North to Savannah

I dragged Les & Kyle into St. Augustine without really knowing what we were getting into. Someone had suggested that we see it on our travels and I didn't do any research beforehand, so I didn't know how large the town is or how much there is to see. There was a lot of road construction going on in town and so it took us quite a while to crawl our way through town and find a place to park. When I saw that their eyes had glazed over, I knew that I had bitten off more than they could chew!

We started with the old fort, Castillo de San Marcos, which was built in 1695 by Spain and was held by them until 1763 (and is the oldest masonry fort in the U.S.), when Spain ceded Florida to Great Britain in exchange for Havana. The British strengthened it and held it through the American Revolution. The Treaty of Paris in 1783, which ended the war returned Florida to Spain. Spain held Florida until 1821, when they ceded it to the US. We renamed it Fort Marion. It was interesting that the Fort held through every siege and only changed hands by peaceful means.



After the Fort, we walked across the street and made our way down St. George Street, which has buildings from the mid 1700's. It seemed that every where you looked, there was a fee to see this building or a trinket shop in that building. For me, the problem with towns like this are how commercial everything is. Once you've been to Colonial Williamsburg, which has a single entry fee, fabulous restored buildings and costumed interpreters, anything less doesn't measure up.

We called it an afternoon and headed out. I'm sure that if had I done more research, I would have had a better experience and will, perhaps, try again another time.

Savannah

Kyle decided to forgo the tour of Savannah! Les and I made our way to the historic area and decided to take the Trolley Tour. This is a great way to see an area in a short amount of time. The drivers have great information to share with you.

This is Chippewa Square, the park where Forest Gump told his life story. There are 22 squares in the city; beautiful parks that the city was designed around.

This is the Mercer House (originally built for the father of Johnny Mercer). It was the home of Jim Williams, who was instrumental in the restoration of many of Savannah's historic homes, (he was also the central character in the story; Midnight in the Garden of Good & Evil.)

I especially liked this building, which is the oldest existing in Savannah. The city originally was a walled city and this building was outside of the walls. The rules inside the wall included 'no alcohol', so those gentlemen who wished to imbibe, would go outside the walls to places like this. However, if you happened to overindulge you might find yourself shanghaied and taken through an underground tunnel which went all the way to the riverfront, where you would be loaded on to a boat and forced into service. That's a serious repercussion!

Disney World!

As we were getting close to Orlando, we called Kyle to see if he could come join us and were so excited that he was able to come out and spend some time with us on the road. We spent our first day at Downtown Disney.

How about these hats at the House of Blues?

This was just before getting soaked on Splash Mountain!

I really am just a big kid when it comes to the Magic Kingdom.

Rainy South Beach

This was our unfortunate view of Miami's South Beach! I had really been looking forward to seeing the great Art Deco architecture up close and personal.


Not only did we have the thunderstorms, but the streets were teeming with college students enjoying that magical time known as Spring Break!

Traffic was bumper to bumper and so we broke off and went for burgers.

As a side note to other RVers, we were lucky to stumble on the Larry & Penny Thompson County RV Park. Very reasonable rates and a great location.

4 weeks behind

I'm now exactly 4 weeks behind on the blog! Our travels have been a whirlwind and I can't seem to keep up with this! I've taken almost 600 pictures and just started on my second 4 gig memory card.

We were in Key West on March 26th! I'm going to make a valiant effort to catch everything up in the next few days... Thanks to all who send their warm fuzzy thoughts my way, it does help keep me inspired.

Key West

I was really excited to go to Key West, and since Les didn't want to have to drive the RV down the keys, we decided to leave it at the campground and drive the truck down. We made reservations at The Southernmost Hotel and headed out the following morning.

We were hunting for a fun lunch spot and wandered off the main road in Key Colony and found this cute little park were someone had built a very nice sandcastle.

The drive from the mainland to Key West is about 115 miles. We finally found a great place for lunch at the Island Fish Company in Marathon, which is about half way down.

When we arrived, we were happy to find that our hotel, The Southernmost Hotel, was a nice hotel in a great location on Duval Street; close to the action without being right in the middle of the noise and festivities of Duval Street.

Bikes and Scooters are the preferred mode of transportation in town, so we were happy that we had our bikes to do a little site-seeing.

Mallory Square is where people gather in the late afternoon to celebrate the sunset. When the sun goes down, everyone cheers and applauds! This is so very "Key West" where the atmosphere is casual and quirky.

Les was very relaxed as we have a beverage before dinner!

This is supposed to be the Southernmost point of the continental US, but it isn't really. That's a mile or so farther down the beach, but it's on the military base, so you can't really go stand there. Also, it's actually 98 miles to Cuba.


We splurged on Eggs Benedict at the La Te Da hotel for breakfast.





