Siesta Bay Fort Myers Fl

Name; Siesta Bay Resort Ft Myers FL

Date;1/20-1/27/13

Staff; Friendly folks in office.

Price; $125 for the week. Internet special for 1st time visitors. $89. + $31. resort fee

Site Description; Back in full hook up w/50 amp electric. Level cement pad, 90 degrees from narrow road. There is cable for an addition charge. Very close to site behind. No privacy between sites.No picnic table.

Big Rig Friendly; No, hard to back into the 90 degree site from the narrow road. We had to have people across from us move their cars. Big rigs can get in, as we did, but we would not call this park big rig friendly.

Amenities; Many, a very active park. You name it and they have it.

Laundry; Yes, very clean. 10 Washers and dryers. No change machine, and the office doesn't have change.

Phone, Wifi,TV; Verizon was 3-4 bars all the time. We use our satellite, but over the air was good. we got all major networks with our antenna. Don't know about wifi.

Dog friendly; NO, the only park we ever stayed at in over 40 years of rving that does not allow dogs.  They never mentioned this to us when we called and made a reservation.

Night; Quite, with very little road noise. Good night lighting. No security gate, anyone could come in.

Book exchange; Don't know

Comment; Great location. A very clean resort. About 80-90% are park models. A very active park for snow birds. Close to many restaurants and stores. We would not stay here again because of the tight sites. Other them that its a great park.

 

Touring around FT Myers-Captiva-Sanibel

       The main reason for coming to this area was to visit with friends. Also we are taking a trip to Key West via Key West Express. A four hour boat trip. We have been to this area before but enjoy a drive out to Sanibel and Captiva. This time we found Captiva Chapel By The Sea. There is also a small cemetery there. The building was built in 1903 as a school and purchased by the Methodist Church as a mission in 1921. See more here  www.captivachapel.com 

      We took a walk along Sanibel Island to the lighthouse.

A Brown Pelican, about 8 tries to catch him in flight.

On Sunday we moved to Thousand Trails Peace River in Wauchula FL. We will be here for two weeks. Upcoming blog - trip to Key West. Thanks for stopping by.

Tin Can Tourist - Tampa Super RV Show

I remember reading and hearing about the Tin Can Tourist. One of the club members told us if you have a RV over 25 years old you can join the club.

The Tampa RV Super show

     We arrived at the Florida State Fair grounds on Tuesday morning. We were in and set up by noon. We have 22 rigs in our group.        Meeting up at reststop along I75, on the way to the Tampa show.

Our group, We are to the right of the yellow barrel, our RV is the one with the brown front.  In the back ground is the parking garage of the Hard Rock Casino.

    We are camped in the same area as last year. The show doesn't open till Wednesday but we were aloud in for a private showing of the new Lifestyles 5th wheels. We will be helping answer questions about the Lifestyles and the Carriage Club. Lifestyles formed a alliance with the Carriage Club. Lifestyles work force is 95 % former Carriage employees. The units are built similar to the Carriage Cameo. We sat in a unit on two different days for 3 hours. There were 5 new rigs and each day 3 couples from our club sat in to answer questions. Both days we "worked" other club members sent folks to us to tell them a little about the full time RV live style. Many folks were  interested in our lifestyle. We had a fun time talking to all the folks that stopped by.
      The show is like a home coming. We met up with Art and Jan from our hometown camping club. We also met up with six couples we had worked with at Walt Disney World. Friends Barry and Donna from GA stopped by for a visit. The first night we went with five other couples to the Spaghetti Warehouse in Ybor City. We had a great meal. I had the lasagna which was big enough to feed a  family of "little people". But I did manage to finish it. Linda had a spaghetti dinner and had the same problem trying to finish her meal. Linda wanted to take a group picture and a fellow offered to take the picture. He just happened to be one of the members of The Malt Shop, the group that just performed at Blueberry Hill  RV Resort were we had our last rally. They are also performing at the Super show on Thursday night. So Linda had to take a picture of them.

    Each day we have a attitude adjustment hour. One day Dave, a member of our group, made a super "Gumbo". It was a long day for him, and he did a super job, and everyone loved the Gumbo. Dave did learn his skill while living in Louisiana.
    Another day we took a tour of the Yungling brewery in Tampa. We had a really great tour guide. A good tour guide can make the difference between a good tour and a not so good tour.

Far right, Lance asking "where's mine"

On the way back to the fairgrounds we stop at Garden's Gyro. Never had a gyro with so much meat in it. They were stuffed full with what seemed like a half pound of meat. The gyro combo with fries and a drink was only $5.99. We all had one. We also got a order of a half pound of "fried gizzards". A first for me and Linda. My mother use to make gizzards in a gravy over rice, but never had them fried.
    Every morning the fairgrounds has coffee and donuts for us, plus a free Tampa newspaper. Thursday, Friday and Saturday there is also entertainment. We saw the Malt Shop Doo Wop group, a comedian and Ron and Kay Rivoli. We had met Ron  one day while walking around the show. One of our member we were with knew him and introduced us. He and his wife are also rv'ers. Starting April 1st they will be preforming in Branson for 7 months.

