Well in case you were all worried...we SURVIVED the week! Now we can say we were homeless for a week and never want to be that way again. The week started off smooth in the hotel (as mentioned in the previous post), but that changed when we decided to head to the Myakka campground. We pulled up and went to talk to the Ranger. Now we have, believe it or not, been here before AND we made friends with some of the regular travelers (they all happen to be 60+ as expected). So when we asked the Ranger to look for their OHIO plates she gave us a crazy look but did so anyway.
Then we tried to show her exactly where we stayed and where their favorite sites were, but this became a challenge due to the fact that they had done some remodeling since we were last there. Since we had within 5 minutes made complete asses of ourselves we told her we didn't care which site we had, but our one request was to be as far away from civilization as possible. She picked her favorite site that was in the back, away from the camp host, and only one other site nearby. The odds looked good for us, but this is where the story really gets interesting. We set up camp quickly, as usual, and sat around reading the paper at the picnic table until our bellies started to grumble. Sooooo... from a couple prior stops we had gathered all the fixings to make hotdogs. We bought most of the items including the actual hotdogs, buns, and liquor.
We took the leftover pop from some friends along the way for our mixer. And we also decided we needed toppings for the dogs. With our cooler packed to the brim with bathroom supplies we knew the only logical way to get just the right amount of toppings was from a fast food joint. So we stopped at a very crowded Chick-fil-a and snuck in to get ketchup, mustard, and utensils. Sara was so stealth no one even knew that nothing was bought! We decided we have to do this more often. Later after the hotdogs were all cooked up Jenn added an extra topping of dirt and sand to her hotdog...she must like them crunchy!!
That evening we were being friendly campers and invited our neighbors and all their crumbsnatchers over for a fire, we also invited Skip and his dog Abby who let us buy some of his overpriced wood too! Skip and Abby were the only ones to join us and trust us that was a real treat. Later, Jenn met perhaps the molester of the campground, Randy. This interesting bird drank beer, burped, and listened to music all night long, and happened to move into the only site right next to us: neighbor #1! The next day was spent roasting in the sun until it was time to head to dinner to see some of Sara's old patients from the James who have a house on Anna Maria Island. Of course we were late to happy hour, but they are good people and quickly caught us up on what we missed! We headed back to Chip's house for a home cooked dinner of eggplant Parmesan, shrimp on the barby, salad, and macaroni salad. We would be lying right now if we said our mouths weren't still watering from the meal. They must have felt bad for us, but we insisted we like camping and headed back to our home away from home tent city!
Basking on the beach is what we started the next with, deciding that laying around was making our muscles go limp we headed for a long swim to the sand bar. Only some water was ingested, but it was worth it when we got out to the most beautiful place ever! We also took a stroll in the wilderness up to the tippy top of the canopy walk. All the gators we saw can't get us from up here!
After awhile the fun was over and Sara had to head to the campsite to shower and make herself presentable for work. First night on the job was a real treat, but while i slaved away making a quick buck trouble was brewing at the campsite. Jenn was stranded with no car in the middle of nowhere with her two person tent. The white trash billies and all their little crumbsnatchers who had rudely declined our offer the night before, took it upon themselves to move into the site directly next to us. As the sun was setting Jenn tucked herself comfortably into her tent, but before she could even say goodnight Randy, the creepy as #$%@ molester was knocking at her tent door.
