Easy Day, Home Depot and Keys Fisheries

Thursday, October 31, 2013

 

Today was spent cleaning the RV inside and Jim spent lots of time getting the pictures you can see from our link organized for ‘his’ video.  A trip to Home Depot for some miscellaneous hardware, along with the evening meal out at Keys Fisheries Market and Marina in Marathon were the highlights of our day.  Another RV friend recommended this place for eating, and the seafood was fabulous.  Jim ordered shrimp, and Linda had the grilled plate, which included shrimp, scallops, mahi mahi, and lobster.  It was all superb.  Besides sitting outside by the Gulf, we also viewed the tarpon swimming near the floor of the restaurant.  This is the only day we haven’t made a trip to the beach, we just used the pool for an hour in the afternoon. Prior to our dinner, we visited Sunset Park Beach to view another sunset.  This beach is not for swimming, but it has really nice sunsets.  I know you may get tired of our sunset pictures, but we have only had two evenings (our first) when there was no sunset.  Watching the sun set every evening is a ritual for even the locals!

 

Links:

http://www.keysfisheries.com/

Sunset Beach Park

Sent from Jim's iPhone

Key West (2), Dry Tortugas

Wednesday, October 30, 2013

We are off on another big day.  The main event will be the trip out to the Dry Tortugas.  But the seaplane check in time isn’t until 1:30 pm.  So there is time to do another Key West exploration.

Linda chose to tour the Ernest Hemingway House and Jim chose to walk around to take a few photos and do a geocache.  You will see our photos in a movie by following the link.  I hope you enjoy it.  We really enjoyed the day and Jim enjoyed linking the photos together (next time it won’t take so long).  Watch this (60MB):  Our Day to Dry Tortugas

 

Some more details on the day….

We parked near Duval Street and walked together to the Hemingway House.  At this point, Linda went on the tour and she regrets not taking a photo of the cats.  We have several friends noted for their close relationship with their cats.  A funny sign in a window sometime ago reads, “Dog have owners.  Cats have Staff.”

Duval Street is the rough equivalent to Bourbon Street in New Orleans.  It is the main street where things are happening.  Just about every other place is eat and drink.  It is sort of known to be a loosely regulated area during Fantasy Fest especially later in the evenings.   But the Fest is over now and during the day times (when we are there), it is just a tourist area (100% tourist area) with several cruise boats docked daily. 

Linda enjoyed the tour of the Hemingway House and Jim got the geocache.  It is now time for the lunch that we brought with us and time to go to the airport.  The Seaplane Adventures company makes it very easy.  Check in is simple.  They give you a cooler with your choice of soft drinks and fill it with ice.  You remember the letter code of your cooler.  All the coolers are the same size so the pilot can stack them in the storage compartment.  They have mask, fins and snorkels (included in the price), or you can take your own.  You can take beach bags, but no umbrellas or chairs. 

You can tell from the photos that we really enjoyed this tour.  The flight is superb.  They fly at 500 feet for 35 minutes.  You can see the reefs, tidal inlets, keys and a couple of shipwrecks.  Some flights are lucky enough to see marine life, but we were not lucky.  You arrive at the Garden Key, the pilot drives over to the sandy beach, points the nose out and reverses thrust to back the planes pontoons onto the beach.  In less that 15 seconds, the pilot is out of his door, opens the passenger door and you start to get off.  As we say in the photos, “All Flights Should Be This Much Fun.”  We spent a short time touring Fort Jefferson and spent the remainder of our time here snorkeling and swimming in the pristine waters.  Needless to say, we hated leaving the island (Garden Key).

Links:

Fort Jefferson National Park

Seaplane Adventures

 

Dry Tortugas Video

https://db.tt/NUEorian

Sent from Jim's iPhone

Anne's Beach

Tuesday, October 29, 2013

 

We had a big day yesterday, so today is shopping and trying another local beach.

 

Shopping included the grocery store and Kmart.  Jim’s snorkel had failed and Kmart had the brand that Jim wanted so that worked fine.  Groceries included a Ribeye steak for the grill this evening.

