DAY 93 SUNDAY 9th DECEMBER 2007

Hillsborough River State Park, Florida (Miles to Date: 11500)

On Friday we had the chance to go on canoe tour down the Hillsborough River with a Ranger to guide us. The river itself is quite narrow in places, with trees, non-indigenous plants and rocks causing it tobecome narrower still in places. This all made an extra challenge for us non-experienced canoers. Jack, partnered with Karen, managed to hits the banks several times, whilst Mark, travelling with Emily got trapped on some rocks and only some frantic manoeuvring freed them. There was plenty to see on this hour long trip, including white ibis, turkey vultures and a 10 foot long alligator who was quietly basking on the river bank.

This weekend we had Jack away for most of the time. Karen has organised for him to attend a weekend campout with a local Scout troop. We took him to the offices of the Gulf Ridge Scout Council in Tampa and enrolled him with their council as a Lone Scout. The Council staff turned out to be incredibly helpful and made what could have been difficult process pain free. The campsite itself was out at Lake Wales, south of Orlando – and we dropped Jack off for a two night campout with a complete set of strangers. This was an opportunity for Jack to earn a merit badge – and he chose to do archery for this weekend.

For the rest of us the weekend was a relaxed time – the campsite had filled up for the weekend with mainly people from the local area (church groups, scouts etc). This gave Emily the chance to play with some new friends. We also had the chance to go fishing with a new rod that we bought in Bass Pro. Rather that having to cast the line out this rod fired the line out, by some catapult mechanism, and the hook is held in a pod and is only released when it hits the water. Needless to say we did not catch anything.

Today we picked up Jack from his camp. Just as we were pulling up to the campsite, eagle eyed Karen spotted a plate site tortoise on the road – which turned out to be a gopher tortoise. Concerned for its health we stopped and Karen picked it up and put it down on the side of the road. Just as we completed this mercy mission the phone rang, and it was Jack wondering where we had been. Thirty seconds later we were at his side – not too close though as he was filthy wearing the same clothes as we had left him in 2 days earlier. Dirt washes off....smiles don't!

On the way back to Hillsborough we called into an RV/ Motor home dealership. We had seen some one on our campsite with a map on their motor home upon which you can stick the States you have visited. This part of mission was successful but whilst we were there we decided to have a look around some of the motor homes. And as chance would have it we fell in love with a pre-owned vehicle on the dealers lot. For a little while we had been feeling the pressure of travelling cramped inside a van and staying in hotels – with four people in such close confines it can be very pressurised at times. In particular the home schooling was proving to be difficult and keeping Jack and Emily’s work organised was proving to be hard. So the long and the short of this is that we decided to buy the motor home. We couldn’t take it away there and then as we need to organise a few things like insurance etc. but it was essentially ours.