From sunny Florida

Hello friends !

We made it to the Tampa area and stayed a week; and are now in Ocala, Florida ("the horse capital of the world" - so the brochures say). But really we took a tour of the beautiful rolling hill horse farm area around here ... said to be over 1,000 horse farms/training facilities here.  The limestone of the area (similar to some of the Texas hill country) is good for the young horses in developing strong bones .... through minerals in the grass, water, etc.... so they are sent here for the first year of their lives before they go on to train as race horses.

We laughed when we encountered white SAND drifts in the streets of downtown Clearwater...... after spending three weeks in the white SNOW drifts of New York.  I think we learned our lesson - been there, etc.

We have also been rather rudely introduced to the much higher camping fees of "seasonal snowbird land". Welcome to reality.... oh, well.  My wish to go to Key West has turned into a day trip ... but that's ok.   We had fresh strawberries from the field yesterday; and wild orange trees are everywhere along the roadsides.  We may decide to go "a little" farther north until we find more reasonable rates.

Later,
Marilyn (for The Three Travelers)