On the first leg of the drive my trailer initially had a really severe unstable sway problem. I managed to fix it by shifting the stuff around to help counter balance my bike hanging off the back. I again stopped on the way down and visited my friend Todd (friend from my Ford Rawsonville days) & wife Chris who live just south of Indianapolis. I took them out to a nice dinner at a local Mexican restaurant. (But I didn't get any pictures of them!)
After staying with Todd near Indy, it was a long drive through KY, TN and Georgia, but the red bud trees were in bloom all along the freeway in TN and Georgia, which was nice.
I spent a night at the same rest stop in southern Georgia (near Macon), and the next day I made it to the welcome center in Florida where I stopped and got my free cup of orange juice. I recall doing that on the trip I made with my family in 1967, and I think it's great that they still give away free O.J. to everyone that stops in.
My first stop was in Lakeland. I had never been to a spring training game and I always wanted to. Last year I planned to, but they were in strike - but not this year. Play ball...!
I went to two games, and the Tiger's won both of them. (They beat the Twins 8-7 (on a batter delay pitch count call of all things) and the Red Sox 6 - 2.)
At the 2nd game I sat with a group of aging former athletes that meet for spring training every year. One guy had played for baseball EMU in the '60s, and they still play competitive softball. They had a lot of great stories so that was a lot of fun.
I also found a fantastic new campground (Wilderness Shores Ranch & Campground) that had both a ranch and a lake. I stayed there for 4 nights. And it turned out that the owner and his kids were all track & field athletes, and the owner is a friend of (former mile world record holder) Jim Ryun, so being a longtime runner myself, that was fun to talk about. Below is my trailer by the lake, and some ibises feeding at the shore. (The skeeters were really thick so close to the lake, and I did move a bit further away from it.)
They have goats and the long horn cattle on the ranch (that you can pet and help feed). It was interesting.
This is the view of the lake from an overlook from one of the trails they created.
I used my (inflatable) kayak every day in the lake at the campground. I found a nice inlet that was also a rookery which was a lot of fun to find and observe.
While I was paddling around the lake I also had an up close and person experience with a 6-7 foot long gator. I spotted it on a bank and was slowly drifting up to it, and when I got to about 15-20 feet from it, it obviously became distressed and it thrashed wildly into the water, slapped it's tail on the water good and hard and disappeared in a flash of fury. That wasn't what I expected based on the contact I'd had with others next to trails, but I guess an encounter from the water is different. (It sure was!)
This was the beach at Fort DeSoto near St. Petersburg. I've stopped here before and they have a great beach and a dog beach which is good for Sandy. I stopped by here for the day on the way from Lakeland to Port Charlotte. It rained in the morning so I sat for a while in my trailer. When it stopped I got out and walked the beach. I had on long pants, a T-shirt, a long sleeved shirt over that, and a rain jacked on. I passed four young girls wearing thong bikinis and I thought, ok, maybe I'm a bit over dressed. (I went back and changed into shorts.)
My friends Dean and Sandy who I stayed with in Port Charlotte. (I met Dean when we both lived at DU one year during college.)
They have a great set up for me to stay with them - they have a 2nd lot I park my trailer on and a shed I can plug into, so it works out great.
This was a stop at the fishing pier in Venice Beach. I usually visit my friend Victor (from Ford) here, but he was in Romania. I still had a nice visit, walked around, ran on the beach and got my requisite pina colada at Sharky's. (A shot under the pier (left) and a snowy egret. (right))
A small bird (likely a killdeer) drinking from an open hose (left), and the common coastal brown pelican (right).
Seagulls (laughing gulls in this case) and Sharkey's on the Pier. I also met a German woman on the pier who didn't speak English, and I talked to her in my limited German.
(I seem to have a bit of an affinity to meet German tourists, as I met a German family last year also.)
I again drove Highway 41 (Alligatory Alley) and made some stops to see the wildlife - gator (left) and egrets (right).
A group of wading birds (left) - likely large billed (vs short billed) dowitchers.
I also stopped again at "Robert is Here" fruit stand /petting zoo (right) on the way to the Everglades and got a fresh fruit milkshake. (mmmm...!)
(It's in Homestead FL.) Robert still wasn't there (so far as I could tell) but the zoo animals all were! (Two emus and some geese pictured.)
Sunset from my campsite in Flamingo in Everglades National Park. (The flash came on and all of the reflective campsite marker signs lit up.)
Some reptilian residents (gators) along the path to the viewing tower at Shark Valley. (Last year this entire area was closed due to flooding.)
I drove up and I made the ~20 mile bike ride to the tower and back. It was an awesome trip - lots of gators and water birds. (But man was it a stiff headwind on the ride back.)
A mom gator with a whole slew of babies by her side.
