West Texas storms

We're in West Texas this week. After Pam's laptop crashed, we lost nearly all the Florida pictures, which was heartbreaking. The "expert" is still trying to recover them, but so far without success.

There's not a lot to see in West Texas other than Mesquite trees and brush, but driving in we got some halfway decent pictures of the building thunderstorms.

Missing Florida

The hardest thing about being back in Texas is not having those gorgeous sunsets and other great picture ops. We're working long, hard days again instead of the great 10-4 hours we had in Florida. Hopefully soon we'll have some other great photos to post, but until then here are some from our trip home.

Ah well. Looks like Blogger is on the fritz again. Will try again tomorrow.

Getting close to time to head back home...

Just about 10 days left of our stay in Florida. We've had a ball, worked our tails off, been frustrated by some people's attitudes and charmed by others. The best part has been the chance to take tons of pictures of things we don't see at home.

Update: Caught the two guys at the top watching a golf game with interest this morning. And our Florida stay is over early. We leave Sunday to head back to Texas. We hope to see lots of interesting things on the trip home, though, so stay tuned.

Some of these pictures were taken at the country club where we're working this week, and on Sanibel island.

In Ft. Myers, FL

We'll be shooting in Ft. Myers FL for the next week. Today we stopped by the Manatee Viewing Center in Ruskin to see if the cooler weather had brought the Manatees in--and it had. There were quite a few in the warm waters put off by the power plant. Our favorite was a female with her calf. Mama kept rolling over onto her back and floating in the water, giving us a good view of her face. I love the way the manatees are always touching with their flippers, their noses, etc. They seem to be very loving creatures.

Also got a few more pics of the Skyway from St. Petersburg. And some sunset pics from Honeymoon Island and Pine Island.

Ah well. Looks like we won't be able to upload any pictures again this week. We don't have wifi at the motel, so we're on dial up, and Blogger can't handle the slower upload.

Check back next week and hopefully we'll have a lot of new pics to show.

Spent most of today driving to Wikki Wachee and back. Had no idea it was that far away. We found a motel to stay in for the next 3-4 days, then drove out to Pine Island to take more sunset pics.

Does anyone ever get tired of looking at sunsets?

Unexpected day off

After a grueling 14 hour day yesterday, with a schedule meant for 3 people with only the 2 of us to shoot it, we were happy to learn we had today off. We thought about going to the Strawberry Festival but decided we needed to rest. We've spent nearly every day off so far driving, sightseeing, shooting pictures, etc. So today we only went about 10 miles south, though we took the long way around and drove closer to 40 miles. We stopped at an Amish-style restaurant for lunch and a huge strawberry shortcake (we shared the dessert), checked out the camera stores (nothing but small chain stores that don't carry much in this area), and drove out to Siesta Key to check out the beach. It's beautiful. Miles and miles of pristine white sand. Because it was a cool and windy day, we didn't stay long. Mostly just took some pictures to see if we'd gotten the sensor cleaned off with our makeshift blower. (Yes!)

Manatees!

Finally got to see the Manatees today. They're very hard to get a decent picture of, but we got a couple. The morning was bright and sunny, then turned off gray and dreary. Rained a bit. Picked up more trash on the sensor while changing lenses to take the Manatee pictures (serious flaw in the Nikon D70 design) and can't find a blower to clean it off. Spent some time watching them ( a male by himself, then a family group), bought some souvenirs at the gift shop, then headed for St. Petersburg.

Going across the Skyway bridge was a real trip. And the wind was high, which made us both a bit nervous. Once across the bridge, we stopped and had lunch at Bennigan's, thanks to our boss and the gift cards he gave us for Christmas. Thanks Bill! Lunch was great! Then we stopped at the St. Pete's beach, but it was raining. Then we drove down to Fort De Soto and hiked around, took some pics, and headed back to the motel. Have to get up at 5 in the morning to go to work. Pam says she does not do mornings!

Tomorrow it's back to work for 4 days before we get another day off.