Touch of Class

One of our good friends up in Minnesota had a son that was getting married.  Now we have known these people for over 25 years, heck, we were willed their two kids if something happened to them, so of course we couldn’t refuse to attend the wedding ;).

We purchased an airline ticket, we were going to leave on September 7th and return on September 11th, barely 5 days.  I figured I put out an extra litter box and food for Mr. Smokie and he’d be fine.

There was rumblings about a hurricane that was coming awful close to Florida.  On the Monday before we were due to leave, we were at the gym, walking on the tread mills, watching the weather on the TV’s.  They showed the “spaghetti” forecast….Gary and I looked at each other and laughed.  There were so many lines covering Florida you couldn’t even see the state.  Holy Crap!  Doesn’t look goof for the old home stead.  Especially as this was a category 5 hurricane and the weather people were saying it was the biggest one they had seen.  So that day we went home, started getting the condo building ready for the hurricane.  We pulled all the patio furniture and put it in the storage closets.  We made sure there weren’t any garbage can’s outside etc.  Pulled in all the hoses etc, etc.  We went to bed and the next morning I wake up.  Gary is already up listening to the weather.  “We have to drive to Minnesota and take the cat, he’ll never survive if this place floods”.  So began our preparedness for the hurricane.

Who doesn’t love the muscle cars?  We were told about this place from a friend of ours in the boat club.  He said it was free. It wasn’t, but it was still pretty impressive ;).

Before I go any further, I should warn any of you who HATE GM vehicles.  This museum is filled with only GM cars.  So if you HATE GM, you might was well read no further.  The rest of you can take a gander at these cool cars.  They do have a website too http://www.musclecarcity.net if you want to check it out.

When you walk in, there is a large gift shop, a restaurant and what looks like a movie theater ticket booth.  We bought our tickets and noticed there was a long white wall that ran the length of the building.  The guy we bought the tickets from pointed to a door and told us the museum was thru there.

Wow!

This place was huge and had quite a selection of cars.  We talked to a guy that was sitting on a stool who looked like he knew what was going on and asked him who owned all the cars.  Gary thought maybe a bunch of buys allowed their cars to be shown here.  Apparently ALL the cars are owned by this guy  Rick Treworgy.   So where does Rick get his money?   Does he buy and sell cars?  Nope.  He owns a large commercial construction company plus a BUNCH of restaurants down here and in Tennessee.  Kind of an odd combination, restaurants and construction.  Of course those construction workers do eat a lot of food, so I guess maybe not such a weird combination.

Apparently Rick will see a car that the just has to have, so either he goes or he sends a couple of his people out with this

Nice Tow Vehicle

to go pick up his most recent toy purchase.  The guy also told us the only car in the place that didn’t belong to Rick was  this Budweiser racer.  It was there on loan for just a few more days.

He does have quite the selection from this 1914 Chevy

1914

to a brand new Corvette

A see thru hood

Look at all those fuses

Where is the oil stick?

Pretty car with a pretty price

Now here is a comparison

NOW I can see the oil stick

1954 Corvette

And the rest, for your viewing pleasure…….

1955 Chevy deliver truck

Air conditioning in the old days

Instructions for Air Conditioner

1958 Chevy Cameo

1957 Cameo

1935 Cadillac

Don’t know what year but dang! Nice woodwork.

1933 Fire Truck

4 wheel drive Suburban!

1970 Olds 442

1934 Chevy

Manly Jeepster

1950 Jeepster and not quite so manly 😉

And it’s for sale

1956 Belair

Engine compartment. You can even store stuff up here!

I think I found Rick sitting behind his desk….

Do you think this may be Rick?

They even had

Is that a GM bike?

Boss Hoss Motorcycle. You’d need manly men legs to keep this thing up

It was really fun to see all the cars and the old memorabilia they had on the perimeter walls of the place.  We were glad we went and if any of you old car buffs would like to see it, we’d be glad to show it to you when your in town.  But remember, the only way you can touch any of the cars is if you are in the nude! So be sure to leave the clothes at home.  On second thought, if you’re leaving your clothes at home, maybe I’ll stay home too ;).

