Moving south, searching for a place to lay my head

July 10, 2016 Sunday
We were up moderately early for such a late night. The first stop was Cracker Barrel for some road fuel and to thank them for letting us stay.

The boys played a game while we waited.

 We tucked into good food.

After breakfast we got back on the road. We slabbed it all the way to our friend's home in Green Cove Springs, FL. We spent a week with them last year. This visit was just over night and it was great to see everyone again.

 Crossed a big river somewhere. Becky took some pictures.

 Naomi wanted to take some selfies with Becky and Andrea, the one in the back, jumped in on the action. The boys holed up in Willie's room to play video games and Abigail watched cartoons. The adults talked and told stories over bar-b-que.

 July 11, 2016 Monday. We rolled south again!

 After several hours pounding I-95. I needed a beach fix so we turned left at Ft. Pierce to A1A and found a public beach parking lot. Garrett got his first glimpse of the mighty Atlantic and he threw his hands in the air and screamed, "This is awesome!"

 We ended up at Paradise Island RV Resort. I randomly picked it out of the ones I wanted to look at. The bathrooms were not accessible or the showers. I couldn't get into either one of them. The doors were not wide enough. They did have a nice pool lift. Scratch one off the list.
The boys practiced their superman jumps!

July 12, 2016 Tuesday.
We packed up the trailer and made a tour of the different parks getting further and further away from my target area Ft. Lauderdale. We were going north and the final park on my list absolutely sucked. I won't tell you the name of it or the name of the owner who treated us very rudely and claimed that his establishment had passed an inspection that allowed him to say he was accessible. This was clearly a lie because there were no grab bars in the bathrooms or hallways remotely wide enough to get a chair or a walker through. But the guy did us a solid by letting us know right up front that he was a jerk and pointed us to John Prince Park. The park turned out to be city owned and was indeed accessible. We set up the trailer and called it good.
Becky and I went to the grocery store and the boys stayed at the trailer with the pets and played on their electronics. Garrett was all the time dragging Patrick out to walk the dog or ride bikes. It was good to have him along to entertain each other.

Some crazy red headed Muscovy ducks.

Iris allowed these birds to steal all of her food. 

July 13, Wednesday BEACH DAY! We drove about three miles to Lantana Beach. There were two lines of rocks easily accessible at low tide so Becky and the boys could snorkel and see lots of fish. Becky saw a baby octopus. There was a nice shelter that I could sit at because I wasn't able to get down to the water. There were two flights of steps from the board walk.

 That evening after showers for everyone, we drove down to Ft. Lauderdale to meet up with Rick and Michelle Thomas and Kerry McNeal. I've know these three characters for a lot of years and have done a lot of diving with them. Rick and Michelle now own Aquatic Ventures in Fort Lauderdale. Kerry also works there. They told me I was welcome to come work for them for free anytime.
Rick and Michelle were up from Florida last Christmas and bought me dinner at Buffalo Wild Wings and Rick said I owned him dinner next time I was in Florida.
We went out to Aruba Beach Cafe. Then walked on the pier and the board walk to look at knick knacks. We bought some t-shirts too.

The bald guys is Rick, Patrick photobombing, me, Becky, Kerry and Michelle

 Rick bought some oysters on the half shell and Garrett tried one. We didn't know if he was going to keep it down. He said it was good but didn't want another one.

 As we were walking out on the pier some guys who were fishing had caught a baby nurse shark. I wasn't fast enough to get a photo. They threw him back in.