More about Key West

Since I am anticipating getting into a "little mischief" this evening, and it might be awfully late when we get back to Marathon, I'm putting the blog in a little earlier today...Being the perfectionist that I am, I haven't missed a day yet since we started full timing in June...So in my mind there will have to be some good reasons for why I might miss a blog and here they are: 1) an extreme family emergency, 2) both of us are sick, 3) I got into more mischief than what is good for me, 4) the dreaded computer crash or major computer problem OR no air card signal  5) I got run over on my bike ,  6) I am suddenly deceased 7) I tipped over in a rental kayak and I'm clinging to it out in the middle of the Gulf or the Atlantic. There! That ought to cover it! Oh, I need to say, Eldo does not type, so he wouldn't be up for doing the blog. He has enough responsibilities as it is, taking care of me and the RV. THAT'S a full time job! (taking care of me, that is....)

We are heading back to Key West this afternoon for a walking tour...then a dinner/buffet cruise for a couple of hours to see the sunset. Then, we are going to check out the night life in Key West. I've heard a LOT about that...interesting looking individuals walking the streets and calling you into their taverns and businesses. We'll see about that! But first, I need to get on my bike and RIDE...that's bicycle....it's not easy to get to a riding trail here..there are places at the state parks, and there are trails further down the road a ways...so I'm going exploring to see how many miles I can get in this morning....

The photos today are left over from our first visit to Key West yesterday....
There were several styles of homes there...Bahamian, Victorian, and some others....many of them were built for judges and sea captains...here's a beautiful Victorian one....

I talked about the gingerbread trim on the houses yesterday...here's one with the pineapples on the picket fence....Hey, it's for sale! Wonder what this baby goes for? I shudder to think what it might be....

As we rounded the corner on our Conch Train tour, we saw these colorful bikes on the corner... Not sure if they are for decoration, or they are really using them, but it's so FLORIDA!

More gingerbread trim...these really ARE gingerbread men! Look carefully under the roof....or click on the photo to see it larger.

And, Key West is known for it's respectable establishments...like this one, Hog's Breath Saloon....

Every inch of real estate on this key is maximized for the most potential. I think Key West is only 2 miles by 4 miles. There are eating places in alleys, stores down alleys, and no yards for homes in Old Key West. The cemetery is full, so crypts are now being stacked on top of each other.  Guess the kids must have played out in the streets when they were growing up.  This town has gone from the richest city in Florida to the poorest and back to the middle somewhere. They depend entirely now on tourism to keep going, so there's lots of competition for our dollars....we'll see what kind of trouble Eldo and Sparky get into this evening!

"Changes in Latitude, Changes in Attitude"

Some cool architectural features in houses in Key West

That Jimmy Buffet song perfectly sums up the Key West experience. We decided to check out Key West a day early...during the day...nightlife is a whole different story, that is coming tomorrow night. Eldy likes to check out locations, sort of scout them out ahead of time...whewee! Key West is expensive for places to stay....that's why we picked Marathon, to try and save a little instead of choosing an RV resort at the southernmost point of the U.S. It's expensive to park there for the day, $4.00 an hour...but the restaurant prices did not seem too bad at all. (F.Y.I.-- Having had two glasses of wine this evening, this blog is going to be a short one today...I'm having to backspace too much to fix mistakes!)

A museum in Key West, can't remember which one, lol!

We went on the Conch Tour train today to get a history of Key West. Nice tour, $29.00 a person, and you learn all about the old Key West. But don't count too much on taking photos, the tour moves too fast and is extremely bumpy, you are bouncing around the streets of Key West the whole time...We saw incredibly beautiful old Victorian style houses, gorgeous foliage, mahogany trees, kapok trees (the tree used to formerly make life saving vests) and plants and trees I've never heard of--one was called the powder puff tree.  Key West has really struggled through several industry changes--rescuing ship wrecks from the sea, cigar manufacturing, sponge diving, and now tourism....we learned about why every house has a tin roof--to prevent fires from jumping from roof to roof...why porches have blue ceilings on them--to make the wasps and flies head "skyward"...the many different styles of gingerbread on the houses--everything from pineapples, the symbol of hospitality, to shamrocks, to ship's wheels, to real gingerbread men, depending on whom the house was being built for....(Gingerbread refers to fences and trim on the houses that have cutouts symetrically spaced along the railings, trim, etc.) We got a glimpse of many murals painted throughout the town, many of the sides of buildings, others in bars...here's one in a bar....

We saw the southern most point in the continental U.S--a bunch of people were hanging out there...here they are....see anybody you know?