Ok…who saw it?  Who burned their eyes out looking directly at it?  Who was smart and bought the glasses?  Who was cheap and just wore 5 pairs of sun glasses?  Who used alternative methods to look at it?   Who couldn’t care less and slept thru it?

We were supposed to have 83% coverage so we waited in anticipation for August 21st to arrive and the 100 year event of the total eclipse

When the time arrived, we went out by the pool, thinking that would be the best spot.  Fuddy duddy old Gary wouldn’t let me look up at all to figure out where the sun was so these are some shots I got by luck 

Pretty nice shots huh?  Ok, ok…I pirated those pictures from various places on the web.   Here is what I got

That is our roof in the lower left hand corner

That one looks like you can see stars or something but I really think my lens is dirty

This one I zoomed in thru a palm tree. Kind of cool

Of course, Gary did it the proper way.  He used the binoculars to let the sun shine thru the lens on to a piece of paper

Infamous binoculars, courtesy of West Marine 🙂

1st one

and a few minutes later

2nd one

It got somewhat darker while we were out, but not much.  We did notice how much cooler it was.  But to be honest, if you can’t look directly at the eclipse to see what’s happening, what’s the point?  After a few minutes we decided to hell with the eclipse, let’s go have a drink

Cheers!

During July, in between doc and dentist appointments, we were still working on painting the house and baby sitting the kids.  One day out in the garage, I saw this big ugly bug   I know, it is a bad picture but you can still see the super long thing hanging out of it’s butt.  I have seen these kinds of insects before but not with that long what ever hanging there.  And here I was in Minnesota, that is the sort of creepy bug you’d see in Florida!

While we were there visiting, it was eventually going to happen, Smokey jumped into Gary’s lap one day while he was holding one of the Grandkids

Baby meets cat

Purr, Purr….What!  There is another critter in your lap!  It has no fur!  It makes loud squealing noises!  I thought I was your favorite!  I am going to leave and go poop in your shoe!  Well, that went well, don’t you think?

On a free day we drove done to Willy’s Hidden Harbor.  We heard our old Chris Craft was there    Last time we saw it was in 2015.  The new owners had stopped into the gas dock at Sunnyside to fuel up.  They had just bought the boat and the were taking it to Willy’s to make repairs and then it was on to Florida with it.  Well it wasn’t at Willy’s, so we’ll have to keep an eye out for it down in Florida.

We did see this truck there

Jumpin Jehosaphats!

The guy must be a gambler.  Those are cards stuck all over the truck.  I bet dad was mad to see that roll up in the driveway.

When we got back from visiting Willy’s they were still painting.  We decided it was time to skedaddle out of there before they put us to work again.  So, it’s back to Florida!  Hopefully they will be all done painting by the next time we visit.

My, My!  Here it is August and two months of our summer is gone already.  What have we been doing beside the normal everyday stuff?  Weeeeelllllll, Gary installed an umbrella for the pool

Cool Umbrella

That will help keep the sun burn off this summer. (Too bad when we got back from up north we found one of our condo mates broke the PVC pipe off.  Kids!  You can’t leave them home alone for a second can you?)

The first part of June we had a big storm roll thru. It rained so much I bet Noah was starting to build that ark ;).  Our pool almost over flowed

Our pool

The canal had a lot of water in it too, look at this guy’s boat

Boat across the canal

Same boat today

Normal pool

Quite a difference huh?

Then, as per our tradition, we had to head home for the 1st grandchild’s birthday.  First we had to prepare ourselves for the long journey

Get those batteries re-charged

Once we took off, we thought for sure Smokey was a well traveled cat and enjoyed the trip

Bored Cat

but I think he is giving us the stink eye.

When we were stuck in one of our traffic jams I did see this cool car inch by us Maybe because it is such a purty blue and even had blue wheels to match!  It sure caught my eye.  Much too low for me though, I’d have to be crawlin in and out of that thing.

When we stopped for a potty break and a delicious and nutritious lunch at our favorite stop, McDonald’s, we happened to notice the different motif of this one.

