Day 12: Kayaking in the Mangroves

During our visit to Key West two years ago we went kayaking through the mangroves. We had such a good time that Betty and Kathy suggested that Barb join them on another 4 hour adventure. A friend of Keith's and Betty's filled out the party as Gary, Al and Keith pursued other activities.

Barb and Rex made a good team. There is a rumor that they ran aground a couple of times. Here's a good shot of some of the wider openings that exists but most of the time the openings are no wider than the kayak.

There is a lot of sea life to be seen as you wind through the mangroves. Below is a crab that Barb captured in several pictures. There were also thousands of jelly fish swarming on the bottom.

Following a much needed rest, the group met up at the "Schooner Wharf" for a recap of the days events.

The night was still young for the Reiffs who still had some energy remaining. They danced the night away as they tried to burn off some the calories consumed over the last week. I think it also had a lot to do with this being their last night in paradise.

Day 11: Wreckers Cup Race

Today we participated in the Annual Wreckers Cup Sailboat Race aboard Keith & Betty Gordon's boat "Bar Hopper"



Fortunately the high winds of the past week dropped down to 10-12 knots, however the wind direction also changed to the north. This meant that we would be sailing the entire race downwind.



There were a variety of fleets, but unfortunately no handicap ratings were assigned to the different boats. There were also only three rules. 1. There are no rules! 2. Refer to rule #2! 3. Refer to rule #2!



As I mentioned there were a number of different classes. Below is one of three schooners that entered the race. The schooners allowed paying passengers on the boat for the race. The overall winner of the regatta a J-24 which flew 2 large spinakers, one was from a Farr 40. As I said there were no rules. By the way, Keith's Catalina 36 was the first Catalina 36 to finish.

Day 10: Art Show & The Beach

We heard the "Key West Art Show" was going on today so we decided to check it out. It was really good, not quite as large as the Des Moines Art Show but the quality was just as good. Just across from the show was the Banyan House which has a Banyan Tree that pretty much surrounds the entire house.



The temperature was great, mid 70's with a 10-15 mph Northeast wind. We needed to catch up on the rays so we hit the beach for a couple of hours.



The visit wouldn't be complete without a walk down Duval Street. It's loaded with shops, restaurants, and loads of bars with entertainment. We stopped at a little bar with a one man band and Barb and I felt compelled to put on a dance exhibition for the patrons.

Day 9: Key West Tour

This afternoon we toured the city on the Key West Trolley. It's really a pretty good way to see all the Key West highlights and hear a lot of interesting facts.



A tour of the city wouldn't be complete without a cheeseburger in paradise at Jimmy Buffett's Margaritaville. Barb and Al were overwhelmed by the size of the cheeseburgers. We should have ordered one for each couple.



The southern most point of the U.S. is also a favorite place for tourist to visit.



This evening we headed to the Green Paroit to meet up with Keith and Betty and catch some "Blues". Unfortunately the music didn't start until 10pm. That's too late for these oldies to get started so we stopped by B.O.'s where Betty heard their was music. The impromptu group was great. They played a wide variety of music, blues, jazz, country, and some great old standards.

Day 8: Arrival in Key West

Following breakfast this morning we discovered a little friend at the Jolly Roger Campground, an 18 inch Iguana. He didn't like all the attention and quickly scurried under the motorhome.



We arrived at Boyd's Campground in Key West around noon for the start of our 2 week stay. Our friends Keith and Betty Gordon winter in Florida each year and recently sailed their boat to Key West to meet up with us. Prior to departing on our trip we made a stop at the Drug Town in Ankeny to pickup a beer order for Keith. To those of you who don't know him, he is passionate about his love for Hamm's beer. We built a Hamm's tower to celebrate our meeting.



We learned during our last visit to Key West that drinks and food are rather expensive so we like to hit the restaurants before 7pm for the 1/2 price drinks.
This evening we headed to Schooner Wharf for dinner, cocktails and music. Kathy and Betty feasted on a Fish Tacos, Al the crab Cakes and the rest of us Fish n' Chips.



Following dinner Barb and I decided to burn off a couple of the calories we had taken in. It turns out our entertainer was from Lake Okoboji, Iowa. What a small world
.

Day 7: Marathon - 1/2 way to Key West

We headed out of Key Largo around noon for the 40 mile drive south to Marathon. We decide during our trip planning to take our time and explore more of the keys than just Key West. Today we checked out the Doplhin Research Center, several marina's with some beautiful sailboats and a couple of boating stores.

Taking Barb and Al along is like have our children with us when they were younger. They like to do some funny things and of course we have to save the moment for posterity.



