Memorial Weekend 2012

This weekend has been a fun adventure through small towns all around Florida. Saturday morning James and I headed to the west coast.

We drove through St. Pete Beach area looking for a place to eat lunch and ended up stopping in Madeira Beach, which is just north of Treasure Island. There were plenty of restaurants, ice cream shops, and parking meters. We had lunch at what we thought was a local place but boy did we get ripped off – the food was bland, portions were small, and pricing was outrageous. 🙁

After lunch we walked around and looked in some of the shops. We found a place called Lori’s Soap & Sponge Market where I of course had to do a little shopping. 😉 I got some bath salts and 4 bars of soap made with goat’s milk and olive oil. Everything I purchased feels and smells fantastic.

Next stop – downtown Clearwater. We found a Starbucks here so brought our “Florida” book inside to scope out our next stop. The Stabucks was under construction and in such shambles that we were surprised it was actually open. The electricity was on though, so we found a cushy couch facing the street – perfect for people-watching. Then the strangest thing happened… there were people in kahki pants and button-down shirts all over the place, walking in all directions. Hundreds of them. All dressed alike, and every one of them had a black box attached to their belt. Strange, right? We couldn’t figure it out. So when we left Starbucks James asked one if there was a graduation ceremony going on or something (thinking this might be what they wore under their cap and gown?). The guy looked frightened by James and didn’t speak but just shook his head quickly and zoomed away. Odd. We noticed several of them walking into an alley between buildings, so we followed them and found they were boarding buses (what the heck!). James stopped another one. This time he explained we noticed several people all dressed alike and wondered if there was a convention going on or something. The man was very nice and explained they are with the Church of Scientology. James asked why they were getting on the bus, and he said it was hot outside so the bus was more comfortable than walking across town in the heat. Hm.

James is convinced they were robots or aliens, or maybe some hybrid mix of robo-alien. I think they were human, but just not very social. I’ve made a mental note to research Church of Scientology to figure it all out.

Anyway, so we started to notice Starbucks was the only business open in this creepy downtown area, and we were the only “normal” people left walking the streets. Time to move on.

Last stop for the day: Dunedin. 
So a few miles down the road we come to the quaint little town of Dunedin, Florida. the first thing I notice is this clearly marked “Zombie Apocalypse Response Vehicle”. What the heck is going on here?! James might be onto something.

Despite the crazy pickup truck, we change into dinner attire and proceeded to have a very nice dinner date at a fantastic tapas-style restaurant called The Living Room. The atmosphere was perfect – nice weather, attentive waitstaff, fair pricing, large food portions, and nice live music. This was our favorite restaurant of the weekend and we both loved the quaint little historic downtown area of Dunedin. This is definitely on our list of places to visit again in the future. What a nice way to end our day.

Sunday’s journey was a lot shorter and included a few friends from our MINI club. We first went to Deland, then to Mount Dora before returning home.

It was a dreary day (thanks to tropical storm Beryl) so we thought a nice tea room would be perfect. Our friend Casey is leaving for 3 weeks to visit his family in England so we planned to meet up with him while he’s still in town. We searched and searched but apparently every tea room in Central Florida is either out of business or closed on Sundays. Eventually we just decided to go with plan B, which was “Grab an umbrella, drive to Deland and figure it out when we get there”. 🙂 Fortunately, that worked ok for Casey too. We ended up eating a late lunch at Brickhouse Grill in the historic downtown area. The food was tasty and the pricing was reasonable. James was telling Casey about our adventures through small towns this weekend and mentioned that we haven’t gone to Mt. Dora – a small town that we know and love. I immediately posted an invitation on facebook and next thing you know we were sitting at Pisces Rising in Mt. Dora with five more friends at the table!

It was a beautiful evening. The storm brought in a nice cool breeze but no rain. We sat on the outside deck listening to live music, enjoying delicious food and drinks, and sharing stories with friends. This is the definition of “the good life”.

And as if that wasn’t enough… I finally got a photo of my car with the sunset. There was a photography contest on sunshineminis.org with “sunset” as one of the topics. I tried to capture one all month long but always seemed to be indoors or too far from my car (the car had to be in the photo in order to qualify). When we saw tropical storm Beryl in the forecast for the remainder of the month I assumed all hope of getting a sunset photo was lost, but I was wrong! So here it is, my entry for the May photo contest.

I of course took a zillion photos and picked that one for the contest – since it showed a lot of sunset – but here’s another one that I like just as much. I like that it includes the American flag flying, I thought that was nice symbolism being that it’s Memorial Day.

And here’s a closeup that shows more of the car and not as much sunset.

After Pisces Rising closed we walked down the street to a nice little place called One Flight Up.  We’d been here for a MINI meet before and knew they had sandwiches, but much to our surprise they also had ice cream, frozen coffee drinks, and even brownie sundaes! Needless to say, we camped out here for a little while and enjoyed a nice sweet finish to our nearly-perfect evening.

Here are more pictures of Sunday evening at Mt. Dora.

So what did we accomplish on Monday? Well, pretty much nothing. We bummed around the house eating brownies, editing photos, and catching up on our blog postings. 🙂

What a great weekend.