Tarpon Springs & Dunedin Florida by Tricia Baehr

We've just left a great area that we want to share with everyone. Tarpon Springs, FL is located on Florida's Gulf Coast just north of the St. Petersburg area. The area known as the Sponge Docks provided us with a wonderful cultural and educational experience. The Baehr kids learned all about sponges and the sponge industry there as well as a great deal about the Greek culture and best of all Greek food. We would recommend the following restaurants, Mama Marias, Costas and Hellas. The kids already loved calamari but have now added, saganaki (Opa! cheese), keftedes, greek salads, greek chicken/lemon soup, gyros, souvlaki and baklava to their ethnic foods they love.

We also found a great little shop there, The Spice & Tea Exchange http://www.spiceandtea.com/ where we bought some great teas & spices. The proprietors, Jen & Dennis Macke were so friendly and informative. Birke is in love with the Phoenix Oolong tea and we are anticipating their "Florida Sunshine" salt blend on all the seafood we hope to be eating while in this part of the country. We also liked that they had bulk spices, spice mixes and teas in large jars so you could purchase a little or a lot. Which means less packaging and a smaller impact on the environment.

We stayed at the Dunedin RV Resort on Alt. 19 which was clean, neat and lots of friendly folk there. The kids LOVED all of the many dogs that live there with their people (just a note, I believe they have a pet free section) http://www.campingfriend.com/dunedinrvresort/

We also enjoyed the beach at Honeymoon Island http://www.floridastateparks.org/honeymoonisland/default.cfm on December 30th the kids played on the beach and Brandt and Bailey even swam quite a bit in the Gulf. The sand was white like granulated sugar with lots of stones and shells to play with.

We watched all the fireworks on New Years from the Dunedin Causeway, we could see from Port St. Richey all the way down to the St. Petersburg area. We found the Dunedin recycling center which was great except we felt that they needed to take plastics 1-7 instead of just plastic bottles. The downtown Dunedin area http://www.dunedin-fl.com/is great for walking around, shopping and restaurants-we had breakfast at a little coffee house there.

There was so much to see and do in this area, we barely scratched the surface...luckily for us the job John was working on there will require us to go back there and for his company to do another 10k sq. ft. in the future so we're excited about that!

Our First Adventure by Tricia

I have to make this short as I am almost out of time on the library computer here in Hernando County, Florida. We have had a great first week on the road and I look forward to adding more to this story when I get more computer time. Thanks to everyone for their support with the sale and we will have to have another in a couple of weeks because we still have many items remaining. We did PAY for the wonderful truck in cash and it did great on the 10 hour trip here.

All is well and we all feel happy and grateful for God allowing us to see our dream become reality.
The kids have learned about Manatees and other wildlife here in Florida. We are going to be visiting a battlefield from the Seminole War today. We have visited a sugar mill plantation ruin and the archeological dig and area from indigenous peoples from more than 1600 years ago. Where there are temple mounds and burial mounds. We have seen two beautiful Florida gulf coast sunsets, swam in brackish water (brackish is also a new vocabulary word) and enjoyed every minute of it. John has had a couple of set backs on the job but should be finished tonight and back on the road to Tennessee in the morning.

I have been given the gift of 10 extra minutes on the computer so I added a few of our adventures. I will add links and other information upon our return. Looking forward to some
mobile technology in some ways but have enjoyed the absence of it as well.