During our walk around one of the marina's we ran into Hank & Ann Evans. What a small world, they're from Des Moines. Last August they retired, purchased a 42ft. trawler and began heading south. Hank is a former sailor and it turns out we had a number of similar friends on Saylorville Lake. They are going to meet up with a friend, the former mayor of W. Des Moines, in Key West. They plan on heading up the east coast, dropping down the St. Lawrence to the great lakes and over to Chicago before heading south on the Illinois River and eventually to the Gulf of Mexico. What a trip! Good Luck Hank & Ann!

Day 6: Ft. Lauderdale to Key Largo

This morning we got a little bit of exercise riding our bikes around the RV park. It didn't take us long to figure out that the vast majority of the winter time residents in this park we French Canadian. Very few of the people we spoke with answered in English. Almost every vehicle had a Quebec license plate.

Our friends Al & Barb Reiff arrived at the airport at 1:30pm. Last night we drove over to the airport to see if we could pick them up in the motorhome. It has an upper and lower level and we were concerned if it had enough clearance. The upper deck had the most clearance so we pulled up at 1:45 with the jeep in tow to pick up the white snowbirds for a week in paradise.


The drive down to Key Largo was horrendous. Somehow we took a wrong turn and ended up going through Miami. It probably only added a 1/2 hour to the drive but it was white knuckle driving all the way.



Following the cocktail hour we headed to an ocean side bar and grill for sunset and a hearty seafood dinner.

Day 5: Florida 2009

We arrived in Ft. Lauderdale around noon after a 2 hour drive on the Florida Turnpike. We are still trying to figure out the toll they charged us. The toll from Orlando was $24. The toll for the MH alone would have been $8 and the toll for the Jeep $8. Since the jeep was being towed by the MH there was an $8 surcharge, thus $24. Go figure!

We had a difficult time finding a campground that had an opening. We finally found one that had room in their overflow area, an open field. It was reasonable though, $60, ha!

After changing into shorts and a t-shirt we headed to the beach to catch some rays and a stroll in the sand.


There were several kite surfers taking advantage of the strong 20+ mph north winds.



After developing an appetite from the walk on the beach we asked a couple of police officers on horseback where the "Skyline Chili Parlor" was located. If you read our Key West blog 2 years ago you know that Kathy and I love Skyline Chili. Our home town of Cincinnati has well over 100 Chili Parlors and we love their 3-Ways!!! Well, Lauderdale has one about a mile off the beach.

Day 4: Florida 2009

We reached Florida about 1pm today. The temperature was about 65 degrees here which I hear is pretty normal for northern Florida this time of the year.



Florida has a beautiful welcome center where they serve free orange and grapefruit juice. As you can imagine they have tons of travel brochures so we picked up a couple on campgrounds.

This afternoon we stopped just south of Orlando at a very nice campground just outside of Kissimmee.


Across the street is the spring training facility for the Houston Astro's. Before grilling a couple of Iowa chops we toured the facility by bike. Tomorrow we are going to head to Ft. Lauderdale.

Day 3: Florida 2009

Boy are we glad we got out of town on Thursday. Here's a shot that a friend sent of the snow storm that hit Des Moines on Friday. The prediction was for 2-3 in and they got 7 in.

We headed out about 8am through the hills of Tennessee. The new braking system worked well as we encountered a couple of 6% grades. Traffic was fairly light until we hit Atlanta. Last time we came through here we learned that we qualify for the carpool lane since there are two of us in the MH. As you can see below the traffic through here, even on a Saturday, is terrible.

We stopped a little early (3:30)this afternoon so we could pick up a couple things at the store and find a nice restaurant to celebrate Valentines Day.

Day 2: Florida 2009

Following an uneventful night in the Wal Mart parking lot we drove over to Klaus's Service Center around 11am to see how Tim was coming with the installation of the air brake system on the jeep. The installation went faster than expected and he was just finishing up. Now he had to run the air lines from the MH. He also mentioned that their was a leak in the radiator on the jeep. I had noticed a minor leak earlier but it was getting worse. So his son picked one up at the parts store and proceeded to install it as his dad finished up the MH air lines. These guys do great work and they are very reasonable at $60/hr.



After going through the hookup procedure with Tim we headed south at 2:30. We drove until 7pm and stopped in Clarksville, Tennessee. No Wal Mart in sight but we found a big Sam's Club lot.

Kathy's great at driving the RV!

Florida 2009

Day 1: Key West here we come!!!

We headed out of Des Moines this morning about 8am. We had parked the motorhome in a friends heated building overnight to keep everything we loaded yesterday from freezing. They will be joining us in a couple of weeks in Key West.



