Port Charlotte

Brent is on the downward slide of school.  He has been blessed not to have to do any out-of-town rotations.  I think that would have been devastating to him--being away from his family.  So the next worse thing is Peace River Hospital.  It is a little over an hour drive. The school doesn't provide any accommodations, unless you are on call.  If you are on call, they provide a room in the hospital to sleep in.  Usually the rotation there is 3 weeks.  Brent gets to do at least 7 weeks.  Poor guy!

So anyway, he is on call today from 7 a.m. to tomorrow at 7 a.m.  I thought we would go after church to see him and take him dinner.  Plus, a couple hour Sunday drive is fun!  (Right, Dad?)  We loaded up and headed out about 3.

The kids did well in the car.  I took pictures of this bridge because the little girls got so excited!  They said, "A hill!!! Weeeeeee."  (All the way up and all the way down.)

As you can see, the hill isn't all that big.  I think they will be amazed at even the on-ramps to the freeway in Utah.  Those are bigger than any hills in Florida.  Kind of funny how perspective changes. 

 Once we picked up Brent, we headed to a park.  We found this one right on the bay with a nice eating area, a couple of piers and nature walks (plus a lot of homeless or homeless looking people).

 It was overcast and very windy.  We got halfway down the pier and it started to downpour.  We ran back to the picnic shelter and waited for a few minutes.  It stopped raining, so we tried again.

You can see Wes and the little girls scaring the sea gulls off as they ran.

 This picture shows the waves crashing against the side.  It was a pretty strong wind!

 We could tell that they were trying to clean up the park.  It had a nice eating area and bathrooms.  There were also a bunch of painted benches like these:

 There was a cool palm tree with a cactus growing on it!

It was nice to be with Brent for a while.  We took him back to the hospital and headed home. Now we can say that we have seen Port Charlotte.  We might do it again next Sunday.  Lucky Brent gets to do call two Sundays in a row!