Mac the Knife

It looked like really a fun place for the kids (and us old people too!).  Too bad we didn’t have more time to visit and play :(.

Once we arrived at our daughter’s house, we were just in time to go to the White Bear  Manitou Days Parade.  We met up with a few of our nieces and nephew

Our group (sittin on an ant hill, icky!)

Then it was time to watch the parade

Exercise Club

I don’t know if that was an exercise club or a juggling group but I think I could do that with my chair!

Short Straw

Then you got the kid that drew the short straw and had to wear that costume.  Or maybe everyone wanted to wear that costume and he considered himself very lucky, ya never know ;).

Here come the clowns

LSD 60’s Clown

I don’t know, some clowns are very scary……

and lets not forget the Vulcan’s from the St. Paul Winter Carnival.   They used to be able to run up to a girl and rub their black greased check on the girls to mark them.  All in good fun mind you.  Now, they have to ask your permission and use a grease stick.  Man, where is the fun in that.

All in all, everyone had a fun time

Whee! Beads!

Not to mention a sugar high from all the candy we caught 

That was a lot of fun and tasty too ;).

Then we had to celebrate someone’s Birthday.

Whoa Mom, watch that fire!

That was another fun and tasty day.  Too many more of those days and we’ll have to hire a crane to get us back into the van for the ride home.  Luckily they put us to work to pay for our room and board while we were there.  We were

Scraping

and

Primering

and

Baby Sitting

while they scraped, primered and painted.  We did get off for good behavior and were able to visit the people at Beartrax and their cigar smokin dog 

By the time we got back, we found they had hired a professional painter to finish the job

He’s cute and cheap

He does have a little drinking problem so we are keeping our fingers crossed he’ll get the job done ;).

This is our first trip to Snook Bight Marina by boat and our final trip before we head home. This particular marina is located on the back side of Fort Myers Beach.  We have visited here a few times by car and have even stayed at a hotel a few times that was located a little further down the road from here.  This marina is actually where our old 1972 42 foot Pearson is docked, but more on that later…..

We had another beautiful day to travel.  Nice and sunny, light winds.  On our trip there we of course, drove by some interesting things.  The first thing we came upon were these two statues outside of someone’s house 

It must be Neptune and Amphitrite.  Whoops!  On closer inspection I see that she is NAKED!  Hey!  This is a family blog, you people with kids….don’t let them look.  I was thinking they might be nice by our pool, but after realizing one of them is naked I wouldn’t want to cause a traffic jam in our canal ;).

As we continued our trip we drove by this brand new house they were building.  I sure hope that lovely shade of pink is the primer color and not the color of the house ;). Although if someone gave the house to me, I’d certainly not thumb my nose at it, pink or no pink.

Pink!

Then for those of you that have visited down here and have been to Nervous Nelly’s.  Here is what it looks like from the harbor

Nervous Nelly’s – yum!

Once we turned into the harbor from the ICW, it was a long, slow ride to the maria.  Which is all good for me, that just means I can take lots and lots of pictures.   The first thing we came upon was a mooring field.

Mooring Balls

Mooring fields have mooring balls that are anchored to the ocean floor and usually belong to a city, state or marina.  You are charged a fee for using these balls which it is much cheaper than dockage.  This particular field has water delivery and pump out service.  This means they come to your boat and fill up your water tank and pump out the potty, all for a nominal fee.  During “season”, all these ball have boats attached to them.  Now that “season” is pretty much over, the only people left are the “live aboards”.  Unfortunately, most of the “live aboards” have boats that are in pretty tough condition thereby giving the word “live aboard” a bad name.  We were “live aboard” and we didn’t leave our boat in that kind of condition.  I guess that is why Gary always referred to us as “long term cruisers” cause that didn’t have a negative association with it.  But unfortunately, these boats definitely looked like “live aboards”

Nice improvising on the canvas

Then there are the “live aboards” that can’t afford to pay for a mooring ball and just drop anchor any where they can find room.  This guy’s railings need a bit of work.

