DAY 14: Tampa and Morriston, FL

Saturday, October 6th, 2012: Tampa and Morriston, FL

We woke up early this morning in Bonita Beach to finish packing and to pick up Kingsley from the kennel in Naples.  As we were leaving the kennel, we discovered a farmers market going on down the street.  Of course, the first thing Kingsley did was take a huge dump right in the center of the market.... I think he was excited to be back with us after his week at the kennel....

Bakery stand at the farmers market.  The guy working was so nice - he gave me a free bagel and cheese bread biscuit :)

Produce stand at the farmers market.

What we got:
(2) loaves of rosemary bread
Basket of bananas

Total: $8.50



After the farmers market, we were off to Tampa to search for some food trucks.  Since it was Saturday, we weren't to sure how successful we'd be.  My friend, Sam, who has lived in Tampa, suggested trying 'Taco Bus' which was easy to locate in downtown Tampa.  Thanks for the suggestion, Samantha!

Bridge to no-where in Tampa.

It wasn't exactly a real truck, but the building was in the shape of a bus, plus they have other food trucks throughout the city, so we compromised.  I'm glad we did, because it was so good!  They even had vegan options!

Checking out the Taco Bus menu.

Taco Bus - Tampa, FL

What we got:
Shrimp taco
Tempeh taco
Carnitas torta
Butternut Squash Salsa Fresca
Pineapple Agua Fresca
Horchata

Total (with tip): $23

Shrimp taco and tempeh taco.

Horchata and Pineapple Agua Fresca.

Carnitas torta.

Everything was so good and fresh!  And cheap!  My favorite was the Pineapple Agua Fresca.  They also had homemade hot sauces, so Mitch bought some to take with us.

Hot and Mild hot sauce from Taco Bus.

Next stop was Mitch's childhood house in Tampa where he was born and raised until age 5.  We even got to surprise some of his old neighbors that are still close family friends!

Mitch's childhood home in Tampa.

The Whalen's - Kelon, Tera, Teri and Mick.

The Zappone's - Annette and Fred

After leaving Tampa, our final stop was at my cousin, Marianne's, house in Morriston, FL, about 2 hours north of Tampa.  She lives on a horse farm with her daughters and boyfriend, so we were excited to see a different side to Florida than either of us had ever seen.  There were literally miles and miles of horse farms and horse training facilities!

The Belafonte in Morriston, FL.

Rachel, me, Lyric, Taylor, and Marianne.

Their land was beautiful and they had so many different kinds of animals in addition to horses on their farm.

Piglets!

Wallace.

Rachel, my cousin's 13 year old middle daughter, was our chef for the evening.  She made us one of the best meals we've had so far!  We were super impressed with her cooking skills.  Marianne's other daugters, Taylor and Lyric, are such amazing girls too and treated us like royalty while we were there.

Ritz cracker-encrusted chicken with sweet potatoes.

Rachel made us cake pops :)  She is so cute.

What we ate:
Baked Chicken Tenders with Ritz cracker breading
Sweet potatoes
Broccoli salad
Potato Salad
Cake Pops!





Food truck/farm market spending: $31.50 (under budget)

Total Spending:

Kennel and Vet fees for Kingsley (5 night stay plus all vet needs up-to-date): $243 (about $49/day)
Starbucks (I know, I know....): $9
Extras from Taco Bus (2 kinds of hot sauce): $6
Gas: $76
Food truck/farm market food: $31.50

Total Spending for Day 14: $365.50 (over budget)

Real life Mario Cart driving through northern Florida...

Thanks again to everyone for all the support!

XOXO
Mitch and Laurel

DAYS 11 - 14: Yes, we're still at Bonita Beach

Wednesday, October 3rd - Saturday, October 6th, 2012: Bonita Beach, FL

Sorry for the delay in posts!  We didn't have internet these past couple days.  Lots more to come this week!



Wednesday 10/3

We had heard about a dog beach down the street near our condo, so we decided to pick up Kingsley from the dog kennel for the afternoon and take him there.  Mitch made some breakfast and we were off the dog beach.

Breakfast: Grits with leftover veg/tofu stew (with an egg for Mitch) and toast.

Dog Beach

Frisbee master

This place was awesome!  There were probably 25 other people there with every king of dog you can imagine.  Kingsley got lots of frisbee and hump time in, so he was happy.




Later, we drove to Ft. Myers Beach hoping to find some food trucks or street vendors, but found nothing.  We stopped at a produce stand, an ice cream stand, and a fish market off the island though, so we still got our fix.

Produce stand in Ft. Myers.

Pickin' out the good stuff.

What we got:
Oranges
Potatoes
Tomatoes
Onion

Total: $10

Kingsley gettin' in on some Mint Chip.

What we got:
Mint Chip cone
Mango Sorbet slushie

Total (with tip): $10

Fresh fishies.