(She was so placid it seemed like I could just walk up and pick up a baby and play with it. Something tells me she might have objected to that.)
A moorhen (left) and an anhinga (right) in a classic wing spread sunning position.
A great blue heron stalking through the grass.
The Shark Valley observation tower. The view from the top is really nice - you can see for a long ways.
The upper platform (with access from a small spiral staircase) was closed (possibly permanently).
The famous pink visitor center at Flamingo from the water while in my kayak in the bay.
(The center has been closed for a couple of years due to hurricane damage. I hear it's supposed to re-open soon.)
On the right is a shot of the mangrove lined canal which I had a close up encounter with a croc (of unknown size) similar to the gator experience at Lakeland. (I never got a good look at this one, but I sure did hear the splash when it writhed and slapped the water and went under. I found out later that evening that there was a 14' male and 11' female nesting near the marina. I saw the female but the male was out on the prowl. I doubt that was the one I ran into, but still, yikes!)
Hiking the (short) mahogany hammock trail (left) - which is a boardwalk thru a dense forest on a small raised bead of land.
(Other than occasional "hammocks, it's all wet grassland throughout the everglades.)
The lizard on the tree (right) was about 8" long and is most likely a broadhead skink.
Dwarf cypress (left) and two fledgling egrets (right) in a large nest right in the middle of the Flamingo marina area.
(The young egrets sure would squawk up a storm when mom and dad were feeding them.)
On my last morning in Flamingo I also saw a group of about a half dozen manatees in the murky water in the marina. (I tried but didn't get any good pictures.)
On Highway 1 towards my final destination of Key West.
Some shots around camp at Boyd's of Key West (which is actually on Stock Island, but they seem to get away with calling that Key West also.)
A shot of the ever present roosters the wander the entire key. (There was one ornery one somewhere in the camp area that started crowing at 4 AM in the "morning".)
My campsite (left), and my neighbor Sue's site (right). She was a very nice lady from West Virginia that I got to know and had dinner with at a local watering hole (Hurricane Hole).
Flowers in bloom and a swamped boat left in the wake of 2022's hurricane Ian which swept very near by to Key West before making landfall at Fort Myers.
Leaving the marina on a large Sebago catamaran for a snorkel excursion.
It was an ~3 hour trip. It was a bit rough, and I started to feel queasy while snorkeling, so I got out a bit early after 45 minutes (vs a full hour.)
On the way back I was talking to a young woman who had to excuse herself and hurl over the side of the boat for a few minutes. (I got her some water.)
A cruise boat was in docked Key West for the day, which is common. On right, a shot of the beautiful blue water around the reef. (The dark areas are coral beds.)
I took a tour of Hemmingway's "mansion". They broke down his life by where he lived and with which wife. Key West was wife #2 - Pauline.
And the "no credit cards" bit definitely makes me beleive that something shady is going on. I asked the person at the desk and my tour guide about it. I got the same response - it's just the way they do it...! (Sure, them and other tax evading, money launderers. But something tells me that wouldn't have bothered Ernest a bit.)
The daily feeding of the tarpon, and the penguins as well by default. It was quite a spectacle and would draw lots of onlookers,
including the lady with red hair in the photo on the right who I must say had the largest, most protruding bulbous derrière that I have ever seen.
(That she was obviously very proud of - she wore thong undies with a see thru wrap - yikes...!) You get all kinds in Key West - that's part of the fun.
The lively and relaxing open air cafes at the historic waterfront area in Key West. I enjoy that area and would often head there for happy hour.
Ahhh - key lime pie...! (and a beer to properly wash it down)
A classic Key West sunset as viewed from the circus atmosphere of Malory Square. (It's a must see at least once during a visit to Key West.)
Taking in some of the night life after the sunset. The lady on the left is Kristen McNamara (aka KMAC) who is one of the performers I enjoy who lives and works in Key West.
She has a spectacular voice and was on American Idol some years back and got jerked around by Simon Cowell as she told the story.)
The famous Key West landmark. People line up for most of an hour for pictures of themselves there on nice days.
But if you get there early (as I did on my last day on the island) you can step right up. (There was fantastic weather the entire trip and I hated to leave!)
(I rented a scooter and took a loop around the island on that every day. I also rode my bike around the island every morning.)
A couple of shots along the long ride home. I drove it in 2 days - 12 hours the first day and 16 the next.
I wasn't sure I could still handle a drive like that, but I made it pretty well. Pulling a trailer is a lot more work while driving, but my little one isn't too bad.
Stopping for a lunch break. (I eat out very little on my trailer trips. And why not, I have a kitchen along wit me.)
The shot in the right was my "neighbor" at the rest stop I spent the night in on my final night (in GA.) It was an ET amusement park ride
To close, a final shot of the sunset at Key West my last night there. (This is the page's background (wallpaper) photo.)
