Our last few days at
Lithia were just wonderful. Thursday we did our “Annual” trip to Lakeland to
meet Ross and Pat and watch the Tigers Spring Training exhibition game against
the local college, Southern Florida. On Saturday we drove over an hour to
Venice. We biked 10.5 miles on the Venice Waterway Trail and then rode into the
historic downtown for lunch. A Farmers’ Market that would have been a great
place to eat was just closing up but we went to the nearby Three Little Pigs
Bar-B-Que and we both had a great salad of spring greens, candied walnuts,
dried cranberries and goat cheese; Marv had his topped with a chicken breast.
Afterwards we drove to Manasota Beach and sat in the sun for about an hour and
a half. I went in the water twice and we watched a dolphin swimming south just
outside the swimming zone. We ended the day by going to Sharon and Dan Rankin’s
lovely house for an amazing bar-b-que. Sharon was a very helpful mom for me
when I had her wonderful daughter, Katie, in kindergarten. We are friends on
Facebook and when she saw that we were in Florida she invited us for dinner
because Katie and her family, including her Mini-Me, Sophie, were in town.
Sophie looks just like I remember Katie looking and is a kindergartner herself
now. They had another couple come too and we had a really terrific time and
delicious dinner. Sunday we drove over to Largo one more time to visit Louise
and attended the Vesper Service with her and then stayed to watch MSU beat
Wisconsin in basketball. By the time we got back to Lithia Springs Sunday
evening there were about a dozen campsites open, and even more opened up on
Monday, including ours, as we sadly left Lithia Springs to go further north to
the Withlacoochee State Forest campgrounds.
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| Joker Marchant Stadium, home of the Detroit Tigers Spring Training |
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Publix Field with the renovated and expanded Grandstand.
No more bleachers, much more shade, but no cheap seats, either. |
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Cabrera gets his first of two ground outs. He and the other "Stars' played
three innings and batted twice before sitting out the rest of the game for the
true Rookies and wannabes to get their time in. |
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| Big new scoreboard |
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| Venice Waterway Trail |
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| Manasota Beach |
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| Peggy went in twice but Marv didn't go in at all. |
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