"Big Daddy" Don Gartlets

Many readers have no idea who Big Daddy Don Gartlets is.  Back in the 60s he was the hottest thing in drag racing.  He broke many track records including being the first person to exceed 200 MPH in 1/8 mile!  Not 1/4 mile but 1/8 mile.  Talk about G force!

Don has a drag racing museum and a classic car museum in Ocala Florida.  Attached are a few pictures of some of the items in the museum and a few of the wilder cars.

After we visited the museum we had linner at Outback steakhouse.  Donna has been talking about steak lately so we had one at Outback and I will be doing some Rib Eyes on the grill today.  That should conclude her need for steak and we can get back to chicken.

After we had linner we drove around Ocala and on the way home we stopped at an antique mall.  I always like looking at the old magazines.  Ads for old free standing TV's in color and you can even get it with remote control!  Ad's for '57 Chevy's selling for a little over $2,000.00.  Wish I had 10 of them.

The weather here has been extremely cold.  Most mornings we wake up to frost on the car.  The highs have been in the upper 50s to lower 60s.

We are in Bushnell, FL now and will be returning to the Brandon area again next weekend.  I have a physical with the VA the following Monday and Donna has an appointment at the Cleveland Clinic in Ft. Lauderdale the following Thursday, for her leg problem.  We will be staying around the Brandon area until the weather starts getting back to normal.  In the worse case, we plan to start heading North by the end of March.

Below are a few pictures for the nostalgia file

Rained out

We were down in Wauchula, Fl yesterday camping at Thousand Trails, where we are members.  They have 400 sites.  200 are on high ground with full hook ups and 200 are on much lower ground with water and 30 amp electric.  We were planning on staying until Monday but we had two problems.  The first was, we couldn't get CBS there and that means we would watch re-runs of some old shows when the Super Bowl is on.  That is never going to happen.   Yesterday afternoon we had a great linner at a local Italian restaurant.  After we left and headed back home, it started to rain like crazy.  Water was building up all around the RV and we were parked on grass.  We decided we had better get out of there before the RV sinks in the mud.  The RV weighs about 35,000 lbs. and even though it has a lot of neat accessories, one of them isn't 4 wheel drive.  We unhooked the utilities and hitched up the car in the middle of a Florida downpour with no end in sight. We didn't know where to go, so I thought we would try a nice paved Wal Mart parking lot.  Donna didn't like that idea, so instead, we just headed for Lazy Days Campground.  We wound up on a site with full hook ups, a paved site and CBS.

Monday we will go to Bushnell which has an Escapee's (we are also members) park and stay there for about 2 weeks.  We will be baby sitting or should I say bird sitting for our friends Joe and Marcia.  They are flying to Kentucky for a week to take care of a few things concerning their new RV. 

We will be back around our old stomping grunds (Brandon, FL area) for the month of March.
We planned it this way because we have a rental house there, that we thought was going to be vacant and we needed to be in the area to get it re-leased, but I signed a new lease with the tennant today.  We will be heading north on our journey as soon as the weather up there improves.

Monday 2-1-2010

Yesterday we decided to go to the TECO (Tampa Electric Co.) power plant in Apollo Beach to see the Manatees.  They like to go there because of the warm water.  TECO has one side of the pier blocked from the other to keep the warm water in.  One side is 66 degrees and the other side is 82 degrees.  There were many Sting Rays jumping out of the water but they are too quick to get a picture.  Here are a couple of pictures of the Manatees.  We went with Joe and Marcia Jones who are also full time RVers.  They have been full time since 2007.  Joe and Marcia just bought a new Kountry Star motorhome and are moving all their "stuff" from a storage garage to their motorhome.  Believe me, that is not an easy task.

After we went to see the Manatees, sand crabs and Sting Rays, we went to Circles for linner, (lunch and dinner combo)  The meals were fantastic and we all had a great time.  After we ate we went to MacDill Air Force Base and visited the commissary and did a little shopping.  We got in because Joe and Marcia have a pass.  Marcia had a very persistant cough and chest congestion. She is going to visit a doctor today.