Tying up Loose Ends

A little bit of this, a little bit of that today...A beautiful day...when I think about how much I love snow, and how my old home town of South Bend, IN is getting hammered with about three feet and more in the last couple of days, I just think back to how much I hated the shoveling and what the snow looks like after it melts and gets all dirty and how hard it is to drive on icy roads. Then I look around at all the palms and flowers and the aquamarine waters around me, and I count my blessings to be here and not there....but I'm a Chicago suburbs gal, and I do still love snow and probably always will until I experience a bad fall on an icy walk. Then I'll probably feel differently about snow.

Yesterday I found a bike trail--this is the Florida Keys Overseas Heritage Trail...there are currently 60 miles of trails, but the completion is still a ways off. The vision is to have a continuous trail between the keys from Key Largo to Key West. Right now there are bits and pieces of bike trails here and there. Some of the trails require bicycle riders to cross the bridges between the keys using only the bridge shoulder, which is not safe. I rode the Overseas Highway 1 right outside our park for a little bit to get to the trail nearest our RV park. From there, it was a nice long ride towards Curry Hammock State Park and beyond. I rode about 9 miles today out and back. The trail has much shrubbery, palms and some trees along so it is partially shaded. There are breaks in the foliage so you can see protected areas, swampy marshes and brackish waters with baby mangroves areas developing.

View from a break in the trail foliage

Yesterday while riding my bike to the trail, I stumbled on a yard sale in Marathon, off the trail path. I got all excited, because I LOVE garage sales. I thought one in the keys just might be a little more classy, as this house was on the water....oh, BOY! Maybe I'll find something outstanding, I thought...well, it was quite the yard sale, that's for sure. I need to study fishing lures, I've decided. This lady had every possible fishing lure I have ever seen from my dad's fishing days. She had some old ones that I am sure were antiques. Heck, she even had antique wooden chests storing a ton of lures.  She had some that were STILL IN BOXES, the cardinal rule for selling stuff on ebay. But I've been bitten so many times, thinking I knew something had value when it didn't, I behaved responsibly, shopped responsibly, (I'm a compulsive shopper--there, the truth is out!) and I came home with-----NOTHING! Only because I was on a bike ride, and I DIDN'T HAVE ANY MONEY WITH ME!! RATS! (That's probably a good thing, says Eldo) Look at all the stuff she had, and this was only a fraction of the very large garage that was filled with everything fishing, and everything costume jewelry (his and hers sale, I figure) and it was extremely organized...a shopper's dream...

fishing rods galore

My problem is, I've been watching too many The Pickers, Pawn Shop, Antiques Roadshow and the new one about clearing out abandoned storage locker facilities, and I'm convinced Eldy and I need to start going to estate sales and yard sales on our travels so we can make a little extra money. (Eldy says, you mean so you can SPEND a little extra money!) You know the annual one in the summer that is on some highway for miles and miles?--I think it's on a route going south through Tennessee and Kentucky all the way to Florida?... Well, I'm going to nudge Eldy to travel in the vicinity of next year's World's Largest and Longest Garage Sale next year. Since I am spatially challenged, (and that's a conservative statement) I am going to need Eldy to navigate me to these yard sales. Even with modern GPS technology, I still get lost, that's how bad I am!

Jewelry section

You never know what you are going to see when out on the road, whether it be on a bike, boat, motorcyle, or RV....it's a great big world to explore out there....hope you are enjoying exploring with us....see you tomorrow....  Eldy and Jeannie