Installment #9

Still roaming around Florida – such a big state and so many things to see – it could take us a little longer here.

We spent a little time in Chiefland, Florida, with a side trip to Cedar key – this is quite a tourist town – we walked and drove all around the town. A limosine pulled up near us, a young man - unknown to us - got out, trunk lid went up automatically, and he proceded to unload musical equipment – evidently he was part of the band for the evening at the restaurant. Saw this homemade trailer that looked like a caboose (picture). Saw a double wide mobile home that had been put up on stilts – seems to be the norm down here as we found out later.

As we neared Tampa, we saw at least six jet streams criss-crossing each other. We travelled through the scenic towns of Inverness and Floral City. Saw a bicycle rider with an umbrella attached – our first indication that this weather was going to be hotter than we imagined.

After getting parked in Tampa, we took the car to Clearwater Beach to see the sunset on the Gulf of Mexico (http://www.sunsetsatpier60.com/) . Clearwater Beach has a sunset celebration every evening with live music, jugglers, artists, vendors (and a major traffic jam getting to the beach). We saw a bicyclist doing tricks, a juggler giving a very amusing show, a guy finding metal objects on the beach with a metal detector (he had a long handled tool so he didn’t even have to bend over when his detector registered – just picked up the object with the tool and the sand sifted through, leaving his find).

We spent the next day at Bill Heard Chevrolet (http://www.tampachevy.com/) in Plant City having a Chevrolet dealer, specializing in Workhorse engines, look at the motorhome – after six hours in their very nice waiting room (free coffee, donuts, popcorn) – the guy determined the motorhome needed a new power steering pump. We will have to return to the area on our way back up from southern Florida to have the part put on. His last comment – "I hope you enjoyed your day in our waiting room".

In the evening we went to see Rob & Cynthia Monroe. Rob had been in Baghdad for six months and showed us documentary pictures of his deployment. Picture of his pictures - the cutout in the top of a very heavily armored SUV so guards could pop up out the top whenever trouble was spotted. Also a picture included of Rob & Cynthia’s back yard – we had a great evening with them.
St. Petersburg – at The Pier (picture from the top floor) – was quite a photo session (http://www.stpete-pier.com/) – arrived just as about 30 sailboats were leaving the harbor, airplanes were taking off from a nearby landing strip every five minutes, we could get as close as two feet to the pelicans (notice the picture of one of the pelicans in flight), the inverted pyramid building was a shopping mall. On the drive back we stopped off at the Bay of Tampa where we could drive the car to within 20 feet of the water. Drove around by the shipyards to see what we could find – only a gypsum plant and a ship from what we think could be Germany. Continuing on our drive we drove down Bayshore Drive. This is the longest continuous sidewalk we have ever heard of (4.5 miles). We drove back into some of the more pretigious homes…unfortunately, we were in the way of all the gardeners driving to work – we must have seen five different gardners with their pickups and equipment in a two block section. Continued our drive through historic Hyde Park and Ybor City.

Leaving Tampa, we went to the Florida Everglades to take a trip on one of the many air boats – this was quite an experience. Pictures are of the swamp boat, alligator too close for comfort, scenery while on the boat ride, and a bird flapping his wings to dry off.

Other pictures – unusual cloud scene, trees with moss hanging down everywhere and grass hut covers over picnic tables.

After getting setup in an RV park in Florida City, we took a half day off to do laundry. Sometimes laundromats are not a good experience – I think the clothes could have dried faster in the hot wind of Florida. In the afternoon, we took a small drive down to Biscayne National Park, passing the Miami Speedway. This has been the hottest day on the trip – Tony turned on the air conditioning in the motorhome, and there were no complaints from Sharon.

The next day we left very early in the morning to go to Key West. Our first picture was of the sunrise on the drive down, followed by the seven mile bridge between two of the Key islands.

We stopped at the southernmost house in the contiguous United States and at the southernmost point…people were lining up to get their pictures taken at this spot – since we are trying to be real tourists, we knew it was the thing to do.

We saw a hurricane memorial, Key West airport with what seemed like hundreds of small planes, rentals all over Key West renting bicycles, mopeds, convertibles, 3-wheeled carts for two people, bicycles built for two.

We got smart and parked the car and bought two tickets to travel around Key West all day in a trolleybus – on and off at any of 10 different stops. We visited the Flagler museum (http://www.keyshistory.org/flagler.html) (the man responsible for the railroad from Miami to Key West). A baker from a Key Lime Pie shop came up to window of trolley with a cream key lime pie and pretended he was going to throw the pie (enough to make me duck and enough that Tony was so surprised that he wasn’t even able to take a picture). The baker gave me a can of key lime candy. We stopped off to look at and watch all the planes overhead, catamarans leaving the dock, helicopters in the sky, and cruise ships in the harbor.

Another stop off took us to the top of Key West’s tallest building (to the seventh floor) for a photo session from above (the two cruise ships and a church below). This was the floor that Tennessee Williams rented years ago and where he wrote "A Streetcar Named Desire".

Another stop took us for a walk passed Ernest Hemingway’s home and the Key West lighthouse. Next stop was for a pint of ice cream for Tony and a frozen key lime piece of pie covered with chocolate for me and a place to sit down. The trolley took us by Mile Marker 0 of Highway 1 (picture). Also took a picture of a huge banyan tree (seem to be everywhere down here).

We stayed in Key West long enough to watch the "sunset entertainers" and then the sunset. The acrobatic entertainers were two brothers and a sister from England and another guy getting out of a straight jacket in three minutes. Tony volunteered me to help the guy get buckled intp the straight jacket.
Visiting Key West was quite an experience when considering it’s the farthest south we could go in USA. We just happened to pick their busiest day in the year because of Spring Break and the same day as the clocks changed and us losing an hour’s sleep – the trip from Florida City where we kept the RV was 260 miles and lasted from 6:30am to 11:00pm.

Thanks again for all the phone calls, emails, and blog messages. We enjoy hearing from everyone.

~~Sharon & Tony