Now at this point Randy was supposed to be home to Wisconsin, but he decided to stay and was bummed his site was taken by the billies. He offered Jenn a drink and conversation "as he was a really good conservationist", but Jenn politely declined and did her best to deadbolt the tent by tying the inner strings tightly. Just as her baby eyes were drifting off to sleep, WW3 begin between all the coons in the woods courtesy of the Billies who took the liberty to name each coon and fed them a trail of strawberry poptarts directly to the site. Needless to say Jenn fell to the calming sounds of coons growling and hillbillies giggling...the way camping should be. Before long the sun was rising in the east and Sara returned to the tent for some rest, to her dismay this is not what she was going to get. Now we were sitting in the tent recapping the previous nights activities, when all hell broke out in billyville. Apparently it was move out day and the Mr. Billy was taking down the tent before Mrs. Billy had her full fat foot out. It billyville this enough to cause Mrs Billy to completely go off the handle and the "whole F*$#%ing trip is ruined". After numerous F-bombs, screaming, and threats from both ends, Mrs Billy said enough is enough grabbed half of her kids and sped off to god knows where. Mr Billy, although still upset seemed to calm down and started to evaluate is life decisions, little did we know he was soon going to join the "missing persons list" and Jenn would find herself in the middle of the trial. With it finally returning to quite wilderness Sara drifted to sleep only to awake a couple hours later with police rounding the site. Jenn seemed to make a comment to the police about the crazy billys and before you knew it Jenn was forced to make a statement of that mornings activities or her plates would be run and he would need her to come to court if needed. The situation went like this: Mrs. Billy couldn't find Mr. Billy and called the police claiming he was missing, but failing to mention and later lying about how they had gotten into a fight earlier that morning. After numerous police rounds and questionings we escaped to the bathrooms to shower and hide, but to relief the camp host, Mickey, came to tell us that Mr. Billy had been found on the side of some highway and no longer needed to question Jenn. The jury is still out whether Mr Billy really wanted to be found by Mrs. Billy...the world may never know!! Luckily we both worked that night. Sara's night alone in the tent the following night was much less eventful and her only problem was mild rain storms.
Sooo, as you can tell we were in dyer need of an actual roof over our head. The crap in the car was starting to crowd the front seat and you had to strategically place your ass in the passengers seat just to fit! Not to mention the rank smells from all the dirty clothes, beachwear, and camping equipment. Jim, or Rocco, the landlord said the house would be ready around 1. Now this weekend on the island was "Siesta Fiesta" so we headed to the village for some drinks. One sign made our whole days wait worthwhile: FREE BEER. It happened to be at the shoe store so we did a little trying on while we drank our beer. Within a half hour we took over and started running the keg. We also got invited to a crayfish broil at the owner of the shoe stores house...the friendliest people live on this island! After we drained our final beer we got the go ahead from Rocco to move on in! We were pleasantly surprised at how nice our beach house actually was. See pictures:
Being 0.3 miles from the village and the beach you can see this island life is going to be EPIC! We were exhausted from moving in and living out of tent that the first night in the new house was spent in PJs watching Pretty Women and passing out early! However, after a well rested day we dropped a ton of cash on a few of our favorite things at the grocery store. Then it was mixed drink and off to the beach on our bags, dinging our bells all the way there. We learned a lot on this first bike ride to the beach including:
1. It is ok to wear a dress when you ride your bike
2. You must ding your bell at every intersection
3. You still have to look both ways when crossing streets (Sara is going to have problems with this)
4. It is difficult to hold a cocktail and ride at the same time..but with practice it is possible
While we were enjoying yet another beautiful day on the beach Sara got a little present from the seagulls. A healthy portion of shit complete with a rainbow of white, black and green..that means good luck right?!?!
After that it was home to spruce up for our first big night out in the village, looks like a tornado is coming through town tonight. We started the night with high hopes and headed to SKOB to listen to some live music from our friend who was playing near the shoe store the previous day. We couldn't decide what to drink so we went balls to the walls and had long island iceteas, mistake #2 (mistake #1 was the empty case of yuengling at home). As we sat at the bar we met some local yocals and talked about another well known travel nurse, but we soon decided she got nothing on us and we will soon the talk of the town! This goal will soon become mistake #3. After awhile our travel nurse story was spreading and before long people were begging us to join their table and shots of patron were placed in front of us, mistake #4. After that went down, not so smoothly we joined another table of some kids our age. They said the only way they would order a "Village Idiot" was if we would join them, we can't let them down so Village Idiots we became, mistake #5. Now, you know we cannot just drink a drink so we started playing the Alphabet Game.
Although this is one of our favorite games the previous mistakes were starting to take a toll on our minds. Needless to say instead of "helping" them drink this bucket we just consumed it all. Before long we got yelled at for playing the game to loud and it was time to blow off some steam at the Beach Club. Usually we are not clubbers, but on island it is a different world, so our assess landed directly in the middle of the dance floor, this was quite the scene and mistake #6. We became the free entertainment it was something special. Our baby eyes were getting tired and now our baby legs were tired too and we still had to pedal our way home!! We thought it was a successful night but when we woke up we realized we were missing a couple important items, sorry Jim. A bike lock, 2 bananas, and the house key, PLUS there was a situation in the bathroom, but no need to go into details of that one!
Overall, the Island Village life is gonna get the best of us!
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