Beach Seafood Market - Ft. Myers

What we got:
1# of grouper
1# of medium shrimp

Total: $21

Dinner at the condo was 'Gulf of Mexico Bouillabaisse' - grouper, shrimp, saffron, seafood stock, tomatoes, garlic, peppers, and pasta with crusty bread.

Food Truck Spending: $41 (over budget)

Total Spending: $41 (under budget)



Thursday 10/4

Thursday was another lazy day by the pool/ocean, reading and drinking Bloody Mary's.  We didn't prepare any food at home because we made plans to meet Mitch's grandma (we call her Nonnie) for dinner in Lehigh Acres, FL where she lives.  It was about a 45 minute drive from where we were staying.

Nonnie took us to a place called 'Beef o'Brady's' which (I think) is a chain restaurant in the south.  It was very good!

Ribs n' Chicken

Fish n' Chips

Nonnie, Mitch and Laurel at Nonnie's house.

What we got:
Fish and Chips
Ribs and Chicken Tenders
Wine
Beer

Dinner was Nonnie's treat which was very generous of her!  After dinner, we went back to her house to hang out with her and her boyfriend, Jim.  The best part is when she pulled out all the old photo albums with pictures of Mitch when he was a kid!

Some of my favorites:

Mitch.  Stud.  Same haircut today.

Mitch.  Stud.  Bleached mullet with the sides shaved.

Mitch.  Chef-in-training.  Stretching some pizza dough.

Mitch's mama.  Beautiful Debi as a teenager.

Food Truck Spending: $0 (under budget)

Total Spending:
Target (more sunscreen, tooth ache medicine for Mitch, nail polish, Twizzlers): $31
Gas: $65

Total: $96 (under budget)



Friday 10/5

Friday was another lazy day by the pool (poor ol' us, I know)....

At night, I did some homework, then decided to color my blond hair with a box of brown hair dye.   Not ideal, but desperate times call for desperate measures!  There's no time for blond highlight up-keep on this trip!  Good thing I like being a brunette :)

Mitch did weird 'Mitch' things (including harvesting, straining, drying out, and separating seeds into envelopes from all of the tomatoes and peppers we had brought along from his garden at home ... the things that keep him entertained are beyond me....).

Then we packed up the car/camper so we could leave early the next morning.

Friday breakfast - grits and veggies, Pellegrino and coffee on the patio.

Our condo - Seascape on Little Hickory Island

Food Truck Spendng: $0 (under budget)

Total Spending:
Walgreens (brown hair color, envelopes for Mitch's seeds): $19

Total: $19 (under budget)



New posts coming soon from:

Tampa
Morriston, FL
Tallahasse
Rosemary Beach, FL
Pensacola, FL
Mobile, AL
Gulfport, MS
New Orleans
Lafayette, LA
Houston
Austin

Yeah!  So excited for what's still to come!

XO
Mitch and Laurel

DAYS 8 - 14: Bonita Beach, FL

DAYS 8 - 14: Sunday, September 30th - Saturday, October 6th - Bonita Beach, FL

Mitch and I are taking a few days off before we're back on the road eating ONLY at food trucks across the US!  Which means only home-cooked meals from our condo and plenty of wave-jumping in the Gulf of Mexico (and sunburns on my part).


We are having such a good time doing absolutely NOTHING!  I think we're going to go to Miami for the day tomorrow (Thursday) to check out the food truck scene there.  Also, Mitch's grandma (Nonnie) lives nearby in Lehigh, FL, so we're going to spend Thursday night with her and have dinner at her house.  She is an amazing cook - she's the first person to teach Mitch how to cook!



Here are some of the meals we've cooked so far:

Monday Night (made by Mitch):

Homemade vegan pizza (caramelized onions, mushrooms, garlic, spinach, peppers and tofutti cream cheese) and Campari cocktails.

Tuesday Night (made by me):

Homemade vegan stew with couscous (roasted potatoes and peppers, tomatoes, garlic, cucumbers, vegetable stock, and tofu), beer, and Campari cocktails.

Bloody Mary's for the pool.

Books and Bloody's.

Pool with a view.  The weather has been perfect so far!

Shells everywhere.

Bonita Beach is so quiet and beautiful.  Thank you again to Scott Bryer for extending his lovely beach front condo to us this week that he so generously gifted to us a wedding gift!

DAY 9 - 10 Food Truck Spending: $0 (obviously under budget)

Spending for Day 9 - 10:

Target (we didn't pack swimsuits (?!) and Mitch's favorite boots got holes in the bottoms, so we had to stock up on those things, plus sunscreen, a new car phone charger, and some books): $131

Walgreens (shipping boxes, tape, and bubble wrap for some items I sold on eBay): $14

Post Office expenses (2-day shipping for eBay items): $31

TOTAL for 2 days:  $176 (way under budget!)