Love the pop of color with the purple door!

This boat has two dinghies and a cute dog peeking out the door.

They even have a dog on board

Then for those of you that have always wanted a house with a white picket fence :).

White Picket Fence

This one is for the Vampire.  Not many windows.

Wall to wall boat

So, this is where all the old house boats from the river go.

Now, if you think about it, these boats probably never leave the spot they are anchored in. So the question of the day is…..who pumps out these babies?  You betcha!  That’s why I never swim in any of these waters, give me a clean pool with chlorine any day.

Now this boat

Air Generated Electricity

uses that little thing that looks like a wind generator to generate electricity for their boat.  I would think that would work pretty well as it seems there is always a breeze down here.  And in a hurricane, he can light up the city :).

As we continued our slow pass to our final destination, we passed this house

Whoa! Looks like a hotel

They are using their shoreline to the max.  They have a few docks, some beach and look at that screen enclosure.  Man oh Man oh Schevitz!  What a house.

Then we drove by this dock

Termite issues?

they are either having trouble with termites or sea worms.  Either way, they better get it fixed or someone could get hurt.

Then we passed Moss Marine, and saw this boat

Glass bottom boat

Pretty funny looking, isn’t it?  I had to zoom in on it to see that it was for dolphin tours.  They call it the “Big M”.  What ever it is, it takes the prize for the weirdest boat I’ve seen in a long time.

After our long slow enjoyable ride, we finally arrived at the marina 

After we tied up, the first thing we looked for was our old boat

Pearson in 2007

10 years later

Those railings need a little work, not to mention the rub rail.

Poor baby.  Florida has been hard on you 

But once we got past our old boat on our way to the ships store, there was this guy cleaning fish.  You should have seen the HUGH tarpon swimming around with the cat fish

big fish

5 and 6 footers!

And ya know what?  These are only for catch and release down here.  You can’t keep them if you catch them.  Although I have also been told that they don’t taste very good anyway.  They were amazing to look at though.

They had a nice pool (on the second floor) and a big area for shade, which of course I liked. There was a Publix grocery store right next door and when you could cross the street and walk out on the beach on the gulf side of the island.

While some of the people we were with checked out the hot and sunny beach, I was sitting in the cool breeze and shade.  As I was sitting there, this little cutie walked by

Lennie the Pit Bull

This is Lennie, he is 10 years old and has arthritis in his back legs.  He looked like an over grown pot belly pig.  He sure was friendly though.  Apparently, he is the maria mascot and sits up by the out-door bar a couple of times a day and greets people and dogs alike. Although he doesn’t sniff the people’s butts :).

After a fabulous (but expensive)(I guess we can’t go to Denny’s all the time) dinner at the marina , we noticed the awesome full moon

Harvest Moon

I just had to get a picture.  Unfortunately, the second night had a few more clouds

Makes it look spookier, but cool none the less.

By Friday, it was time to go home.  We left early because there was supposed to be more wind in the afternoon.  More wind means more waves, the First Mate doesn’t care for the waves too much.   At least there wasn’t any fog this time.  We did pass this house with this cool window

Nice Stained Glass Window

I like all the different little flags in the window too.

Once we got back to the harbor area, we passed all the shrimp boats

Big fleet!  I’ve heard they go shrimping at night so that is why they are all in dock this morning.

We made it home safe and sound before the heat wave hit.  All in all it was a nice trip and a great marina.  Always fun to get together with our boating buddies ;).

I know it is spring up there, and it has been a while since you have driven a boat, but what the heck happened here?

Time to abandoned Ship!

Do you think alcohol was involved or just stupidity? LOL.  At least they made it to shore safely.  Watch out for those sand bars boys and girls ;).

This time we were traveling to Fisherman’s Village which is located in Punta Gorda on the north end of Charlotte Harbor.  It is about a 50 mile trip from our place.  Fisherman’s Village is also a good destination by car, if you like to shop.  There are also 5 different water side restaurants to go to.