Then we ate lunch at Margaritaville, Jimmy Buffet's starting place, as I understand. And of course, we had the Cheeseburger in Paradise!

Margaritaville, Key West

My sister told me about chickens and roosters walking the streets in and out of the stores, we saw them!  Saw a guy making hats...saw an advertisement near a bar wall of painted on bikinis on women...they were totally naked but with the painted on swim suits and assorted designs on their bodies, they looked like they were wearing real clothing! Sorry, no photos on that one....We saw this hat maker working hard on weaving some hats for waiting customers. (I'm repeating myself. Just checking to see if you were paying attention.) We're heading back tomorrow to Key West to experience a dinner cruise..I have  not seen a dolphin in the three days we've been here. I hope we see some off the coast of Key West on this cruise--cruise is dinner, dancing and the sunset.....If you don't see a blog post for Friday night, we're still in Key West, experiencing the night life and getting some interesting photos, hopefully!   Bye for now.....

The Weird and the Wonderful

Here's the weird...I was catching some shots of the pelicans at the pier. I turned my camera sideways and the LCD display went black. What the heck??? I turned it back to the horizontal position and the screen lit up like normal. Turned it vertically, it disappeared...."ELDY! Come look at this...something is wrong with my camera." (It's not that old, so I was annoyed to say the least!) He couldn't see from the distance I was holding it at. I came closer to him and showed him the camera. He said he couldn't see anything wrong with the camera. He had pushed his sunglasses to the top of his head to get a closer look. "I really don't see anything wrong with your camera! Why don't you take your sunglasses off so you can see better?" I take my sunglasses off, rotate the camera vertically and the lit LCD display was just as bright. I rotated it again and nothing was wrong! Get this...I put my sunglasses on, and darned if the camera display didn't go black again in the vertical position! Can somebody please explain the phenomena of why the LCD display is fine in the horizontal position and goes black in the vertical position while wearing polarized sunglasses? Does anybody really care? Of course not! Well, it's about to get weirder later in the week 'cuz.....

We're going to Key West on Friday. There's some pretty weird and wacky stuff I understand in the town furthest south in the continental U.S.  Maybe that has something to do with everybody's brain being cooked by the sun 365 days a year..can't wait!..But back to the wonderful....78 degrees was the high today...we have great neighbors on all sides of us...very friendly...the waters of the gulf are the coolest (as in awesome) blues and greens...you can see the bottom for a L-O-O-O-N-G ways out. The pelicans are neat! We watched them fish today at Bahia Honda (no, it's not a car dealership!) State Park. They have the biggest gullets (I think that's the right word) when they yawn....here's a passel of pelicans roosting....

The Wreck Bar and Grill in Marathon

We walked the beach at Bahia Honda and checked out the campgrounds...sites are reasonable but booked solid till April! You can't get in. The attendant at the gate said you had to start calling 11 months ahead of when you want to come...You'd be extremely lucky and have to be on the internet daily to try and catch a cancellation. We checked out another park, Fiesta Key, in Islamadora, a town farther away from Key West, hoping it would be cheaper and it was.  They were running a special 49.95 a night for three nights, we just stumbled upon that today. But we are committed to one week here at Jolly Roger. It seems you can't find anything under 85.00 a day, even with a weekly rate. We've been looking hard as we are having to pay 465.00 this week for our stay here in Marathon...some of the parks are not very nice places to stay or you are jammed in next to your neighbors and the prices are sky high this time of year in the keys. But this is quite the experience, so we will be tightening our belts after our stay here for our travels to Texas coming up at the end of the month to make up for this splurge. Speaking of tightening our belts, we could be in danger of breaking our belts by all the great waterfront restaurant choices to choose from. Who wants to cook when you can sit out on the gulf with a light breeze blowing, and eat happy hour appetizers specials and drink $1.50 beer at the Wreck Galley and Grill restaurant just down the street? How does 3 shrimp cocktail for a dollar sound? Three mozzarella cheesesticks for a dollar? No? Well, then sit back and enjoy free live entertainment and see if there's something else on the menu you would like....

Here's some more wonderful....the lone pelican on the post....the view from the pier just a couple of rows over from our site...

view down the pier

Here's a view from the pier looking in the other direction....

We'll see you in the keys again tomorrow.......where's it's 5:00 all the time!