 

There was also a group of old RV's at the show. They were part of a group called the Tin Can Tourist.  More on this group and photo's in our next blog.

Another great rally

   We were part of  25 rigs attending the  Carriage rally in Bushnell FL. The rally was held at Blueberry Hill RV Resort. This is a great park and under new management this year It is now part of  Sun RV Resorts. Our rally rate was $25. a night. You can see our review for this park in our archives under RV Parks Fl, from last year.  We would stay here again as it is a very very nice resort. We shared a lot of stories, had some great food, played a lot of games and just enjoyed the great friendships. The only down side was Linda and I are still fighting our colds. Although a lot better, still not back to 100%. Linda also suffered with a lot of back pain for a couple of days. One evening we a had a great "doo wop" group  called the Malt Shop. The rec hall was full to overflowing. We did see this group at the Tampa Super show last year, and they will be there again this year. About 22 rigs from our group are caravaning to the Tampa RV Super show. We will be at the Tampa show till Sunday the 20th. Then we will be heading for the Fort Myers area. That's all for now, thanks for following along.
       PS, while in Bushnell try the great home made ice cream at Lickity Splitz. About 20-25 flavors.

More from Florida - great movie- a bad cold

   Over the holidays we did get to see another great, funny movie. We went with friends Lance and Andrea to see "Parental Guidance". It was showing Christmas day in Clermont about 10 miles from our RV Park. When we got there the parking lot was almost full. Wow, never realized how many folks go to the movies on Christmas day. When we came out the parking lot was almost over flowing. It was good to have a few good laughs.
     We also tried to see if our bingo luck held out. But our luck ran out. Neither of us won. We came close several times, but somebody else got that last number before us.
     We also got to try something new, a "Idaho Spud".  It is a candy bar from Idaho. New friends shared them with us. see www.idahospud.com .  The candy bar is potato shape, with a soft marshmallow center(looks like mashed potato's), and a chocolate coating. It has been around since 1918 and is one of the top 100 selling candy bars in the Northwest.

 

 

Linda has been under the weather for a few days. We did make a trip to the walk-in medical center. A very bad head cold and very sore throat. She got two prescriptions and is on the mend, but it is  a slow mend.  On two different days friends in the park brought  by food for the sick. Thanks very much.

 

      Linda was feeling a little better so we went to another night of bingo. Our luck didn't hold out. We came close, but no wins. Bob did have a winning ticket to be crowed "king" for the night at bingo. He got a crown and had to pick a number from 1 to 75. He picked 13, his fathers lucky number. Each time his number was called he had to squeeze the chicken which made a very annoying noise. He also got a dollar for every 13 called. In total he got $8. Plus he also got 3 extra bingo cards for the "specials", which paid up to about $175(can't remember the exact dollar amount). We were with 5 other friends and you can imagine the laughs each time Bob had to squeeze the chicken.

     A few days later it was bingo time again. It was Bob's lucky night. He won two games for a total of $236.  I guess we're done with bingo for a while.

     On Friday we left the Thousand Trails Orlando for a trip to Bushnell. We arrived at Blueberry Hill RV Resort before noon. We are here for a Carriage rally. There are a total of 25 Carriage rigs here for the rally. We will be here till Tuesday, then caravan with about 20 other couples to the Tampa Super RV Show.  Thanks for stopping by.





 

Pileated Woodpecker and these big guys

   These photo's at Thousand Trails Orlando.  Had a visit from a pair of Pilested Woodpeckers today.  The first photo is a little blurry, shot through our window. They appeared to be at least 12 inches long.

Then out of the brush behind us came these big guys. See how Linda Christmas cactus is blomming on the table. The second time this year they bloomed.

Bobcat, Sand Cranes, more of Florida

     If you check our archives you can see two new listings. They are 2007 and 2008. This will show our first web pages from a different website. We didn't want to loss those pages, since we no longer use that site.Unfortunately we do not have any pages from 2005 and 2006. We did have a lot of photo's on another site, which has closed down, but we did salvage those pictures.

     A gathering of a few friends celebrating the Holidays.

     While we were sitting here a Bobcat came out of the woods behind our RV and hide aside of that log. You have to look hard to see him. There is also a large swamp and beyond that a large lake. We tried to get a few pictures. This photo, if you look close, you can see a "tuff" on top off his right ear(on the left looking at the photo), identifing him as a bobcat.  He was big, we guess 25-30 pounds. But unlike a purebred bobcat his tail was a little longer, not "bobbed", and the tip was white, not black. He may have been mixed with a feral cat, our guess.

Sand Cranks

My mother thinks I'm Pretty!

A redheaded wood pecker

And this cute guy

     We were trying out Linda's new camera.  Great telephoto lens.
  Our site at Thousand Trails Orlando. You can see our review of this park in our archives under RV Parks FL Our site here is A40, a full hookup with 30amp electric. The park is almost completely full, somewhere around 840 sites.