So we start our travels to the marina early.  The weather is pretty nice, not too much wind. We pass a couple of big boats.   this guy was anchored for the night.  I suppose it is pretty spendy to pull that thing into a marina.

Then this one passed us

Koochie mama!

Oooooouuuu! Pretty!  Nice name too

Drinkability

One thing boaters everywhere do ;).  Docktails!

The water was a little rough in Charlotte Harbor for a while.  I apparently drank too much coffee cause I could feel that sloshing around in my stomach with every wave we hit. 

Luckily that didn’t last too long and we finally arrived at the marina.  There were a few boats in front of us (we all seem to arrive at the same time even though we all leave from our home ports at different times), so we waited outside of the maria for our turn

Entrance to the marina

When it was our turn, Captain Gary was at the helm and I was managing the lines.  After a few lassos of the pilings, we were……

Snug as a bug

They did have quite a tide here which caused our boat to rise and lower with the tide.  When we got back to our boat at night, it was quite the jump down to get on the boat.  That’s what you get for having a small boat I guess.  Better fuel consumption but not too good for low tides.

After we got all tied up, we made our way to the marina office to pay.  We passed the dingy dock (in case you don’t know what a dingy dock is, the dock is for people who anchor out in the bay and then take their small boat into the maria to get provisions, eat out, grocery shop etc.).  I think this boat has been at this dock way too long

Boat at dingy dock

And I mean waaaay to long.  Look….

Eeeeuuuw!

all that mud in the bottom of the boat.  Nasty!

Here is another one

Life Jacket

This one appears to be in better shape and even has a life jacket in it.  But what is that?

Stow away

Whoops, there is a stow away in that one.  So did he jump in there and couldn’t get out or was he too small to bother with and was just left there?  Either way, after sitting out in the hot sun I am sure no one is going to want to eat that thing.

Fisherman’s Village not only has a marina but each little colorful building, which are all connected by a roof between them, have hotel rooms on the top and shopping below.

Marina and Shops

So if you’re bored, and you don’t feel like swimming in the pool, you can always entertain yourself by checking out all the shops.

Anyway, while we were there, it was reeeaaaally hot.  There was a pool, but not much shade for lit’l ol’ me, so I found this nice little spot at the end of the dock

Very colorful

Nice big shady spot and super windy, which kept it nice and cool.

One of the morning, while we still had a little more shade in the boat, I was sitting on the back deck of the boat when I saw this little stow away

Another stow away

Thankfully he wasn’t stowing away on our boat.  Cute little guy though.

Of course we always have to take a picture of our boat at every marina we stay at

Lookin good

We wouldn’t want to break tradition.

Can you see that guy on the dock behind our boat with the salmon colored shirt and the lady that is with him?  The lady is totally blind.  She has a degenerative what ever it is called to her eyes.  She could see before but then her vision got smaller and smaller until she finally can’t see at all.  Impressive that she can still boat.  She even throw the lines.  Her sense of hearing is great as she recognized Gary and I by our voice, after only one meeting.

This lady here, she is a good friend of mine

Gimpy

and some of you people from Sunnyside might recognize her.  She cracked a bone in her foot and is wearing one of those boots.  Remember that low tide I was telling you about?  She had some problems getting on and off her boat too.  See what troopers we have in our boat club?  They go boating no matter what ;).

Well, another marina checked off our list.  We have another new one next month so TTFN 😉

Our “galley” is soooooo, like, 19777777!  We really need to get it updated to like, at least this decade.  Hahaha!

In all seriousness we do need some work in that room.  We do have relatively new granite counter tops, and the appliance are newer, but as you can see from this picture

Stove for short people

the stove needs some work.  The other people just took out the range hood and put a microwave in there.  It must have been a while ago…..no turn table….only 750 watt, but it still works.  At least we don’t have buttons and dials like the people above us ;).  And yes, the cupboard above the microwave is a dandy place to store liquor, which makes this a favorite cupboard :).  But there is not much space between the stove cook top and the bottom of the microwave.  Ya know, I’m short, and I still have to bend over to read the dials and readouts for the oven.  Soooooooo, along comes handy Gary!

