Wednesday, May 27, 2009

It's Wednesday in Bradenton, Florida

It's Wednesday and we are here in Bradenton, Florida at the Winter Quarters Encore resort. It is a nice place and we got here on Monday and will stay for 7 nights. Yesterday we were busy cleaning house (yes, I still have to do that in an RV) and going grocery shopping at WalMart. We got our prescriptions filled for the month there also.

We decided to take a little trip today. The day didn't start out too great as far as I was concerned. After our usual 1 hour walk and then showering, I got my clothes for the day out of the closet. I put my polo shirt on and then I got my pants off the hangar to put on. I got a pair of those cropped pants, or whatever you call them, at J.C. Penney's. Anywho....I put the pants on and was tying the cord at the waist and I see this HUGE bug come out of the pants leg and run around in circles on the floor. I mean this was a HUGE BEETLE of some kind. The bug ran under the bathroom door as I was shrieking and it went into the living room. Bruce came to see what I was screaming about and I told him it was a huge bug out of my pants! Then we saw the bug on the carpet in the living room. Quick...grab a tissue and smash him! Hey, not me. I gave Bruce the tissue and he grabbed it and smooshed that bug up real good. Dead! Bruce then proceeds to lecture me on not screaming like that as it is just too alarming when it wasn't anything serious. Is he kidding me????? Did he have a bug crawling around in his pants?????? I told him that I'll be shrieking or screaming anytime there is a large bug crawling anywhere near me. No kidding, this bug was about 2 inches long and very ugly.

We got the rest of ourselves ready to go and I also packed us up a picnic lunch. It was the day for Annie, the Schnauzer, to get her hair cut at the PetSmart. We had an appointment in Bradenton for that. We deposited her at the grooming salon and left to go eat English muffins at McDonald's. It was "Muffin Wednesday" after all.

We finished our breakfast and set off going north to St. Petersburg. We had planned to go to the Florida Holocaust Museum. We took the interstate and went off on I-275 to go across the Sunshine Skyway Bridge. It is a toll bridge that connects the Bradenton area to St. Petersburg. It is a beautiful bridge and only costs $1.00 to use it.

Here is the Sunshine Skyway Bridge as we get closer to the toll plaza.

Here we are on the bridge itself. Florida is the "Sunshine State" so this is named the Sunshine Skyway Bridge and they have painted part of it a sunny yellow color. It goes over Tampa Bay by the Gulf of Mexico.
This is the outside of the Florida Holocaust Museum in St. Petersburg. We could not take photographs inside the museum.
The purpose of this museum is to honor the memory of millions of innocent people who suffered or died in the Holocaust. It is dedicated to teaching members of all races and cultures to recognize the inherent worth and dignity of human life in order to prevent future genocides. There are 3 floors of exhibits and displays. One of the most notable exhibits is an actual boxcar that had been used to transport the Jews to the Treblinka death camp. It has not been restored and is in exactly the condition it was in during the transportation of Jews. It rests on original railroad tracks from the Treblinka camp. It was a wonderful museum to tour, although sobering in content.


After spending about 2 hours at the museum, we left St. Petersburg to head back toward Bradenton. Just before going through the toll plaza for our return trip on the Sunshine Skyway Bridge, we pulled off at this rest area to eat our lunch. We enjoyed the sunshine and the breeze off the Gulf kept us cool enough. Here I am with the beautiful blue water of coastal Florida behind me.


After our lunch break by the water, we continued on across the bridge to Bradenton. We stopped by PetSmart to pick up our Annie. She got a great hair cut and a bath. Isn't she cute? (Annie, that is)






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