The first week of our trip, Mark and I had a bit of bad luck.

For example, on the third day Mark got a flat tire. On the fourth day the travel trailer flatted out on a really busy road. If you haven’t read that story, you can find it here. So by the time we pulled into our campsite at the end of the fourth day, we were beat. So much so that we decided to stay there two nights. We were in the Tampa area at the time, which meant we were fighting through busy-city traffic. Even our RV campground was in the middle of a city street with a 7-11 just across the road from us.

Consequently, the next day we lazed about not feeling motivated to do much of anything in such a congested area. Finally that evening shortly before dusk, we roused ourselves to take a walk. We set out in the opposite direction of the 7-11 and hadn’t walked but a half-block when we crossed a beautiful large paved bike path.

If only we’d know that was there, we would have been on our bikes exploring it during the day! We weren’t too happy with ourselves that we had missed that opportunity. Later, we found out it was the popular Pinellas Trail, which is 44 miles long.

We kept walking and very quickly walked out of the busy section into a quiet neighborhood. We turned the corner and ran right smack into the coolest section of antique stores, restaurants, ice cream and confectionary stores, and boutiques. Just the type of places I love to explore!

But now the shops were all closed because it was after 5 p.m., and we’d already eaten dinner, so we’d also missed the option of the restaurants. We were really ticked off at ourselves because we hadn’t made any effort to explore the area around us.

We discovered this area was called Ozona when we passed this quaint village hall.

At this point, we saw signs that said “Beach ➜,” so we followed them and just down the block was a beautiful marina and beach. We were able to catch the sunset, which was lovely, but the day could have been so much more.

 

Lesson learned: When the tag line of your blog says “adventure is all around us,” maybe we’d better be sure to explore a place before writing it off as being boring!

Kick up some dust!