Goodbye, Fort DeSoto

cool tree at the front entrance of the park

We left at 9:00 this morning...it was an uneventful 7 hour ride to the keys except for the cloud of "love bugs" that hit our windshield on I-75 on Alligator Alley on our way to Miami and beyond. I thought a bunch of rocks hit our windshield or a rogue thundershower of rain splats....nope! It was a cloud of bugs...they left the entire front windshield covered with splats and tentacles from the splats spreading out over the whole front of it. It looked like a bunch of amoebas hit it...Ugh! We were ready to leave Fort DeSoto, but here are some photos of things we left behind....

gull at one of the piers in Fort DeSoto

Bay Pier at Fort DeSoto

We felt we had seen just about everything there was to see, but for next time, we'd like to explore Pass-a-Grille, a neighboring town close by....lots of cute stores, a great waterfront to sit and watch the pelicans, and some great restaurants.

Here the pelicans are roosting on the waterfront at Pass-a-Grille....

And, you know you are in Florida, when the garbage trucks look like this--PINK!!! And for a great reason, too!

This mermaid on a storefront at Pass-a-Grille caught my eye....one other thing we missed while at Fort DeSoto was a bald eagle site. Every time we headed towards St. Pete's Beach, we noticed bird watchers at a pond just outside the toll bridge. It turns out they were watching some bald eagles! We finally stopped one day to see what all the camera lenses were capturing, and we had the thrill of seeing a bald eagle take flight from the nest and return. Should have had the binoculars and the camera!

We got to the keys at about 4:00 this afternoon...we are staying at the Jolly Roger RV park..the sites are kinda close together, but there's an atmosphere of friendliness that was immediate upon arrival. Our neighbors asked if we needed any help, other neighbors offered advice on a local restaurants. At the Jolly Roger, we can't be on the waterfront, they are all taken, so we have an inside spot on an end site. It's not cheap for a week's stay, but one of the more reasonable ones in the area that we could find. We have full hookup, water, and it's 73 degrees...temps will remain about that for the next couple of days....there are two state parks nearby and we hope to explore them and go biking in them later this week...

Off we went to the Island Fish restaurant tonight, two weary travelers too tired to cook..It's a cool place that was built like a tiki hut, no glass or windows in the entire restaurant AND on the water. Eldy had a great grouper dinner...and WE had a great cheesecake dessert, my favorite! Time to go home and to bed, two weary travelers....we'll see what tomorrow brings...goodnite, Eldo...goodnite, Sparky!

Maximum Fun at Maximo Park

Eldy surprised me this morning and said he had part of our day planned out...That was a nice surprise...he usually just plans the RV stays and campgrounds, and I am the "recreational director"...I said, where are we going? And he says, to one of the top rated disc golf courses here in St. Petersburg...and I said, "YES!" Eldy has bought his own discs, so now the competition is on....we went to Maximo Park in St. Petersburg...this park has an 18 hole course that is highly rated, which means LOTS of obstacles and barriers like trees. Or, in this case, PALMS...I actually found my disc in this mess! We didn't keep score today..Eldy has to get used to his new discs...He bought a driver, a mid range disc and a putter. You can buy all kinds of discs to hook left or fade right. Some guy in the sporting goods store told us about a huge disc golf store north of Clearwater, right on 19, but we won't be visiting it this time....but I COULD use a midrange driver, and a disc that fades right...that will have to go on next year's Santa list....

This is a beautiful park off I-275, exit 16....one exit away from Fort DeSoto and St. Pete's Beach...there's  beautiful water, sailboats, harbor, picnic areas, an observation tower, it's one of the prettiest parks we've seen in west central Florida. The park is heavily shaded with palms and other trees, so it was a very enjoyable outing. Of course, it helps that the temperature is only in the high seventies!

interesting trees!

We saw quite a few disc golfers on the course while we were out...disc golfers are a mellow bunch...here is one of the holes they've made their mark on....

If you've never played this sport, give it a try....it's really fun and a great activity to do while traveling...these courses are all over the country....This is our last day here at Fort DeSoto...we'll be leaving early Tuesday morning for Marathon, Florida in the central part of the keys. I'm really looking forward to seeing some different sights...could be quite interesting, from what I've heard!  See you on the road......

Up, Up, and Away!

One of the cool things about Fort DeSoto is there is a beach that often has favorable winds for kiteboarding or as some people call it, kitesurfing. It's the East Beach, and on Saturday afternoon, the winds were perfect as evidenced by the 30+ kiteboarders that were there, trying out their soaring kites over the beach. It's really amazing to watch them harness themselves and get pulled along at speeds that appear pretty darn fast to the bystander! The kites are in beautiful colors, the guys and gals wear wetsuits as the water is a chilly 54 degrees right now, and some of the surfers or kiteboarders do some amazing stunts some 10-20 feet in the air. They zipped back and forth all afternoon in "lanes". I don't know how they kept their lines from getting tangled with each other, as many as were out there. After watching for a little while, you could see which guys were the "hot shots"...

