Happy Birthday Candy!

We arrived at my Dad's home last night. He has a nice big driveway ... Tom and Candy's RV resort! They're right on the Withlacoochee river ... another place we'd love to do some kayking someday. Actually, they're on a wide part of the river known as Lake Rousseau. We stopped by a couple months' ago on our way south just for one night, promising to spend more time on our way north. Well, I'm afraid it's not to be, we have to leave tomorrow if we have any hope of making it to Austin in time. We had to spend most of today driving to Orlando for a short job at another RV park. We left Odie here. When we returned, we hear the tale of his little adventure. Take a look at this photo of their back yard. It ends at the banks of the river. Apparently, a lot of vegetation has been dislodged upriver and found a resting place here. All that green you see is just floating on top of the water. But Odie doesn't know that. When he gets to the end of the dock, he decides to jump down to this lower level lawn for a stroll. Glub ... Blub ... woops! I remember that he did that last year when we were here, I still laugh about the sight of him disappearing in a splash after jumping onto these lilly pads. He probably doesn't think it's so funny. After a few worrisome moments looking about for the resident alligator, Candy guided him to an area of the bank where he could get out. She washed the muck off of him and kept him inside for a while. When we got back, she simply explained that "Odie had a bath!" Here he is enjoying a post-bath run in the yard. Boy can he run. Our visit happened to fall on Candy's birthday. So we got to join them for a special dinner at December's Restaurant. We had a delicious gourmet dinner. And even were visited by the very friendly chief cook and bottlewasher ... the owner. Happy Birthday Candy!