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Happy Valentine’s Day from Key West!

I wanted to start out by saying that this blog does have some links in it so the underlined places we have been are a quick link to their website if  you want more information or are just curious.  Paul’s day started early with a Scuba tour to Looe Key where the reef has been protected since the early 80’s.  He didn’t get back till 2 so he had a really phenomenal start to the day.  Sightings were trumpet fish, barracuda, reef sharks, lion fish and another monster fish… 300 pound Goliath Grouper.  He had a blast with the 2 dives he did today.  Colors were wonderful, his partner was great and they saw tons of coral.  My day was slower to start, sleeping in and a lovely card and gift on the breakfast table from my honey, waiting to be opened.  After breakfast I took an 8 mile bike ride.  This was mostly to go back to the area where I spilled on my bike the other night, I wanted to take one last look for my sunglasses.  I believe there is a bird somewhere that scooped them up and is styling in my sunglasses.  Paul thinks he saw a bird with sunglasses but it kept running into things because the prescription was not compatible. 🙂  Once we had lunch, we did some maintenance on the RV getting ready for the next leg of our trip.  We took off to Key West in time to see the sunset over Smathers Beach and talked to Jeff who is holding the fort down while we are gone.  We walked along the beach and enjoyed our last evening in the Keys. 

Off to the grocery store to stock up for the next leg and back home to have a quiet dinner.  Grilled ginger chicken and grilled bourbon peaches, salad and some homemade honey wheat bread.  Dessert was homemade molten lava cakes with vanilla ice cream.  I challenge the other RVers to top that!  Happy Valentine’s day y’all!

Today started out with a couple calamities… Paul’s scuba trip was cancelled due to the other participants cancelling, lost $50 somewhere along the line and I discovered when I took my spill on the bike, I may have lost my prescription sunglasses!  Well, you just have to roll with it!  Paul rescheduled the diving for tomorrow, didn’t find the money or sunglasses yet but I do have a back up pair.  Good thing I got them on a deal at Walmart!!

We decided to do a few tourist-like things today and go to the Southernmost Point in the Continental US.  If you will note in the picture, it is another beautiful blue skied day in Paradise. 

We then walked a million miles (well half a mile) to the Hemingway House where Ernest Hemingway lived for 9 years and did the majority of his famous writing there.  The tour guide was great, obviously had a passion for the property he worked on and kept us enthralled with his information and humor.  There were several movies filmed at the Hemingway House (James Bond, time to kill) and a new one coming out in July called “Leisure Seeker” in which our tour guide played a tour guide (didn’t see that one coming, eh?) in the film.  He was very knowledgeable and entertaining.  I would recommend it if you are here and have the time.

Next to the Hemingway House, there was “Six-Toed Cat” Restaurant (Hemingway had six-toed cats on his property – 53 at this writing) and had a delicious lunch outside, watching the people go by.  Two lovely older ladies buzzed by on electric wheelchair scooters, did a u turn on the sidewalk, almost hitting the tree where we were sitting.  Cute ladies, I hope they were not drinking while driving, but I suspect they were!

We moseyed along to the Key West Winery – not Paul’s cup of tea (or wine).  Apparently they don’t use grapes to make their wine and make wine from other fruit so even the ‘dry’ wines were too sweet for him.  I was OK with it so we shared a tasting and brought Mango Mama wine home to make some slushies.  We had some time to kill so we walked to the pier and spotted a 500 pound Goliath Grouper – that ain’t no fish story either… It was mammoth! Walking back to the car, we ran into the little ladies with the wheelchair scooters, trying to turn into a sidewalk dive eatery/bar and running into the walls trying to navigate the doorway – fortunately, they had an ambulatory male friend who seemed able to guide them into the place.

We made it to the sunset cruise and enjoyed the evening watching the sunset over the water.  Apparently there is a phenomenon called the “Green Flash” where, just as the sun is disappearing beyond the horizon, there is a green flash as the water catches the reflection of the setting sun.  It did appear as if the sun was turning green tonight but it was flashless…the captain of the boat said he saw the green sun as well – maybe hoping for a better tip??

Off to a hidden treasure for dinner – Hogfish Grill on Stock Island, off to the east as you are coming out of Key West.  Someone told Paul about this place and it was another spot WELL off the beaten path.  More like a local bar and grill type place right on the water.  Of course we had to try the Hogfish so I had Hogfish sliders with lime remoulade and Paul had the Hogfish with blackened scallops, both really good.  I had to top the day off with Key Lime Pie, naturally – what else do you eat for dessert in Key West?

Although we slept in today, it didn’t really put a dent in the amount of sleep we needed to catch up on… but luckily we didn’t have any place to go today either!  We all participated in a bleary-eyed breakfast and noontime walk around the lake at the campground, looking for critters.  We found some lizards, shell fish that looked like mussels and clams, and found some itty bitty jelly fish in the lake.