It ain't heavy.....

This guy below definitely thought he was "hot stuff"...he would surf with his butt just hanging horizontal to the top of the water, digging in with his board, coming right into the beach where a few bystanders, myself included, were standing with cameras or just watching. At the last minute, he would careen sideways and send a huge SWOOSH! of water right at us, like a speedboat wake. I really think he was trying to get us wet. But he was THE hotshot of the moment, as he flipped and turned higher than anyone else out there, and got some appreciative whistles and comments from his fellow kiteboarders on the beach. God only knows how high he is in the air!

Here he is, coming into the beach about to give us THE WAVE! Back up everybody!

I guess this sport would qualify as an extreme water sport...it's extremely expensive by the time you take lessons so you don't kill yourself, then buy the equipment, then travel to find the wind and water. It's anywhere from $1200 - 3500 to outfit yourself with a board, kite, harness, etc. Sure looks like fun to me! (Oh,oh! says Eldy) Not to worry, honey, I'm getting too old to try that. If I was younger, I do think I would give it a go....The training for this sport can start on the ground with "trainer" kites...you learn to use the harness and straps in a field, learn the pulling and maneuvering of the equipment and then you head for the water if you don't manage to break any body parts in the learning process. The sport can be quite dangerous with a hard fall on the water, getting your lines tangled up and various other accidents that can happen. It was truly amazing to see the controlled flights of these guys, so many of them out on the water at a time, zipping and turning in their established "lanes", yet following the wind at the same time. I counted at least 30 out there at the same time and nobody got tangled up....it certainly was very cool to watch! But I think I will settle for disc golf, a little more down to earth sport for aging boomers like us.....

And here's one that is a more traditional type of kite surfing....I think I could learn to do that! Eldy says, time for a more "genteel" sport...disc golf. He's got his own discs, now, it's serious! We're in competition, friendly competition, heh, heh, heh....see you tomorrow at the golf course!

Happy New Year From St. Pete's Beach!

kayaking past our campsite

After kayaking for two hours yesterday, and Eldy watching his Notre Dame guys win the football bowl game, life doesn't get much better than that! But to top it off, we went to a shindig at Silas Dent's Steakhouse Restaurant in St. Pete's Beach. It was a small affair, the first year they had a private New Year's Eve party but we thought it was great! The staff was exceptionally attentive, the room where they held it was decorated beautifully and elegantly in black and white, and the food was outstanding.

The chef creating Bananas Foster

Appetizers started at 7:00 and lasted till 8:00. You could have had a complete dinner with just the appetizers alone. Then came a terrific buffet dinner from 8:00 to 10:00, then the dessert, flaming bananas foster personally created by the chef, which received a round of applause. For 49.95 a person, it included beverages with dinner, the appetizer buffet, the dinner buffet, the flaming bananas foster dessert, a night of dancing entertainment, and the standard glass of champagne and party favors at midnight. What was great, too, was there was NO smoking! Florida is a state where you can't smoke indoors, love it! Needless to say, we had a great time and danced our sox off, thanks to Darryl, the d.j., who had over 35,000 songs (yep, you read that right!) at his disposal. At our table, we had the fortune of meeting a very nice couple from London, Ontario- Canada. Their names were Nancy and Dave VanderSchaff. They were really great people! I am always in admiration of someone who easily befriends other people as I can be shy in new settings. They very quickly made us welcome. Nancy and Dave have that gift of making others feel at ease and show a genuine interest in the people they meet. Friendliness is contagious and soon we invited another couple who were sitting off by themselves to join our table. By the end of the evening, we all were old friends.

Nancy and Dave

We're moving a little slow today, having exercised more muscles last night than we remember having in our bodies, so we decided to check out the flea market in St. Petersburg and Clearwater. It's supposed to be huge and it was. It was a combination of two flea markets, with everything you could possible imagine...the usual sox, tee shirts and sunglasses and lots more with regular vendors in several buildings, but then they also had individuals selling outside in spaces in the open fields. There was produce and there was entertainment...as we left the flea market today, I heard somebody call out, "JEANNIE!" I looked around, thinking who in the world would know me down here, and that it's probably somebody else with the same name. I looked around the corner of a car, and here comes Nancy and Dave from last night! They had been at the flea market the same time we were, and were leaving at the same time. Not only that, but our cars were parked right across the aisle from each other, back to back! What are the chances of that happening? We chatted a bit then headed home for our campsite....on the way in, we saw the kite surfers' kites at the East Beach in Fort DeSoto...stay tuned for some photos tomorrow of the kite surfers.....see ya!