XOXO 

Mitch and Laurel

DAY 8: Savannah & Tybee Island, GA, Jacksonville, & Bonita Springs, FL

DAY 8: Sunday, September 30th, 2012 - Savannah and Tybee Island, GA, Jacksonville (kind-of), and Bonita Springs, FL


We decided to check out Tybee Island, a small beach community just east of Savannah in the Atlantic Ocean.  After driving through Savannah first, we discovered that parking was (surprise, surprise!) very difficult.  Tybee was about a 25 minute drive from where our campground was, but was definitely worth the out-of-way drive!  The beach was amazing!  This will for-sure be a place for us to come back to some day.

The tide was waaaay out.

Atlantic Ocean

Kingsley's first time in the ocean :) Clearly, he loved it.  He just ran back and forth.

As we drove around Tybee Island, we only found one food "truck"... which was really a food truck converted into a stationary outdoor restaurant.  Regardless, we considered it to be a food truck and decided to stop and eat.

Gerald's Pork & Shrimp "Food Truck"  - Tybee Island, GA

That's Gerald!

What we ordered:

Shrimp Po-Boy

Oyster Po-Boy

Fried Okra

Iced Tea

Total: $23 (with tip)

Oyster Po-Boy

Shrimp Po-Boy

Fried Okra

The Po-Boy sandwiches were the specialty of the house, so it was very easy to decide what to order. They were delicious!  Plus, the cole slaw had capers in it, so I was happy.  Also, the bread was really good.  I always find that the bread can make or break a sandwich.  Mitch liked it so much that he ate it so fast and forgot to put the homemade house mango hot sauce on!  Mitch never forgets to put hot sauce on anything! 

(Side note - Shout out to my friend Janessa for the suggestion that Mitch and I should explain what we did or didn't like about the food we eat at the food trucks.  Thanks for the advice!  I will do this from now on.)

The only thing I would change about the meal would be to have some sort of dipping sauce with the fried okra - although they were delicious by themselves!  Gerald, the owner, was very nice and talked to us for a while about our trip and about how his business came to be on Tybee Island.  We will definitely be back to eat here some day.

Another side note - here is a cute picture of Kingsley and how he is choosing to situate himself while riding in the car:

He's totally sleeping in this picture!  Not quite sure how this is comfortable for him...

I should probably also mention another tidbit about our trip to Tybee Island - we got pulled over by the local cops.  We didn't have license plates displayed on the camper, so the cops were very curious as to what two Wisconsinites were doing on a tiny island in Georgia pulling a bright blue vintage camper.  We even let them look inside the camper after one them asked about 'any dead bodies back there' or something to that tune.  

After showing them the camper and Mitch winning them over (as Mitch does), they let us be on our way.  One of them even let me take a picture of him...

Mitch and the Tybee Island cop.

After all that excitement, we drove through Savannah a bit more.  We had every intention of parking the camper and walking around, but it got to be too late.  We knew we had an 8 hour drive to Bonita Springs, FL ahead of us and it was about 3pm already.  Savannah was a very cool city, so we're excited to go back there some day when we have more time to explore.

When we were about a half hour outside of Jacksonville, FL, I decided to search for food trucks there just to see what we could work with.  It turns out that there was a Jaguar/Bengals game going on in town that supposedly had food trucks/stands at it, so we optimistically decided to check it out.  

Jaguars Stadium

I'll just go ahead and say that this was the WORST idea I've had the entire trip.  I have nothing much to say about Jacksonville (I'm sure it's a fine city) except that there were homeless people everywhere, there were no interesting sights to see, and the only 'food' we could find near the stadium was a sad-looking hot dog stand in a run-down gravel parking lot.  

After cursing ourselves for wasting an hour searching for the stadium and then driving around it like idiots, we got STUCK ON A DEAD-END ROAD with a CAMPER.  Mitch was a champ though and really proved that his trailer towing skills are getting better every day.  He managed to back out of the dead-end road without hitting anything or losing his cool.  Once we were out, we decided to get out of Jacksonville ASAP.

We drove the rest of the way to Bonita Springs on the Georgia Peach (as Mitch calls it...more commonly called the 'scenic route'), and made to to our condo around midnight.  We're going to take the day off from eating at food trucks tomorrow and just relax at the pool and cook meals at the condo.  Plus we have to take Kingsley to the dog boarding facility in Naples in the morning - no dogs allowed at the condo :(

Day 8 Food Truck Spending: $23 (under budget)

Spending for Day 8:

Gas:  $182

Boiled Peanuts (Mitch's favorite in the South): $3.50

Food Truck food: $23

TOTAL: $208.50 (over budget)

Leftover from our $6000 budget:  $4507.50  

More soon!

XOXO

Mitch and Laurel