Maintenance & Movie

By the sea, by the sea, by the beautiful sea.

We started the day with maintenance activities. It was cleaning day for the RV. It is always lovely getting everything back in order after being on the road with no time for organization. Yesterday, we bought fresh flowers, which grace the table and countertop. Since we are planted for a while, I decorated with window flags and a glass sunburst. The RV is looking nice and homey.

For lunch, we went to Sunset Plaza and ate at Dan Marino's restaurant, good food and ambience. Then, we went to see Brokeback Mountain, a movie that breaks ground by taking big risks, really well acted but way too long. As Mel said, "That's 2+ hours that we won't see again." We both felt it could have been an hour shorter and still make the point, but it seems a lot of directors want to keep us in our seats long after we understood the significance of a scene. It will and should receive award nominations but we still like Crash better.

When we returned to the campgrounds, I asked Mel to drive us through the park so we could see where the bike trails would take us. We saw a bit of a brush fire and on our turn around we saw the Florida Department of Forestry and a fire truck. Thinking it was a controlled burn, we continued back to our campsite. When we turned on the 6:00 p.m. local news, the lead story was about the first-of-the-season brush fire at Larry and Penny Thompson Park, which is where we are staying. The odd thing was that when we signed in on Tuesday, they gave us information about "Red Alert" for hurricane and fire evacuation. So we began to prepare in case we had to make a run for it. Around 8 p.m., the fire was finally out but was still the lead story on the 11 p.m. news. It seems the cold weather and lack of rain dries out the trees and they combust. Wow, the things that we have learned on this trip. We are always very aware of weather and local conditions.