The trip to Highland Illinois was uneventful (that's good)! We are stopping overnight in Highland to have a new braking system installed on the jeep we pull behind the motorhome. The auxiliary braking system will be tied into the motorhome's air brakes and will provide proportional braking on the jeep as we apply brakes to the MH. It will take about 6 hours to install tomorrow so we won't hit the road again until the Friday afternoon.

Tonight we are in our favorite campground, a Wal-Mart parking lot. It's safe because they're open 24hr. and they allow campers to stay overnight.

Gatlinburg

We knew it wouldn’t be long before the 6 girls would experience withdrawal from shopping, so late this morning we headed down to the Gatlinburg main street shopping area. There is a multitude of shops, exhibits and attractions. One of the attractions, Parrott Mountain, was being promoted by a street vendor. Here is Emily who was a little in shock that the bird was beginning to walk up her arm to her shoulder.

After kid photographs with the birds, we headed out to seek more treasures. The younger girls spent the majority of their time trying on every piece of jewelry in the Claire’s store. Following lunch, we stopped by the Movie Cars Museum. Here are the girls with the VW from the movie Herbie.

There are so many attractions here you could probably spent a month and not see them all. Of course, many of them we wouldn’t want to see anyway, such as wax museums, Ripley’s and trinket stores. Our goal was to take the aerial tram to the Ober Gatlinburg ski area on top of the mountain.

Unfortunately on Fridays they are closed for maintenance, so we decided to drive the extremely steep drive up the mountain. They have a variety of summer rides for the kids to experience. Al and I, as well as the kids, tried our hand at the Alpine Slide. We took the chair lift to the top.

Weight plays an important role accelerating the sled down the hill, so Al and I competed for top speed.

Paige and the other girls didn’t have this weight advantage.

Now it was time take out our aggression at each other, so we jumped behind the wheel of a bumper car and slammed into each other for the next five minutes.

For the first time for the entire week, we got to eat at a sensible hour. The other evenings we never seemed to arrive home until after 8:00. Following supper, we took to the links to play 18 holes of golf, miniature golf that is. Mary wins the award for the longest drive as she hit the ball over three fairways away. Al had a hole in one on #18 and won an additional round of golf. Who knows when he will use it! And it looks like Paige is going to be the next Tigress Woods since she posted the lowest net score.

Gatlinburg

I guess the trip wouldn't be complete unless someone got sick. In this case the cold that Paige had for the last week turned into pink eye. When she awoke, her eyes swollen practically shut. A quick call to her doctor got her a prescription at the local pharmacy. By lunch time it was getting much better. So, we decided to head for Cades Cove. It's an 1800's community in a beautiful valley in the park. The majority of the homes, barns and churches are located around the perimeter of the valley. The one-way circle road around the community takes about 2 hours by car.

Here is the old grist mill that was used to grind the corn from the surrounding area. There are no longer any residents living here, the last one died a couple of years ago.

Exploring the old structures is really interesting. The barn uses a cantilever construction that was developed in Europe.

On the way back we stopped by the stream that flows along the side of the road. We rested our weary feet while the kids played in the stream. Paige and Emily couldn't resist posing as a took pictures of the area

This evening we grilled outside and the girls made us S'mores on the campfire.

Gatlinburg

Today we headed into the Great Smokey Mountains National Park. First we stopped in the park office and watch a movie about the history of the park. The park has more species of trees than all of Europe and there are many creatures only found in this area. The reason for the diversity here was the glaciers that stopped just above the park.

Following a picnic lunch we took a 1mi. hike to the Sugarlands waterfall. It was fairly easy because the trail was flat.

The girls enjoyed climbing the hills surrounding the falls.

We decided to be a little more adventurous and tackle a longer trail so we drove to the Laurel Falls pull off and headed up the mountain. This trail was quite a bit more difficult. The entire trail to the falls was up hill, about a 1 1/2 mi. To make it harder there were a number of spots with steep drop offs so we had to be very careful. Al and Nancy decided to turn back. It was more than they wanted to tackle. We headed on up with the girls. We were not disappointed, the falls were beautiful. My pictures cannot capture it all.

It took us close to 2 hours to complete this hike so we were ready for a rest. We next drove to the Roaring Fork Motor Nature Trail. It's a driving trail about 6 miles long that winds to the top of the mountain. There are several scenic pull offs and a number of historic cabins, barns and out buildings to explore. This is the Jim Bales homestead from the early 1900's.

Along side of the homestead is beautiful stream. As you can see there are extremely large boulders in the stream. These boulders were also in the surrounding fields making farming very difficult.