Cycling Again - On the Ream Wilson Clearwater Trail

This was our last day before departing Clearwater. We had a few chores and errands to do to prepare for departure, but we saved the afternoon for another bike ride.

We needed to take some packages to the post office, so we pedaled there first, and then returned back to the Ream Wilson Clearwater Trail, which we picked up near the Phillies' Brighthouse Field. The path stretches for several miles through Clearwater, ending in Safe Harbor, an upscale residential and shopping community on Tampa Bay.

The first section of the trail crossed Kapok Park, which was developed in the early 2000's by the demolishment of a mobile home park to preserve water flow in Alligator Creek, and to provide additional natural habitat. The project was completed in 2005, and the park has matured beautifully in the ensuing seven years.

Here is David at the entrance to the park:

Here is a photo of Kathy surveying one of the ponds formed in the Park.  Note the typical Florida caution about alligators.

The path follows a strip of land lying between active railroad tracks and a stream and wetlands, and connects Kapok Park with the Eddie C. Moore Clearwater Softball Complex, which has incidentally preserved a lot of undeveloped land.  Here is a palm tree that appears never to have been groomed:

The trail crosses one of the main roads via a beautiful overpass.  Here is Kathy on the overpass, looking down on the traffic:

 Once we reached Safety Harbor, we found a little beer bar on Main Street, where we had a refreshing brew:

Remounting the bikes, we headed back to the RV and arrived around 5pm, in time to hang out in our camp chairs with Baxter and feel the breeze come up and watch the sun go down.

THE DARK SIDE OF RV'ING:  We decided to establish a new feature on this blog, which we'll call "The Dark Side of RV'ing."  Looking over our blog entries, you might believe that all is peaches and cream for people who RV in retirement.  Well, of course, it isn't - we just choose to highlight the exciting adventures.  But there are also darker "adventures," and we think we owe it to our readers to describe some of those from time to time.

We decided that today's "darker side" was Kathy's adventure getting diesel for the truck.  David is trying to download some Amazon cloud music he hadn't yet downloaded, while we have this speedy campground wifi, and so Kathy volunteered to fuel the truck.  She will regret it for years.  To know her pain, you must understand that the truck has two diesel tanks - one on each side, which are fueled separately.  Pulling into the gas station, Kathy quickly loaded diesel on one side.  But as she maneuvered the truck to turn it around and fuel the other side, she maneuvered wrong.  Realizing that she was still going to fuel the same side, she tried to re-position the truck.  But someone had pulled in behind her and she couldn't reposition as she wanted.  So she tried another maneuver - and someone else pulled into her target spot!  "Okay," she said, "I'll pull around to one of the pumps on the other side of the station."  She headed over there, only to be beat out by a Coca Cola truck.  "That's it!" she spat, and tried to steer the truck across the busy street to go down to another station.  Sorry, Kath:  six lanes of backed up traffic.  So she bulls her way through all the stopped traffic, gets down to the other station - and remembers that she didn't go in and purchase some bleach we need at the first station's mini-mart.  Oh, forget it.  She drove home, very frustrated and bleachless.