Another Week in Paradise

Can't believe how fast the weeks go by while in Florida. We have had another nice week of weather. It was cool one morning but by 10:00 a.m. it is sunny and warm again.

We have just done our routine activities most of this past week. On Wednesday night, we had a soup supper which was good. They had about 12 different types of soup, with bread and crackers, and then cake for dessert. Everything was very good.

The owners here at the park have an organization called Friends of the Circles and they are the ones that made the soup. It is a good fund raiser for them. Although it was only $4 a person.

Yesterday we went with our friends, Don and Linda, to a town called LaBelle. It is about 40 miles Southwest of here. They were having their annual Swamp Cabbage Festival. Don and Linda had been there before for it and they said it was a lot of fun and invited us to go with them. It was a fun day. They had a parade and they have different type floats in their parades than we do in the Midwest. I will attach some pictures. They decorate the floats with palm leaves instead crepe paper - it sure made you know you were in Florida.

After we watched the parade, we walked over to the their park where they had vendors for food as well as arts and crafts and live music.

As you can see by the menus they had Gator bites and Swamp Cabbage Fritters. Well, we decided we needed to try both of these. Both the Gator and the Fritters were deep fried (no good for our arteries) but really they were pretty good. I thought the Gator tasted like chicken and the Swamp Cabbage tasted like regular cabbage. Swamp Cabbage comes from the heart of a palm tree - I forgot exactly the name of the palm. Here is a picture of a pile of the palms. They just take the heart of it out and cook it. It is like a filler - not much of a favor.

Well, after all this the guys wanted to go the Lawnmower races. This was a first for us. We had never been to anything quite like this. They "supped" up the lawnmowers and they raced around the tracks. First they had some drag races and then they had oval races. It was pretty cute! And, a woman won two of the races. She was quite a driver. We heard she had been racing for 22 years. So I guess she should have been good....

This was a fun day but we were pretty "pooped out" by the time we got home.

Today we have been packing for our cruise. We are leaving in the morning to head over to Fort Launderdale to pick up our friends, Dora and Marlin, and then head to Miami to catch our ship. We won't have the computer so we will be off until next weekend. Have a good week.