First we have to find a new home for all the liquor bottles (and drinking them all at once is not an option), then we have to take down the microwave

Sit microwave,
stay microwave,
good microwave

As you can see  the microwave is not hot wired in.  That looks like a pretty beefy electrical cord though.  And see the cement behind the cupboard?  We’re not afraid of no stinkin tornadoes here.

So the next thing Handy Gary does is he buys himself a special tool to help him cut the cupboard shelf off

Special super dooper tool

That broke in the first five minutes :(.  So we have to improvise.  Get a saw blade, wrap a rag on the end and whala! Works like a champ!

Next, don’t forget to measure and measure twice

Measure twice

Cut once 🙂

Now it is time to move that electrical outlet up some better make sure the power is off.  Double check that too ;).

Then wham bamm thank you ma’am

Almost done

The cupboard is now 5 inches shorter and all ready to put the microwave back up….after the doors are shortened.

Look at that!

All done!

Just like a professional job!  Now we are all ready for when we have those cupboards resurfaced…….some year :).

A couple of our boating buddies asked us if we wanted to go and visit Pink Shell for a few days.  Of course we agreed.

Side Note – the boating club we belong to has each member take a month to plan a cruse for the club.  During that month that person is responsible for picking a destination for the boat club to go to.  That person has to contact the maria, make tentative reservations, find a restaurant to eat at and a place for us to have our hors d’oeuvres on the first night.  Then you have to contact all the members, tell them the details, make the final reservations and then make sure everyone has a really good time or they kick you out of the club.  JK about the kicking out of the club but the other members will do a lot of grumbling amongst themselves if they don’t have a good time.  I better brush up on my parlor jokes :).

Anyway, we had never been to the Pink Shell before and it sounded like fun.  At first it was going to be 3 boats for 1 day.  It ended up being 2 boats (one of the Captains got sick) for 2 days.  Good thing I brought a spare underwear :).

The marina was pretty nice

Nice Marina

They had floating docks which was kind of unusual down here.  And the traffic going by!  A shrimp boat

Look out you scallywags!  Here come the pirates!

I think I know a couple of little pirates that will want to go on that ship when they get a little older ;).

The place had a valet desk  or should I say ship?

Too bad they don’t park you boats for you.

There was also 3 pools!  Here is the kids pool

 Looks like fun.  Plus they had a wading pool

 Water comes out of the coconuts 🙂

And they had an adult only pool  with mood lighting.

Plus they had lots and lots of umbrellas 

Out at the beach too See the kid under the towel?  That is what I do to keep out of the sun when I walk on the beach.  Saves on the sun tan lotion.

Did I mention they have a spa?    With a steam room?  They give you a locker with a key!  And inside the locker is some flip flops and a robe!  Then in the shower area they have free samples!  Shampoo, conditioner, body wash, disposable razors, shaving cream, lotion….man!  I could have done some serious shopping there ;).

There is also a park at the end of the island but because the first mate from the other boat had a broken foot,

Be nice to me or I’ll hit you with my cane.

Gary and I went for a little walk down to the end of the island by ourselves.

When we went for our walk we found out that apparently someone did some kind of concerts there or something because they had some stadium seating 

They also had some cute little statues along the way  and a

wooden bridge  But the best part was the beach!

 It was nice and white and hard so it was easy to walk on for us people that have to keep their shoes on.

Pink Shell even offers you 1/2 hour of free paddle board use.  Gary and the other Captain decided to give it a try.  Miss Lame Duck sat by the pool, and I came along to take some blackmail pictures :).  The two Captains actually did pretty good.  They got a little instruction and then off they went

This doesn’t look too tough

Look ma! I can do it!

Say a little prayer before I get up

Downward Dog!

Oh oh! The other Captain is loosing it!

I threw this one in for the nice eye candy. The one without the shirt mind you 🙂

All in all, it was a good time.  Weather was perfect, food was good and company was great. Good thing we picked this place for our destination for the boat club.  Be sure to check back in October and read all about it.  In the mean time, I’m sure we’ll have plenty of new adventures to come.