For all of those that knows us, sunsets on the water seem to be our thing.  For all of the sunset pictures that we took on the Chesapeake Bay at Cheriton, VA, this sunset tonight has us hooked on the Gulf of Mexico.  Folks, let me tell you, until you have seen a sunset like this, you will not go anywhere else.  I know it is a gazillion miles from Raleigh, but this has been worth it.

For one thing, this afternoon we did our "Power Walk" on the walking path that borders the Gulf.  It is on Coquina Beach and is wonderful!  It managed to warm up enough for us to be outside without jackets and vests on.  There were lots of Segways on this path, along with walkers and bikers. So we decided we were going to go back to this spot for our sunset pictures tonight.  There were quite a lot of folks that had the same idea that we had. This picture was taken out of the car window as were crossing the bridge going over to the island.

Now comes some really good sunset pictures. The beach is really wide and nice in this area. We were standing on a small pier when we took these pictures.

Bye, bye sun.  Till tomorrow!  The little town in this area is very quaint, as is most of the whole area.  I took this next picture as were leaving.  Lots of traffic. I think we will definitely be coming back!

I stumbled across this restaurant josesrealcubanfood.com/ which is about 2 miles down the road from here.  It seems that Guy Fieri had visited here back in September of 2011.  I think he put it on the map too because even on a Tuesday night, the place, even though with limited seating, filled up very quickly.  It is literally a hole in the wall restaurant.  I did not get any outside pictures but will be going back by there today and will get some then to post.

As soon as you walk in the door, they yell out for you to find a table. There are about 6 tables in there with a bar that has bar stools and seating for about a dozen people. The bar is in front of the cooking area and it is a busy, noisy place.  We sit down and immediately our waitress comes to our table with a smile and asked us had we been there before.  When we said no, she turned around and yelled something to the kitchen and the next thing I know this bowl is set down in front of us.

This is the "Signature House Pork" which is roasted and has some delicious sauce on it.  We are also given 2 little containers that has a dipping sauce in it to try.

There is a board up behind the bar that has some dishes on it as well as some info.  This board is in front of the food prep area as well.

This was interesting as the Boliche was something that Guy had tried in his video but it was not on the paper menu. This was what I ordered and let me tell you something, the Chorizo was like something I had never tasted before. It is topped  with Signature House Pork in a delicious sauce.  I chose plaintains to go with my dinner.                                                                  

Clay chose the Taste of Cuba which has Pork, Piccadillo, Ropa Vieja, rice, black beans, yucca and plantains.  This was  a "wow" dish in itself!

And of course, you always have to try dessert.  We chose the flan and it was a recipe from Jose’s mother so the waitress told us.  It was simple and light.  A great ending to a great meal and a great experience!

This wall was behind one of the tables in the restaurant.  There are all kinds of pictures all around the place.  Jose himself was walking around talking to everyone.  I almost cleaned my plate as I was very hungry.  He told me he was worried about me and was going to tell me that the white stuff was the plate and not more food!  A wonderful and fun experience!

Well, after a much anticipated Christmas this year, it has come and gone! Unbelievable! We had waited so long for Scott and Andrea to come and visit with us with Boscoe and Baxter and now they are already back in Dallas, TX.

We left Raleigh on Friday, December 30th for the first leg of the trip. We overnighted in Brunswick, GA at Coastal RV Resort. We are actually going to be going back there in April of 2012 for a Tiffin Motorcoach Rally. It is a nice place to have the rally and it is really close to I-95 but it will be perfect for our rally.

We had tire issues on Saturday morning after waking up. Our Tire Pressure Monitoring System was reading only 10 pounds of pressure in one of the rear tires on the motorhome! Acck! Not good. But after all was said and done, it seems it was an, ahem, operator error!

This was a really nice resort but as I stated earlier, it is really close to I-95, as you can see with the sign in the distance. But the road noise was not bad at all. These pictures was taken at sunrise as we had hoped to get a REALLY early start on our day!

So we traveled uneventfully to Bradenton/Cortez Fl. I am not exactly sure which city this resort falls under. On some mapping programs, it is Bradenton and on others it it Cortez.  We are at holidaycoverv.com/home.htm.  This is a resort in which the sites are owned by some lucky people who happen to have enough money to spend a 100+ on lots in here. There are 97 lots in here and most all are privately owned. They are rented when the owners are not here. We happened to get very lucky and get a waterfront site which is on a canal. But if you look at the map, we are only about 1 mile from the Gulf of Mexico. We have walked the bridge over to the island every morning now on our Power Walk! It is a draw bridge and the first morning we walked it, the siren went off as we were getting ready to walk on the draw part. It was getting ready to open for a sail boat! It scared the jeepers out of me and Clay! Any ways, our first night here we had pork chops that we had marinated in the Allegro marinade. Boy were they ever good!

The site pad in front of our site is all gravel. They did this so that they could fit 3 sites in on a corner which backs up to the a small canal.

These are some miscellaneous pictures of our site. More will come later as we also explored a little of Cortez/Bradenton/Bradenton Beach/Longboat Key today.

We bought some new rope lights which work out very well. We are very pleased with them. They only run down one side of the motorhome though.

Can you believe this silly goose? I am writing this on Monday. It is now 57 outside but when I took this picture on Sunday, January 1, 2012, it was about 80!

These are just some more pictures of the back of our site. We actually back up to a small canal that can access the Tampa Bay which dumps into the Gulf of Mexico. This is a really nice place! The birds and wildlife here are unbelievable!

We decided it was time to try some Fried Chicken in our Delonghi Deep Fat Fryer.  We have cooked seafood in it before but not chicken.  Granted, this is not something we eat often but we had started the day by eating a full breakfast at Mimi’s Cafe so we figured what the heck!  We would be bad at dinner too!  So we made a trip to Whole Foods and purchased our chicken legs and thighs, as this is our favorite part of the chicken. Marinated them in Buttermilk for about 2 hours.

Then Clay rolled them in All Purpose flour that he had added some Salt, Pepper and Paprika to.  Coated all sides with the mixture.

So here is the fryer all heated and ready for the chicken.  Notice the temperature is set on 360.  This was the first time we have ever fried chicken so this was a trial and error session tonight.  The next time we will cook it on 350 for less time.  We cooked it for 12 minutes which was a little too brown.

So here we are getting ready to open it for the first time!  Drum Roll please……… With baited breath and drooling because it smells so good in here, here we go!

Mmm… Doesn’t that look good?  We have 3 more pieces to cook after this.  Notice how brown it is?  It is a little too crusty although in the end, it was really moist and tender.

So that ended our experiment tonight.  Only on Saturday’s would we attempt something like this.  After it was all said and done and we had cleaned up.  I think we probably used less than 1/4 cup of Peanut Oil in the chicken.  This is something we will try again in the future, maybe next year though!