We were surprised to stumble upon the "Little White House". We didn't know about it and were delighted to find it. The historical marker reads:
"Built in 1890 as quarters for Navy Officers, the Little White House later was used by American Presidents William Howard Taft, Harry S. Truman, Dwight Eisenhower, John F. Kennedy, Jimmy Carter and Bill Clinton. Truman used the facility as a vacation home and functioning White House between 1946 and 1952. National legislation was drafted and official government business was conducted daily from the site. Perhaps the most important of these actions occurred on December 5, 1951, when Truman enacted a Civil Rights Executive Order requiring federal contractors to hire minorities. The house is considered the birthplace of the U.S. Department of Defense and the U.S. Air Force as a result of the Key West Accords of 1948. President Eisenhower used the site in 1956 while recuperating from a heart attack. In 1961, the house was the venue for a summit between President Kennedy and British Prime Minister Harold Macmillan during the Bay of Pigs Incident. Kennedy returned in 1962 after the Cuban Missile Crises. Secretary of State Colin Powell and foreign leaders held an international summit here in 2001. The Little White House was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1974."

http://www.trumanlittlewhitehouse.com/

This website can give you far more information than I can share here!

Everglades National Park

Our trip into Everlades National Park was interesting and informative. We had gotten some great tips from another RVer about where to stay and what to see. On our way across 41, we stopped at Midway Campground and then on down to Big Pine Key.

There were definitely gators in this lake!

Midway Campground

Big Pine Key Campground

Sunset over the everglades.

We also walked the Anhinga Trail with Leon, our volunteer guide, who did a great job of sharing information about the Everglades and the animals that inhabit it. Before we started, we didn't even know what an Anhinga was! It's a bird that is similar to the cormorant; when it swims, it's whole body is underwater with just its head sticking up. When it comes out of the water, it has to spread its wings to the sun to dry off.

We learned how fragile this ecosystem is and how it has been damaged by the diversion of water that should flow from Lake Okeechobee down into the Everglades. Everglades National Park, the largest subtropical wilderness in the United States, boasts rare and endangered species, like the American Crocodile and the Florida Panther.

Flamingo visitor center and campground is at the southernmost end of the park that is still on land, however Everglades National Park extends south into the ocean to just to the edge of the Keys.

And just for fun, another video:

This is from the NPS website:

This national park is the 3rd largest in the lower 48 states, covering 2500 square miles
The boundaries of Everglades National Park protect only the southern one-fifth of the historic Everglades ecosystem. The Everglades landscape has changed dramatically in only the past 150 years. Continued population growth and the large-scale alteration of the south Florida ecosystem has greatly disrupted the historic order of the River of Grass.
In an effort to return the vestiges of the Greater Everglades Ecosystem to their former glory, Everglades National Park is closely involved in interagency efforts at restoration.

Due to the global significance of ENP, it has been designated a World Heritage Site, International Biosphere Reserve, and Wetland of International Importance.

Everglade City & Chokoloskee

The island of Chokoloskee is located on the southwesternmost part of Florida, just past Everglades city. The modern settlement of Chokoloskee Island started in 1874, with farming and fishing. It is part of the 10,ooo islands off the coast of Florida. Farming was possible on the islands until such time as the land was salted by hurricane ocean surge and then the land would be unusable for growing crops.

Smallwood's Store, in operation since 1906, was a important trading post and post office for the area. It remained active until 1982; now it's being operated as a museum filled with a lot of old, interesting stuff from that time frame. What I found fascinating was that most of the trade was done via the water side.

The dock behind the store.

http://www.florida-everglades.com/chokol/smallw.htm

The landing beach next to the store. While we were here we saw a couple of kayaks pull up and since they had coolers in the kayaks, it looked like they had been out awhile.

Everglade City is a good introduction to the Everglades.

Highway 41, the Tamiami trail, between Miami and Naples was completed in 1928. It divides the Big Cypress National Preserve and Everglades National Park. Alligators are a common sight in the canal on the northern side of the trail. It is only one lane in each direction and has no fences to keep wildlife from traversing it.

We didn't see alligators during our ride through the glades. Our airboat captain said that it was because there hadn't been any rain and the water on the glade side was brackish and alligators don't like salt water. Crocodiles are apparently the salt water fans and they are much farther south. There are very few American Crocodiles left in the Everglades.

These pathways through the everglades were originally carved out by the indians. The local airboat operators keep them clear today. The islands of the everglades are basically held together by the roots of mangrove trees. The roots of the red mangrove was used by the indians for red dye and the black mangrove was used for buttons.

I've attempted to put together a little video of our ride through the glades. So much fun!

Naples

I love architecture! Especially the residential stuff. And old stuff. I think if I were starting all over again, I would have made this my course of study. Nothing makes me happier than driving around (or in this case, riding our bikes around) new areas and looking at all the great houses. These caught my eye. I have really enjoyed the easter egg colors on the houses around the gulf.

We happened to be in Naples on a Sunday and the beach was crowded with people enjoying a wonderful day.

Naples appeared to me to be a 'hip, upscale' community. They have a beautiful restored downtown shopping area.

This was taken at the Naples dock. (We were actually looking for the pier, but this was a great side trip.)