Sorry.... way to much fun these past few days to write much. I managed to drive from the east side of Florida to the west as expected on Wednesday. I pulled into the campground at Fort de Soto park around 3:00 in the afternoon and checked in at the front office. My space, #119, backs up to one of the bath houses as well as one of the kids play grounds. It also has a nice view out the back of the beach and the bay the park sits beside. Plenty of palm trees to set up under and provide some shade from the hot sun.
    Got the trailer backed into the site without problems and disconnected the hitch and electrical line. It only takes a few moments anymore to get it all set up and ready to go. This time I also pulled out and set up the side awning, thinking it might be nice to have a shady place to set in outside at times. So far I haven't had much time to do any of that.
    Have been wandering around checking out old and new sights around the area since then. Thursday there was time to check out the beach's here at the park. Lot's of neat shells on the beach and plenty of shore birds to watch. You can also explore the old gun emplacements that were built at various times for protection of the passageway into Tampa Bay. The last time being during WW II when they were afraid of German U-boats coming right into the entranceway channel.
    There was also time to go see a movie on Thursday afternoon. Went and saw 'The Imitation Game' about Alan Turing and his struggle to break the Nazis 'Enigma' code during the war.  A fascinating view of an obvious genius and his struggles growing up in England during the earlier 1900's. Beside being a math prodigy he also had to deal with the fact that he was a homosexual during a period in Englands history when it was possible to be arrested and sent to jail for that 'sin'.
     He, and the group he led at Bletchly Park did manage to break the code of course, thereby saving more than two years of war and 14 million people. In return they arrested him and made him take hormone shots that finally drove him to commit suicide. An interesting movie to say the least, and even though the end for Turning was sad and disappointing it was still a wonderful tale of a group of people who came together and accomplished much.
    I have still been fighting off the vestiges of what ever yucky flu like crud I have had these past couple of weeks. The cough is finally falling by the wayside, but I have been tired all of the time. Yesterday I wasn't up until nearly 11:00 in the morning. Then after some lunch I suddenly felt tired and had to go in for a nap of another couple of hours. I was surprised to find that I actually woke up in time to go over to the first night of the Snow Ball contra dance. Very glad I did however as it was wonderful to be dancing again.
    The first 2 hours featured the Clayfoot Strutters playing with Seth Tepher doing the calling. Lots of high energy right from the start of course. I am guessing that there have to be at least 400 dancers here as there were 5 lines the whole time with at least 80 people in each line, and quite possibly, even more. So lots of people that I know. I had some wonderful partners through out the evening and did well the whole time, only sitting out during the two square dances during the evening.
    After a short break around 10:00 we were back to dancing with the band the 'Stringways' with calling by Lisa Greenleaf. Dancing was only better from then on. I made it all the way to the end at midnight. I headed back to the trailer afterwards and had to contend with heavy wind and rain the whole way. It was a real pain once I got back to the campground as they have an electric gate at the entrance that you need to type a 4 digit code into to open. The main problem is that the key pad is located on the passenger door side, so you have to get out in the rain to punch the code in to open the gate. There was of course a 4"-6" deep puddle right in front of the keypad also, so the shoes and socks also got soaked.
    One nice thing is that there was no leak going on over the bed. Still a little one over the shower area, but that one can wait for a better chance to see about fixing it once again. Right now though I  think it's time to finish this up and go take a nap. There's still a whole lot of dancing to do later tonight.
   Enjoy this video I found of Andrew and Noah of The Great Bear Trio and one of their fireside concerts at this years Contra Dance Holiday dance in Morgan Town in late December.

The Great Andrew and Noah Concert

brk*