 

After storing the groceries and lunch at the RV, we headed off for the beach…

 

Anne’s Beach, Lower Matecumbe Key.  Beaches in the Keys are generally very disappointing.  We have been spoiled by beaches at Destin and Pensacola Beach.  Others, like Tampa, Jacksonville, Daytona… are great, too.  The Keys are coral, the whole place is coral.  The sand is pulverized coral.  In some places it sort of feels like coarse sand, but more often than not, the grinder (wave action) has been running non stop for a long time; and, the pulverized coral is so fine that it can and does make quick sand which is unpleasant to wade through.  The coral pebbles and rocks are also very hard on the bare feet. 

 

With that information, Anne’s Beach looks great as you see it from the highway.  Once we parked and tried to find a good place for setting up chairs and umbrellas, we started to become discouraged.  We did find a place and enjoyed watching kite boarders, and we occasionally waded out through the coral rocks and slimy quick sand to relax in the shallow water which was a very pleasant temperature.

 

The best beach on our list so far is Sombrero Beach in Marathon; no muck, no large coral rocks, lots of space to set chairs and umbrellas and gradually sloping to deeper waters. 

 

Back at the RV, we watched sunset (again), then put the ribeye on the grill.  It was delicious.

Key West day one

On Monday, we loaded our bikes and went to Key West. We parked at the State Park.

We rode our bikes to:
* Truman's Little White House,
* Returned to the state park for a picnic lunch,
* Sat on the beach,
* Went snorkeling for a while,
* Rode our bikes to the Mel Fisher Museum,
* Linda went shopping,
* Ate at Wendy's on Duvall Street,
* Did geocaches at the southernmost point of the US and at The State Park,
* Sat on the beach and watched the sunset.

We had a really good day. We both liked the Mel Fisher Museum. On display are part of the silver ingots with the King's hallmarks for assay, weight, source, and taxes. (So the tax was already paid). Also, part of the gold is displayed.

A Mix of Activities

Last night's World Series Game kept us up too late. 

We did some domestic duties then headed off for Robbie's Marina in Islamorada. ( www.robbies.com )

It is hard to fully explain Robbie's other than you can rent kayaks, jet skis, take fishing charters, feed tarpon, get close to birds, arrange guided Eco tours, have lunch and buy lots of stuff from the little huts. Yes, that's us sitting in the psychedelic beach chairs. I guess we just don't look just right, not relaxed enough.

Signs for sale...

I like "Paradise Ain't Cheap"

We returned to our RV home base, loaded the bicycles and headed for seven mile bridge. 

At Pigeon Key, we found a nice pier. 

We did the geocache and got it. We tried a second geocache and came up with DNF. We asked a geo friend for help and maybe we will try again. 

Back at RV Home Base, we planned our day tomorrow in Key West. We were reading reviews and decided we better make up our minds on the excursion to the Dry Tortugas. We booked the seaplane at 2:00 PM Wednesday. 

Another Day, Another Sunset

Today was our first visit to the Dolphin Research Center. We decided to join so we can go back as often as we like. We will go back to take photos and post them in the blog. We enjoyed the education and the smiling faces as people are so fascinated by dolphins.

After lunch, it was back to Sombrero Beach for a few hours. On Thursday, there were about 5 cars at the beach. Today..., SATURDAY....  It was different. Lots of cars and people, still we had no trouble parking and enjoying the beach.

We stopped at Publix and bought a ribeye and it turned out to be delicious on our Weber grill.

Trip to the Hospital

The Turtle Hospital.
We are both well.

The Turtle Hospital is organized to rescue, rehab, and release injured and ill sea turtles.

We both enjoyed the two hours tour. And we learned a few things.

Mainly, it is easy for humans to help with 2 of 3 reasons for turtle rescues. First, keep debris out of the sea and turtles eat anything (avoid littering). Second, obey boating laws to slow down in shallow water. The third one is tougher. That is something is causing tumors called FP or fibropapilloma virus. It is thought to be a pollutant, but which one is the question.

