She Says:  We left Savannah  and headed to Columbus, Ga to turn in my remaining Army gear.  Thankfully that went fairly smoothly and we were on our way to Fl. We were super anxious to get to a beach so we found the nearest one on the map and headed there.  We were on the gulf side.  Sadly enough the first few beaches we found sucked!! 😦  They were more boat ramps with a little sand.  They were plagued with bugs and hermit crabs. Needless to say we didn’t last long and daylight was burning so we decided to find our campsite and call it a day.  Our campsite turned out to be a RV campsite only (what is it with Fl and all the RV’s!! There are practically no regular campsites)…so we had to look for another.  We finally found another one near Cedar Key, Fl.  It was pretty amazing.  We were right on the water and there were nice showers, a nature preserve, and only one other camper there.  We built a fire, grilled out hot dogs, made some smores, listened to some tunes and drank two bottles of wine 🙂  The next morning we woke up and were getting eaten alive by bugs (nosee ems)  Never heard of them but they were vicious.  We wanted to get out of there quick but when John went to turn on the car, the battery was dead 😦  Damn!!  So he had to go ask the other camper to give us a jump.  Apparently the guy, who was in his 80’s put the charge opposite and now our radio doesn’t work nor our power locks…there is no way I can last this trip with John’s singing.  Sorry babe– you are good but you sound much better when you sing WITH the music..

We stopped at Walmart and got some battery operated speakers and all is well.  We took the car to the shop and looks like the bad jump damaged a wire and its a complicated fix.  UGH!  We were hoping it was only a fuse.  Oh well we are happy we still have music.  We made it to Clearwater Beach–which was amazing!! And spent the day laying out and playing in the ocean.  Man this is the life.  We stuffed our faces with crab legs which I have been craving for approximately 6 months and called it a day.

He Says: I have a sad story to tell today. It was a beautiful day in Florida while drove along the Gulf Coast. So excited to be close to the water and white sand, we drove as close to the coast as possible looking for a beach. Finally, we found one although it wasn’t what we envisioned. A little marshy and dirty, it wasn’t the picturesque beach we hoped for but it was a beach nonetheless and the weather was beautiful. We decided to lay out and relax for a while. I set Mullah Gee (our OSU garden gnome) next to TB and took my usual pictures. These ones were of him gazing out along the water and taking in the beauty and vastness of the water. After the pics, I laid out with TB and soaked up the rays for a few minutes. Eventually, the hermit crabs and bugs were too much so we decided to pop smoke and keep driving to Clearwater where the beaches would be more in line with what we imagined. We folded up our towels, hopped in the car and got out of there as quickly as possible. We finally reached our campsite for the night and started setting up. We had beautiful views of the Gulf Coast from our campsite so I again looked for Mullah Gee to take our usual pics. As I searched I felt my stomach turn several times and then finally drop to the ground where the no-see-ems swarmed and bit it. I realized that I had left Mullah Gee standing on the beach from our previous pics. I felt like a bad father who abandoned his child. I considered driving back to look for him but TB put the kebosh on that being that the drive was 2 hours in the wrong direction. She consoled me by giving me plenty of wine to drink and reassuring me that I could find another Mullah Gee. So I did just that. Got drunk and ordered a new one from Amazon. I can’t wait to see you again, Mullah! 🙂

The Beach! Not a good one, but it will do!

View from our Campsite

Another view from our campsite. The site only cost us $5!!!!!!

I cooked breakfast. Nothing like a hotdog and scrammbled egg sandwich! Yum!

Clearwater Beach

TB & J @ the beach (Sorry we promise to be more tan next photo)

J's new dream Jeep!

The last pic of Mullah before we left him behind. 😦