunch at a neat little Cuban place.  They had a parking spot all picked out for us right at the restaurant.

It was a beautiful day so we all sat out under the umbrella and enjoyed our lunch and a did some catching up.   Jim and Dee are former RVers and have been in every state in the US at one time or another.  They have grown roots now in this area, so they know where all the good food is.  Ed and Lessie are still in Clearwater getting Roundtuit worked on.  We hope they get finished up soon so they can follow us in our westward trek.

Plant City is known for its Strawberry Festival so Dee planned for us to sample some of the tastiest Strawberry Shortcake around.  It was at the Parksville Market.

Because it is a great treat, this is what the lineups look like on a Wednesday.

We all had a 5 dollar Strawberry Shortcake and it was all that one person could eat.  Actually Sue and I shared one and it was still all we needed.

After we got finished I took a little time to watch them sorting oranges out front.  They sort out the ones to sell by the bag and the rest they make into orange juice.

We all got loaded up in the Motorhomes and off we went again.

Just a few miles north is a place called the Hillsborough Preserve and there is camping there.  You have to go online to the South West Florida Water Management site and get a permit to camp.  The permit is free but you have to have it in case the ranger shows up, and also to get the combination to the lock on the gate.  When we got there, we could see that things here were not really good for a 40 ft. rig.  And you almost needed 4 wheel drive to get in.

We surveyed the situation and decided that this was not the place for us but it would soon be dark and the only way out is to back the half mile back to the main road.  We decided to stay right here for the night on the road after the locals assured us that we would not be in anyone's way.

This was the view out our window tonight.  It's the campground that we could see but couldn't get to.