Thursday is Ribs Night

Beachy Day No. 1

Some people are out doing attractions....
Some people are working...

But, we are having a Very Beachy Day.

Iguana You Too

71 miles today. We had an uneventful journey from Homestead to Grassy Key. Highway 1 is not a high speed superhighway, but it flows along well without many delays.

We stopped in Key Largo for fuel and groceries. We then headed for a park to eat lunch. What park? Normally you just look at the gps or the smartphone and you can find a park. Well, not so at Key Largo. It looks like every square inch is privately owned. We had to move on toward Marathon.

We continued on and found a shady spot. It worked well for lunch and there was a geocache.

We got to Pelican Carefree RV and got set up. We relaxed for a few minutes, checked the internet, bought a couple of things from Amazon, and headed for the pool. The water temperature was PERFECT!

At the pool we got tips on places to eat and swim with dolphins (that's on Jim's list if the exploitation aspect is palatable).

We took a walk to the mini-beach and found Mr. Ig right on our path. By the time I could reach for the camera, he had moved away. They avoid humans. Here is our photo...

On the Move Through Florida

Today was a personal RV record for us. Today's mileage was 380 miles! We have never done that.

We are at a PA park in Homestead Florida. It is an OK park, but we missed out by not staying at Midway in the Everglades NP. Oh well, we will stay there on the way back.

We are poised well for our final 71 miles to Pelican RV in Marathon. We will stop in Key Largo at Winn-Dixie or Publix for some groceries.

We have our beach umbrella and cooler ready to go.

Here is a typical Florida rest stop. You would think they like to keep things nice for tourists or something.

First Day in Florida

Florida.  This is Florida!  Let the vacation begin.  Actually, we are not really to our destination.  We are aiming for Marathon Florida on Grassy Key (40 miles from Key West). 

Tonight, we are north of Orlando just off of I-75 in a nice RV Park with lots of Spanish Moss decorating the trees (and some of the RV's).  The swimming pool was disappointingly cool (way too cool).  We were informed that they turn the heater on starting in December when the 6 month residents begin to show up.  Because we lingered on the pool deck, we ran a little late on meal preparation and having spotted Jim's Barbeque less than one mile away, we opted for the easy meal and enjoyed it indeed.  We were the last customers to be served having got there just before 7:00 pm.  Jim's BBQ closes early!

Back to the RV....   Jim has been promising to get the travel blog going again.  At the Good Sam Rally at the Atlanta Motor Speedway, Jim attended a few of  Chris' and Jim's Geeks on Tour seminars.  This really helped Jim understand the differences between Blogger, BlogSpot, Google+, Facebook, Picassa Photo Album, Picasa, etc.  So, here is a fresh start.

We will be back dating some of summer adventures and when we've done it, we will mention it in our daily blogs.  Now, we understand that we can have a travel blog, a bicycle blog, a hiking blog, and Jim's new Mobileye Blog.  You can have as many blogs as you want.  That way, Google knows more and more about you. 

Arrived Raccoon Valley

We had a very pleasant overnight at Berea, Kentucky.  Overnight lows were in the 40's which makes dry camping a very pleasant experience.  We both slept well. 

Our journey from Berea, Kentucky to Heiskell, Tennessee was 104 miles, a perfect distance for the two of us.  At Racoon Valley, Jim went to work on washing windows inside and out.  Linda got busy doing the laundry. 

Oh, by the way....  It is time to announce that our Splendide washing machine is working again. This is a mystery.  Back in August, it decided to not work.  Jim read the manual, the Splendide website and RV forums.  Jim tried all the remedies short of replacing the machine.  Linda went to the Laundromat.  We had clean clothes, but it seemed like we were carrying around a boat anchor.  Well, a thousand miles later, Jim tried it again and "Magic", it worked.  It took about 15 minutes to put all the parts back together.  Linda started doing laundry and it has worked ever since.  We've been afraid to make this announcement, fearing that the machine will take the opportunity to quit.

Jim went to social hour and it was lightly attended, but...  another "Work" was at social hour and we started into genealogy.  We've made an appointment to follow up.