The stroll around the small lake was enough exercise at this point in the day so we visited a bit more with our guests and bid them farewell, back to reality for Jay and Sara, unfortunately!  Grilling an early dinner and then some biking at sunset across the bridge, investigating a small neighborhood community off the main road.  Of course, we found a ‘shortcut’ through the brush and gravel, which I didn’t navigate so well in the dusk of the evening and ended up on my butt.  I will likely be bruised tomorrow but I will make it to see another day in Paradise.  Love to you all!

Teaser for tomorrow, Paul is scuba diving and we have reservations for a sunset cruise 🙂

No miles today except 4.5 biking

Good day!  We started out the day V-E-R-Y Leisurely for a change.  No place to go, no road to travel, just hanging at the Keys…a wonderful thing!  It is a beautiful morning to have breakfast outside, listen to the birds and enjoy the tropical breeze (and the deep blue sky, and 75 degree weather).   

It ends up that the friends we visited yesterday on the way through Pompano Beach were able to come down and spend the night with us so we are hanging at the Lazy Lakes Campground today until they arrive.  Traffic was not cooperative with Jay and Sara and their arrival was delayed so we headed out on the bikes to see what we could see.  In this section of the Keys (mile marker 20) the bike path is separated from the road and easy to navigate north.  We biked through the KOA campground, within walking distance of our resort,  then over the bridge to the next Key passing several pelicans ‘fishing’ off the bridge.  As we passed the giant birds roosting on the bridge railing, they were eyeballing us, spreading out their wings as if they were ready to take off if we made any unusual moves toward them.

The bike path then crossed the highway and delved into the shady trees and past the Mangrove swamps.  If you have not seen Mangrove, the roots shoot out from the side of the plant in search of a place to start a new growth, creating a network of roots, massively intertwining amongst themselves.  It seemed impossible that any creature would be able to navigate through the maze but as we biked along northward, a small Floridian deer ran across the path and into the maze of Mangrove roots and branches.  I am not sure how it got through but disappeared in an instant.  Biking 8.6 miles is pretty easy when it is flat!  At one point we raced each other and got up to 17 miles an hour, but that lasted all of 5 seconds

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Our friends arrived and we visited a bit, starting happy hour with some slushies made with Peach cider we purchased at a road side stand in Georgia on the way down.

We all went to Key West for dinner…New Orleans with a bit more family flair. (Update 2.13.17 – I have decided it is like Bourbon street meets the beach) Not to say you can’t get into trouble here, because you sure can, but it was just a little less ‘dark’ here and more popular type music rather than the New Orleans jazz, (which we loved to hear when we were there a few years ago.)  We first stopped at Malory Square where the street performers were celebrating the sunset, which we caught on the way to Key West.

Blue Heaven was an out-of-the-way restaurant where we had dinner.  Very eclectic and unique with chickens running around (did I mention it was an outside restaurant?) and live music.  Delicious scallop dinner – really wonderful.  After walking for a bit to get there, we had really worked up our appetite.   As we meandered back toward Duval Street, where all the action was, we did a lot of people-watching and tried to take it all in.  Ending up at Sloppy Joe’s Bar where they had a great live band doing a mix of old tunes and current ones.  If anyone knows the “Salsa Baby” story from when we went to Telluride…. It was like that.

A Late, Late night (or early morning, depending on how you look at it), a good time was had by all.  As the Designated Driver, I got everyone home in one piece.  A short night’s rest brought us to Day 7.

No  miles today unless you count biking 8.6!  Over 13,300 steps, that should give you an idea on how much we walked around Key West!

It was nice waking up on a farm!  Bedner’s knows how to do it right.  As we had breakfast, we watched the kids and families go out to the fields and pick strawberries, tomatoes, cukes and peppers.  The birds were chirping their hearts out too… probably trying to keep those kids away from the bird’s breakfast of fresh produce.  When we went into Bedner’s market, the manager on duty let us know about the wild life preserve directly adjacent to the farm.  We decided to take a bike ride to Arthur R Marshall Loxahatchee National Wildlife Refuge (that’s a mouthful).  We biked about 3 miles through part of the park and saw a parrot in the wild, storks, herons, brown pelican, red shouldered hawk and a couple varieties of ducks.  It was a difficult trail on the bike, flat in elevation but sand (sometimes felt like quicksand) and bumpy…. A good workout right after breakfast.

On the way to the keys we drove through Pompano Beach and stopped to see our friend Jay, then stopped in Ft. Lauderdale to see Sara at work.  She showed us around her job site where they outfit yachts and other large water craft with everything from food to linens to play toys for the big boys.  It was a last minute decision to visit but we were driving right by their home.  It was nice to see them, it has been a while and we have known Sara since she was an infant.  Nice to have hugs from our extended family!  On the road again … A slow freight train, traffic and boneheads on the road made the trip past Ft. Lauderdale and Miami a bit tedious.  We did make it to Key Largo to pick up a rental car on our way down to Sugarloaf Key where we are staying till Wednesday.  We got the car about 5 minutes before the place closed but the sales person was quite pleasant and made me feel less stressed about the timing of everything today.

