Florida

Downtown Tampa, Florida - there was not a great deal to do at Bowling Green so we decided to have a day out in the Big Smoke.  We have been spoiling ourselves with Imax/3D movies.

Pensacola, Florida has a big military presence - it is often referred to as the "Cradle of Naval Aviation". Home to the Blue Angels - the USA crack aerobatic team. Unfortunately their 2013 programme has been cancelled due to budget cuts.

We crossed many bridges as we traversed the gulf states. After leaving Louisiana, our route to Florida took us through the towns of Gulfport, Biloxi, Mississippi and then Daphne, Alabama  where we did a one night stopover. We had crossed 3 statelines in a day.

One of the many clean and quite prettily laid out Rest Areas in Florida.

Don't know if you can see it - I took a photo of this Woodpecker from our bedroom window at Bowling Green.

What a view - this is a shot taken from our RV shower...only the squirrels get to perve! 

Torrey Oaks RV & Golf Resort is in the middle of Florida at a place called Bowling Green (with no bowling greens that we seen) in rather uninteresting flat countryside however it is home for a week and I look forward to playing golf on their 18 hole golf course.

First view of our neighbours who appear to be well settled in complete with outdoor bar including flat screen TV and all the trimmings

Our home for the week, the little shed you see to the right of our 5th wheel is to accommodate a golf buggy.

One of the local Alligators in a pond off of one of the golf tees on the golf course, this one was about 5' long. I think it had already eaten and was not interested in Betty.

This is Solomon's Castle built by an eccentric artist it is covered in old aluminum printers drums so it really shines in the sun but helps keep the building very cool. 

Betty in front of another of his creations - an ark which is used as an indoor dining room.

Eccentric is probably a mild euphemism for wacky to describe Howard Solomon the sculptor - this train is made up of all sorts of scraps. It even has a vacuum cleaner part in it.

Howard calls this pair of pistols - the Kervokian pistols. You can do yourself in all on your own.

The Boat in the Moat restaurant at Solomon's Castle where lunch is offered.

It was a lovely and cool under the trees and there was live music on the Sunday we were there.

Having moved on from Bowling Green our next stop was a place called Titusville which is on the east coast of Florida near Cape Canaveral and the Kennedy Space Center. The place we are staying at is called the Great Outdoors RV & Golf Resort and it has won the highest awards for RV camps. No wonder this place is 5 star all the way, it has everything you could ask for 18 hole championship golf course, swimming pools, spa's, saunas, restaurant massage service and on an on. It's normally $45.00 a night at this time of year however by downloading a voucher from their web site we had one free night and thus only paid $45.00 for two nights and we could have stayed a third night for free as well.

This is their welcoming building, the place is very large with about 400 RV bays plus residential homes.

One of the many homes on the estate that have motor home ports/garages for RVs.

There were "homes" where the RV port is fully covered and the owners actually live in the RV and the adjoining building is basically a storage shed.

I saw this golf cart and fell in love with it....isn't it just too cute!!

Our main reason for being in Titusville, the Kennedy Space Center.

Entrance to the Kennedy Space Centre - parking is $10 for the day and a Day Pass is from $55 upwards. We decided to include the simulated shuttle launch, a tour of the Vehicle Assembly Building and launch pads .

They are building this to house the Atlantas Shuttle.

One of the missile launch pads.

NASA VAB (Vehicle Assembly Building)for years the largest building in the world and still the largest single story building in the world. It is used to assemble the rockets and the shuttle when standing vertical which are then transported by a crawler to the launch pad.

This is the interior of the building, unfortunately it is very difficult to convey the actual size of the building.

This is the next generation space capsule that they are working on.

This is Pad 39 where many of the Shuttles have been launched from, I was thrilled to actually be where so much history has taken place.

This is a talking robot that not only talks but moves.

A collection of the rockets that have been used over the years.

The largest rocket ever built the massive Titan 5 which was used to send man to the moon.

The Titan 5 engines.