This month's calendar Archives
January 14, 2005
IT'S FRIDAY, MY FAVORITE DAY!!
Last Friday before the Blazer game, we decided to make sure we knew how to get to the hotel we were going to stay at that night. We found it with no problem, and we went in to see if we could check in early. Our room was ready and we were able to check in. That was great, but because the elevator was out of service, we had to lug our suitcases up three flights of stairs! Then after the game we just drove over to the hotel and went to bed around midnight. It was a very short night, as we had to get up at oh-dark-thirty (4:00 a.m. to be exact) to catch our shuttle over to the airport for our 6:20 a.m. flight to Tampa. I was so tired and of course I can't sleep on airplanes. My eyes were so dry from lack of sleep. When we arrived at Tampa, it was a pleasant 75 degrees outside and after we got our luggage we sat outside waiting for Stan to pick us up and we just soaked up the warmth!
After Stan picked us up and drove us to their place, he fed us a nice dinner of boiled shrimp and salad. He also made us Margaritas and we sat around the pool eating boiled peanuts. I just love the region's specialties. Sunday we just relaxed around the house and then went out to dinner at a popular local place called Margaritagrill. It's one of those "red neck places" located on a backwater river that looks like it ought to be full of alligators! Of course I had to have my favorite fish dish; Grouper, with Key Lime pie for dessert.
Monday, Dave and I left in Stan & Terrie's Jaguar convertible, and headed for Orlando to have lunch with Kati Ennis, our broadcasting contact with the Orlando Magic. She showed us around the studio and then off to lunch. We have to get at least one business lunch on every trip we take! After lunch we headed south toward Miami. We took the Florida Turnpike down as far as Port St. Lucie and then connected with Highway 1. A little after dark, we started looking for a place to spend the night and weren't having any luck. Everything we checked out was full. This is Florida in January; half the population of the northeastern U.S. heads south and rooms are really tough to find without reservations. I was getting to the point where I could imagine us spending the night in a two-seater Jag roadster, and was looking for anything! Even the Bates Motel would do in desperation. But as luck would have it, we found a place. It was old, but it was clean and comfortable and at this point, I didn't care.
Tuesday, after a late breakfast outside at the Juno Beach Cafe, we headed south through Palm Beach, Boca Raton and Fort Lauderdale. We took the scenic Highway A1A most of the way so it was slow going, but the mansions we saw along the way were incredible. It was fun to see how the other half lives!! We just couldn't believe how many there are in the other half! We passed miles and miles of mansions and just as many yachts the size of small ships! A lot of money around there! We were looking for a place to stop where we could get down to the beach and there aren't very many of those. It's all private beach. Then when we stopped at one public beach, they wanted $10 to park our car!! We are so spoiled to live on the Oregon Coast where all the beaches are free. There was no way we were going to pay to see the Atlantic Ocean! We finally came to Delray Beach, which was free. They had parking meters along the street, but when I tried to put some money in the meter, the handle wouldn't turn. Dave fiddled with the thing and found that it was so corroded from the salt air that it was jammed up. He forced the lever around and...bingo...and hour and a half of free parking! So we still didn't have to pay to park! It was a beautiful day so we strolled along the beach watching the Sandpipers and I collected a few seashells to bring back home. Dave always gives me a bad time about that, but he actually encouraged me this time! I only managed to bring home a handful.
We decided that we needed to make up some time if we were going to get down to Key West this week, so we got off the A1A and made our way to the freeway. That was an experience with five lanes of traffic and we didn't have the slightest idea where we were going, or I should say how long it would take us to get there. Dave is gripping the steering wheel and I am holding on to the map for dear life, praying that something on the map will match something on the highway before we end up in some ghetto in South Miami! I finally figured out where we were supposed to go and even at that, Dave almost made a wrong exit, which would have put us out on Key Biscayne. I pointed to the correct route two lanes to our left just as he was exiting. Luckily, there was a break in traffic. We managed to get back onto the correct lane at the last second after coming to a dead stop in the middle of the "Y" and then blasting our way back on the freeway. Thank goodness for the power of that Jaguar! Anyway we made it as far as Homestead that night.
