Camping

Well, we picked the coldest night of the year so far to go camping.  Tonight will beat last night for cold and I will be so thankful for my warm bed.  Anyway, we went camping at Ft. DeSoto State Park.  It's a wonderful place to camp.  We've camped there before and hope to camp there again.  It's right on the Gulf and so far we haven't been there when it's warm enough to swim.  Next time for sure.  One of the neat things you can do there is rent fun, unique bikes.  We are usually too cheap for this but we were going to rent them this time.  Well, because of the wind and cold they weren't renting them.  I was disappointed but it would have been crazy cold so maybe next time.  We got there fairly late and didn't do much beyond setting up the van--no tent this time.  We were too chicken with the cold weather. As it was, even in the van we were cold.  When Ollie checked us in they told us about a whale that had beached itself and then died and told us where we could go to see it.  There was a whole crew there performing a necropsy (autopsy).  The water was red with blood and it was so sad to see this huge whale being dismembered.  Some guy standing there said that he had beached himself (the whale, not the man) and people had helped it back out and it did it two more times.  The third time I guess they realized it had a problem, tried to save it, but were unsuccessful.  It's so amazing to know that these animals are out there swimming in that huge ocean.  The ocean just amazes me, it's so mysterious and teeming with life, a lot of it huge life.  Today at the pier we saw a pod of dolphins.  Amazing!  We had a great trip although it was short and cold.  We made some memories that's for sure.