A Loaf of Sugar is fun to visit in Florida

It rained all day long here in Greensboro, Georgia. I didn't want to go out because I would get very wet and my back foot is also still sore. So I decided to just sleep and sometimes look out the window. I was thinking about places we had been before that was NOT wet and was nice to be in.

I remembered a place that Dad called the Keys. It was in Florida, not far from us here (in Georgia) as Dad reminds me. Dad said it was called Sugarloaf Key. It was down near the very bottom of the United States of America and on a small island or key. Scary to be on the bottom of such a large country. But there was nothing to fear, so I enjoyed it. I was also quite a young dog and nothing could scare me there, not even the big seagulls or the snakes.

We were on one of our EAST COAST trips, driving from Colorado in early Spring to Florida. We left the snow and headed for the warm beach and the big lake Dad called the Atlantic Ocean.

We visited my friends, Misti and Bogie (sadly he's not with us anymore) in Florida.

It was one of my first trips in the RV (the old one we had) and I really was excited. There were so many different smells and things to see. We visited a lot of places along the way. We stopped to see Mom's sister Teri and her dogs, Mysti and Bogey who lived in Florida. They were fun to play with. But they were so small I had to be careful not to hurt them. They reminded me of big snowballs because they were so fluffy and white.

You travel over many bridges over the big Ocean for a long time to get to Sugarloaf Key.

When we left Mysti and Bogey, we drove for a long time over the water on very very long bridges to get there. We decided to stay a whole month (Dad says April 2002) at the Lazy Lakes RV Resort on Sugarloaf Key (we never did see the loaf of sugar there!). They had a special price for April and Dad loves places with special prices.

We were right on the water at Lazy Lakes RV Resort in Sugarloaf Key, Florida. That was cool! Really!

It was kinda warm there but the wind was blowing and when I was outside (which I was much of the time) it was OK for me. Our air conditioner had broken and for a lot of the time we just had all the windows in the RV open day and night. It was the same day and night: warm and windy. I don't think the temperature changed the whole time we were there. (Temperature is the way humans talk about how hot or cold things are. It doesn't make a lot of sense to me, but humans are funny creatures and have strange customs you don't always understand.)


One of the neat things at the RV Park was that we stayed right next to the water. The RV Park was next to a little lake and it even had an alligator in it. An alligator was a scary animal that I'd never seen before. Dad said it ate dogs for lunch so I stayed away from the edge of that lake. I didn't want to BE anyone's lunch.

Mom and I walking along the little lake at our RV Resort (that's me in the back of the photo, but really ahead, as usual.)

Well, every day we walked around the lake a few times. I could go without my leash on the far side where there weren't any humans. It was really fun. A lot of other dogs had been there too because I smelled a large number of them. The lake had steep edges, so you couldn't wade in it without falling in and there was the alligator to consider, so I just walked along the path next to the lake.

I got to rest half way around the lake. It was hot there!

Sometimes Mom would walk me around the RV Park so I could smell the other dogs that didn't venture out next to the lake. The small dogs don't like to walk far and their owners sometimes can't walk very well, so there were a lot of other dogs to meet and smell in the park. Once, while on such a walk, I saw a weird looking stick moving around and pounced on it. It was in the bushes so Mom didn't see it at first. But then, Mom screamed and I threw the stick around in my mouth until Mom demanded I put it down. Besides, the stick was really long and wiggling and was kinda hard to hold. Mom told me later that it was a snake and snakes were something that humans were afraid of. She said some of them could hurt me and humans by biting us. Well, I was just a puppy, what should I know about snakes?

I had a nice place to lie under the shade of this big shelter.

This is my friend, the Great White Heron. He kept me company all day.

Most of the time I just laid outside the RV watching all the birds and the people. One very big white bird seemed to adopt me because he was always right next to me. Dad says he was a Great White Heron, but whatever he was, he was tall with a very pointy long nose and mouth, but friendly. He just liked to stand and look around too. Sometimes, he would dive into the water for a fish, but most of the time he just stood on one leg and looked around. I felt that if we could have talked we would have been good friends. He'd have stories about all the animals and birds that live on the island and what he could see from so far above when he was flying. I'd tell him about all our RVing adventures and about the snow in Colorado. But.. birds are dumb and can't communicate very well (except with loud screeches or whistles and who knows what they are saying?) So we just stared at each other and enjoyed resting together.

We took walks around the RV Park at night when the sun was setting. It was never cold at night.

Dad liked to drive around the island and he let me go with him. He would look for places that I could get out and run around without a leash. We found a couple places that had a lot of sand and water and bushes. I even got in the water a little. It tasted really strange. Dad said that was called salt water and it would make me sick if I drank it. Once a big dog ran after me, but he didn't catch me. You have to be careful in strange places. There are strange dogs there that aren't so friendly.

We walked around Key West and went to the very bottom of the USA!

Sometimes we would take a car trip to another island. There was a place not far on another island called Key West. Dad says it really was the bottom of the USA. In fact we took a picture at a place that said it was at the very bottom. We looked far out over the big lake that Dad called the Atlantic Ocean and couldn't see anything but more water (and birds).

We met a lot of people that were on this big boat (in the back of me) at Key West. They liked to pet me.

We walked all over that island. I was so tired and it was hot when we couldn't find some shade. Once we saw a gigantic boat that had millions of humans on it. Dad said it was like hundreds of RVs all in one boat going from place to place but on the water not on the land. (I don't know how they do that. I fall and sink in water without swimming real hard.) We met some of the people and they wanted to pet me (and did) and they were nice. A lot of them said they had dogs at home but they couldn't bring them on the big boat. I was glad to let them pet me. They said it made them miss their dogs, but it made them feel good too.

This island had too many humans on it for me and Dad, and it had even more birds. A lot of them (the humans) didn't smell so good, but many of them were very friendly to me. One lady at a store even offered me some water. I was very glad to have some because it was so hot there. I was glad when Mom and Dad decided to go back to the Sugarloaf Key. It was so much quieter and cooler there in the shade. It's nice to go back home, even when you aren't sure how to get there sometimes.

Well, we had a long way to travel to get back home in Nederland, Colorado so we left at the end of the month and headed back. We got to stop in a lot of places, but eventually when we got home it was good. It was even snowing a lot. It was a good change after the really warm weather in Florida to have the snow to roll around in again.

When we got home to Colorado it was snowing. A big change from our time in Florida. I liked it too!

Life's fun when it's changing. And it does change a lot for me.

Arf,

Reggie


http://www.lazylakeskeyscamping.com/