Our Excursion to Venice and Dinner w/ Scott and his Family

April 16th - Saturday 87 degrees - Humid

Lou and I were up early and we all had breakfast and got Estee ready for a road trip and a day away from MacDill.

We drove to Venice, FL. This is an old city in Florida that I know my way around in. This is the city that Scott had made arrangements for my deceased husband and me to stay in when we came to Florida prior to his death, and we both fell in love with the quaint old city. The year that Al died, I knew I couldn’t handle him by myself, so our granddaugher, Michelle flew down with us and we rented a handicapped suite in Venice and that made our two week stay perfect.

I wanted to show Lou around this old city and we certainly enjoyed our afternoon. We went to my favorite beach and it was just as I had remembered, the beautiful white, clean sand, with parasailing, and many family activities going on. We ate our lunch on main street at an outside café. As the waiter brought our menus, he also brought Estee a fresh bowl of water. The whole city of Venice caters to the small dogs, with drinking fountains and tie posts for them. We both enjoyed a fresh Greek salad with Iced tea.

After our lunch, we drove to the Municipal Airport that I had always enjoyed and knew that Lou would enjoy and did he ever, we found that it had been used during World War II and he even got to see an Italian Airplane that he had only seen once before, in fact, a gentleman, allowed him entrance into the field so he could get a good picture of the plane, so that made his day, and he found there was a fleet of these planes located in St. Petersburg, FL.

It was soon time to leave to continue our journey on to Scott’s house and as it was, we arrived at Scott’s just as Sue was arriving home from work.

As usual Scott had everything under control. On his smoker he had three huge heads of cabbage, his specialty, along, with ribs, done three ways, chicken, roasting ears and Sue had made her famous potato salad. It was a feast and we ate and ate some more. We were celebrating Melanie’s 18th birthday. She had just become a new Mommy also, so there was lots of things to be grateful for. Scott and Sue’s neighbors, John and Sue also joined us for dinner and it was nice to get acquainted with them.

It was nice to have Nikki there to have a chance to talk with her also. She has a new job that seems to suit her as she had been trying to find something that was going to be better suited to her training and it sounds like this is what she had been waiting for. I believe she said they make custom boats, Intrepid. Hopefully, I have it spelled correctly. From the sound of the cost of said boat, I don’t think we will be ordering one in the near future. The new baby Aimee Nichole was named after her and she certainly took a true loving attitude toward her new niece. To bad she doesn’t live closer.

All to soon, it was time for us to start our 1 ½ hour drive back to MacDill. After hugs and goodbyes we were back on the road again. Lou wanted to travel across the Sunshine Bridge after dark, as neither of us had done that, and I was surprised that I was able to capture a picture of it.

Now tomorrow we are off to Patrick AFB and we plan to spend about a week there, want to tour Cape Canaveral and such while we are there and then travel up the coast to home, spending several days along the beach in North Carolina. I will post as I am able.