Day 7 - April 4th

We spent the morning at a leisurely pace.  Most of today was spent driving.  Scott decided he could skip the large mammal and reptile museum because he didn't think there would be anything good in there.  He "didn't want to cheapen the Bigfoot experience".  That was more than fine with me and we were on the road by 8:30. 

We drove three hours through clouds and the beginning of rain into Bradenton, Florida.  This is across the river from Tampa and a large thunderstorm was moving through right as we arrived.  We decided to hang out in the camper a while and eat lunch while it passed over a little.  De Soto National Monument marks our 112th park and Lorelei's 55th junior ranger badge.  Luke doesn't always like to do them and doesn't seem to be driven to get them all so he doesn't have quite as many as Lorelei does.   It was still raining so we grabbed umbrellas and headed into the visitor center.  This park marks the spot where Hernando De Soto came ashore to lead an expedition into the New World.  He wanted more gold but the King of Spain was hoping he would set up a colony.  He pillaged, conquered and killed on his was through what is now America and I found it quite ironic that we celebrate someone who did that.  However, had he not been so greedy, we might all have been fighting against Spain rather than England in the American Revolution.  Either way, it is an interesting piece of America's history.  But, I digress.

We watched the park movie.  These are always good and give a lot of information.  While we were in the visitor center, replicas of the Nina and the Pinta from Christopher Columbus' voyage to America were sailing out in the bay.  Apparently they are on a tour and they had a schedule to stick to despite the crappy weather.  After watching the movie, we had an outside activity to do to complete our books and luckily the rain let up enough that we weren't getting wet under our umbrellas.  We decided to divide and conquer so Lorelei and I went one way on the trail and Scott and Luke went the other.  We got our answers and Lorelei and I had our picture taken by a photographer doing a piece on the weather for the Bradenton newspaper.  I'll Google tomorrow to see if we made the paper. 

Once we had the answers, we got our badges and got out of the park.  We had another 2 hour drive to get to Winter Haven, Florida where we are camping tonight.  We walked to Walmart next door to pick up a few things and then spent the rainy evening watching a little TV and playing Clue.  It is supposed to rain tomorrow and we are headed to Legoland Florida.  It is our last day before we start a long drive home.