Wednesday it was up bright and early so we could make it to Key West. It was a beautiful sunny day and we HAD to call our kids to rub it in. We have been sending e-mails as much as possible, but it has been kind of hard looking for an Internet Cafe or hotel with Internet service. Anyway, we made it out to the Keys by noon and found a pretty neat hotel to spend the night. That afternoon, we walked around Key West. We went through the home that Ernest Hemmingway lived in and where he wrote most of his novels. While we were walking around, we got lost and ended up in some "project" housing area trying to find where Highway 1 ends. We turned around and tried to look casual...like we knew where we were and really wanted to tour the wrong side of the Key West tracks! It's amazing how fast you can walk and still look "casual". We finally did find the end of the road, just not where we were looking for it! We wound down and rested our tired feet at Jimmy Buffett's Margaritaville Cafe. Later that night after dinner we came back to our room, we decided to take a nightly swim in their pool. So we changed into our suits and headed for a little dip. Well, one foot into the pool and we suddenly changed our minds. The pool was soooo cold, they forgot to tell us that it wasn't heated!!
Thursday, we left beautiful Key West and headed back to the mainland of Florida. The Pelicans love that long bridge and we saw a lot of them. Back on the mainland, we stopped at the Miccosukee Indian Reservation for an Everglade ride. We had the whole airboat to ourselves and our guide took us all around. It was fun, but it was windy and noisy! We saw live alligators at one stop. We were walking a boardwalk through the swamp when I spotted this little guy right under our feet! Scared the daylights out of me!
Our final destination today was to visit with a steamboat friend who lives in Naples. After arriving at his home, he immediately invited us out for a steamboat ride on the river that runs behind his house. His boat ran on wood and it didn't take him very long to get it fired up. We went for about an hour up the river and were headed back when all of a sudden the engine stopped! Being the adventuresome type person that he is, a sudden stop of the engine didn't seem to phase him, he just got out the dependable electric outboard motor and off we went. The only problem was the boiler kept popping off while venting excess pressure and spraying us with hot water every time! His stories of alligators in the water and snakes in the trees, besides trying to find ourselves back home in the dark made us feel like we had defied death once more! We had a nice visit with him and then left in the morning for our home away from home in Florida where we will spend the remainder of our vacation unwinding after a wonderful trip. We looked up the address of an Internet Cafe after we left in the morning. We had a terrible time finding it...and then when we finally did find it...in the rear of a collection of small offices, it was a storage room with a BIG note on the door that said, "We are NOT an Internet Cafe!!" Yellow Pages screw-up, I guess. We finally stopped at a computer store and asked the guy behind the counter where we could find an Internet-equipped coffee shop and he told us how to get to the place where we are posting this. We miss having an Internet cafe on every corner...they just don't do that down here! (Later) Well, that didn't work. We couldn't get online at the coffee shop and they had no idea how to make it work, so I don't know when or where this will get posted. If you're reading it, you know we found someplace. If you're seeing pictures, then you know we found someplace good!
This weekend, we do plan to get together with some more dear friends and then will leave on Tuesday for the cold Northwest.
GIVE ME A BREAK!!
I guess I am pretty spoiled living where I do because we don't have to pay "tolls" on the "freeways" like they do here on the East coast. Some of the tolls are not cheap either. I think we ended up paying $8.70 in tolls from Orlando to Port St. Lucie, just to ride on the turnpike!! Geeze.
Also, I think drivers in Florida think that a yellow light means to go faster and most even ignore the red lights! I don't know how many times we hesitated on the green while someone ran the red light! It seems that around here, a red light means only 10 more cars can go through the intersection! And if you slow for a yellow light, you're going to get rear-ended! And then I was listening to the news the other night and they were discussing whether to enforce the seatbelt law with senior citizens in this state. I mean, it's a seatbelt LAW! Good grief.
