Fun Day with a Surprise!

We had rain throughout the night and a heavy downpour early in the morning — both of us were so glad we weren't in a tent last night!

By 10 am, the rain had stopped, and we decided to bike ride into Venice.

About 3 miles out on the trail, we got a call from our good friends the Galiks. We generally see Karl and Marilouise every year when we come to Florida. However, this year, they were in Wichita, Kansas helping their son, Dave, and his wife, Ann, after the birth of their third child! Anyway, they had left Wichita two days early to fly to Jacksonville, Florida for a family funeral. Today they were driving back home to Naples and wanted to see if we could possibly meet them.

We decided to meet them in the late afternoon in Venice.

In the meantime, we continued our ride into Venice and had lunch in another little cafe. After lunch, we rode down to the Venice Beach.

It turned out to be a fairly nice day and we enjoyed walking along the beach for about an hour.

We were surprised when we got to this one section of the beach to see dogs everywhere! Pretty soon we figured out we were at a Dog Beach. All the dogs and their owners were having so much fun!

When we got back, we looked it up and sure enough, the beach is called Brohard Beach Paw Park.

On our ride back to Venice to meet the Galiks, Greg had a flat tire. Luckily, my favorite engineer had all the right tools and a new tube to make the repair.

We met Galiks at an outdoor cafe for Happy Hour — we enjoyed catching up on each others' lives.

As of April, the Galiks will have 10 grandchildren!! So they are in a very different life stage than Greg and I. They are flying to California in April to help their daughter, Karla, and her husband, Greg, with the birth of their third child.

It was a wonderful surprise to get a chance to see the Galiks after all!