Once set up, about 15 minutes, dinner and wine was on the table in another 15…

We walked around the camping resort to see what it had to offer in the dark.  There are several beautiful sites right on the peninsula for RVers as well as tenters.  We will let you know what we see in the daylight tomorrow.  Listening to Kaleo radio as I type this, chilling and loving that we are finally in the Keys and able to set up for a few days.

Total trip miles 1566.2 (211 today)

Howdy!  We woke up in Charleston, SC at James Island County Park.  We went biking through the park and I have to say it is quite the park, especially for a County Park.  There are lakes, swamp land with loons and other water fowl, elevated cabins with screened in porches looking over the park, campgrounds for tents, RVs and primitive sites, disc golf, climbing walls, challenge courses and a splash zone.  If you are planning on staying in Charleston, I highly recommend this multi-faceted park, the kids will LOVE it.  We biked a leisurely 3.7 miles around the lake and adventure areas of the park and along the way, Paul felt compelled to talk to the loons – enough said!  We got a Little bitty Taste of Charleston today.

On the road to Savannah – a quick trip compared to the last 2 days.  Only 2.5 hours of road in front of us and our first real fill at the gas station…$136.00 for 67 gallons!  Good thing it is only $2.03 a gallon here :=)  Paul got a little aerobic exercise washing the windows, he can’t reach the top of the windows so he had to keep jumping up to wash and squeegee the windshield and all the side windows.. plum tuckered him out.  We got to the RV park with no problem, checked in and then off to see Savannah via Uber.  I think this is the first time we have used Uber and what a wonderful thing!  The driver, Bob, gave us some tips on Savannah relative to the time we had to spend here and dropped us off at City Market where a hub of restaurants and shops are.  His best advice was to take our time and enjoy the southern slow pace.  We walked to the square where there were fountains and found ourselves in the old city.  We meandered, on Bob’s advice, and spent some time looking at the old architecture.  Steep historic steps led us down to the river front (we found out that the STEPS have their own facebook page – I think it is something like the “Steps of Death”!).  We sat outside Huey’s restaurant and had cocktails while watching the boats on the river. The northerners reading this may not want to see the next sentence… 70 degrees and sunny, breezy day, lovely.  While having cocktails, 2 gentlemen sat next to us, ordered in English, then conversed with each other in a language that sounded like German.  Paul is proud of his German heritage and felt rusty with the language listening to these men.  When we got up to pay the check, Paul started talking to the men and stated that his German was rusty because he could not really understand them.  They had a good laugh and then told Paul they were speaking Dutch!  They were actually men working on the cargo ship that was recently in Philly delivering IKEA crates.

We then meandered back up the historic steps and had dinner at the Ole Pink House Restaurant.  The oldest building in Savannah with 1600 square feet of dining, eleven dining rooms and complete with sightings of ghosts, particularly in the Tavern located in the basement.  Our server was really knowledgeable about the history of the building and had several encounters herself with ghost Marie, the slave that used to live there, as well as a sighting of a blonde headed girl holding a wooden doll.  As she was talking, I got goose bumps all over.  The dinner was phenomenal,  having Grits with Ham Gravy, Damn good fried chicken and superb mac and cheese.  We completed the meal with a praline basket with ice cream for dessert.  You have to have pralines in Savannah you know!  The Pink House dinner was our Big Flavor for today.

Back to Red Gate Farm Park for a night cap and stroll around the farm, complete with goats, donkey and horses.  Frogs chirping in the background, Dr. Doolittle –Dimmler had all the animals coming to the gate, at 9:45 pm, looking for a friendly scratch on the neck.

Total trip miles  818

 

Well this morning we woke up at the winery and were greeted by Milt and Sandy.  Hospitable, welcoming and a wonderful way to start the day, touring the log cabin they live in, looking at vineyards and imagining what they will look like in the spring.   We bought some wine, of course, and were on our way to Charleston.  We got a late start but barreled toward Raleigh/Durham and back on I 95,  An uneventful journey (AKA boring), which is OK for today.  Just after I took the wheel, the lanes narrowed to about 3/4 the original width and, well, we will just say that not all the orange and white cones are still standing!  Paul took over for a while and we found a nice stretch of 95 so I took over and, yes, about a minute later the lanes narrowed again!  At least I had the shoulder and rumble strips to ride on this time.  While I am talking about I 95, can I just tell you that South Carolina is the worst stretch of the road?  It is kind of like riding a horse that is trotting… a little too fast, and you are bouncing up and down at an uncomfortable pace.  Any faster and I would have thought things would start falling off the RV.  Tell the grandkids it made me think of the song “people on the bus go up and down, up and down, up and down, up and down” for about a hundred miles.   After Charleston traffic, we got to the campsite by 7pm and had dinner in the oven shortly afterwards.  Looking forward to some touring tomorrow in Charleston and/or Savannah.  Good night all!