Touch of Class

A friend of ours, invited us and 6 other people from our old stomping grounds at Sunnyside, to a day trip to Cabbage Key.  Cabbage Key is about a 25 mile trip from their house.  We had never actually visited Cabbage Key and we hadn’t seen the others in quite a while so we said “Count us in!”

It was a beautiful day, not to hot, not to windy and it was fun to get together with our old, I mean, our long term buddies, from the marina.

 It was her Birthday that day, lucky girl, she got to spend her special time with us :).

These were the two that helped Gary bring the Navigator back from Michigan.  Luckily, the waves were a little calmer today than when they crossed Lake Michigan.

The guy who was piloting the boat knows how to squat it just so, to make the dolphins play in his wake

Here they come!

One of them either spit at us or somehow splashed us, cause we got all wet.  You can see the salt drops on my lens.  Then they just kept jumping

and jumping

and jumping

We figure there was 4 or 5 of them.  One was even a baby.  I wasn’t quick enough to capture the little guy.  See the boat off in the distance?  He is wondering what is going on over here.

Hey dolphins, over here!

Once he figures it out, he is like “Man!  Quit hoggin all the dolphins.  We want some to follow our boat!”  Waa, Waa.  Suffer baby!  The like us better.  So much so that they followed us for a few miles.  Thanks for the fuel burn Chuck.  That was quite a show.

Well in no time at all we were at Cabbage Key.  This place was hoppin!  We had to wait a little bit so we could get a spot on the dock

All tied up, safe and sound.

You can see all the people that just pulled into their sandy shore.

Any port in a storm.

There is not much to do on this little island, a little restaurant, a water tower and some animals.  You wonder why everyone comes here?  Cause it is a fabulous day, that’s why!  The great little restaurant that we had lunch at, was super.  We did have to wait 20 minutes, I guess everyone came here for lunch ;).  The food was great and the prices reasonable.   When we were done with lunch, we decided to do a little exploring. We figured we’d check out the water tower first,

Here is the water tower for the best view on the island

that had a ginormous nest on it.

Big Bird’s nest

I went to the top of the water tower for a look around.  Hi Gary!

After we checked out the view, we decided to look at the animals they had on the island.  They had Tortoises!  And they named them!  They had about 4 pens but we could only

find this guy

I thought he was made out of bronzeuntil someone saw him blink :).  His name was 

I didn’t see any karate chops or pizza eating out of this Michaelangelo though.  (That was a test to see if your up on current cartoon characters)

After we were done exploring the island, we meandered back to the dock.  They have this boat hanging there. The boat is suspended from straps.  Kind of a different way to keep a boat, and a very nice boat it was.

We didn’t dally too long because people were floating out in the bay waiting for us to leave so they could have our spot.

On our way home, one of the Gary’s decided he had been too long without driving a boat, so he took us home

The other Gary

We were almost to Chuck’s canal and we saw this boat in a marina My Gary said it was a newer boat made to look old.  Even on a new boat they were working on the teak wood.

All in all it was a great day.  Everyone had a good time.  Another great day down in Florida…….wish you could have made it ;).

We continued our trip to Clewiston the next morning.  We only had about 16 miles and 2 locks to go this morning so we knew we’d have plenty of time.  The first lock was about a mile up the river.  They again raised us about 6 feet but after yesterday, we were ready :).    After we got thru that lock we traveled at our 8 MPH and were able to see the scenery.  Look at the cool things we saw.  We saw our first alligator

Our first

He was hiding in the weeds and kind of hard to see.  We saw a bunch of these birds

Aaauk! Polly want a cracker!

Don’t know what kind it is but it sure has a long neck.  Then we saw some more alligators as we went along 

They looked like big boys to us.  We even saw a few where you could just see their eyes sticking out of the water, but we weren’t fast enough with the camera to get a shot of them.

We went thru our last lock of the day.  That was the really tiny one we went thru last time we were here.  They just left both doors open so we could just drive thru.  We finally arrived at Roland Martin Marina.  It hadn’t changed much since the last time we were there.  But we did move up our location on the dock.  Much closer to the gang-plank going over to the marina buildings and right outside the bar.  Kinda nice, we can hear the music real well.

So we got all settled in and then we got the whole scoop on the lady that fell on the dock. We noticed they had some 2 by 4’s up with yellow caution tape on them.  It turns out she was walking to her boat and tripped on a board that was sticking up.  Some of the docks at these marinas are not real smooth, so you have to watch where you were walking. Anyway, when she fell, she fell on her shoulder and was in so much pain she couldn’t move.  They called an ambulance and they took her to the hospital.  Everyone thought she dislocated her shoulder but turns out she chipped her shoulder-blade, OUCH.  Luckily, one of the bartenders there offered to go pick them up from the hospital.  When they got back, her arm was in a sling and she was feeling no pain, thanks to the wonderful drugs the doctor had given her.  But this gal wasn’t going to be working the locks on the way home.  Now they’ll have to find someone to crew with them to get their boat home.

We also found out that one of the boats, while trying to pass a barge in a narrow area, buggered up his port prop by hitting a dead head.  Oh no, that is 4 out of the 10.  Then another guy is having trouble with his racors.  He thinks he got something in his gas as the gauge on the racor goes into the red (meaning fuel is not getting thru) when he hits it. Good thing he brought some spare filters so he can change them.  Now we are up to 5 out of 10.  Hopefully nothing else goes wrong.

There was a cute little iguana that was doing a little dance to protect his turf

and later he was eating off of his favorite bush

Yum, Yum

He reminded me of Smokie, reaching for a treat

Get that treat Smokie

One of the other boaters offered to help the wounded lady and her husband get their boat back home and then they will drive him back to the marina later.  So off they went.  Some of the people who were left, took a bike ride while we went for a walk.

Huh?

How many people does it take to figure out where we are?

This is where you would come in if you came in off the lake

So we had a nice little walk but when we got back, we found out that there was another casualty, that makes 6 out of 10!  One of the guys on the bike ride sliced his arm on a fence. The guy was on blood thinners so he bled like a stuck pig.  One of the other riders was a retired EMT.  She had her husband rip off the bottom part of his T-shirt so they could use it as a tourniquet until they got back to the boat where they could patch it up some.  Sure, wreck my favorite T-shirt, why don’t you rip yours up to give to the guy :(?  Well, the retired EMT figured the wounded person could use about 6 stitches and a tetanus shot.  Of course you know guys….. yah, yah.  I’ll just put a band-aid on it and I’ll be fine.  I don’t need to see a doctor.  Well after they got back to the boat and he took the make shift tourniquet off, blood spurted all over their boat.  “You’re going to the ER!” says his wife.  Luckily one of the other boaters whose boat broke down traveled there by car for dinner so they were able to take the guy to the ER.  He ended up with 9 stitches, a tetanus shot and missed our pot luck dinner.  Poor guy.

After dinner, the bar, that was real close to our boat, was having Karaoke night, so a few from the group went up to listen.  We meandered down to our friends boat, further away from the bar, so we could at least have a conversation.  Some of the singers were not very good, no matter how much they drank.

We got back to our boat at 10.  We were leaving early in the morning to travel back with the guy that buggered up his prop and had to go slow.  I tried to sleep but the Karaoke singers were so loud and some so bad they made my ears bleed.  I couldn’t fall asleep till they finally quit at 11.

We left early in the morning

Sun Rise

Pink sky in the morning, sailor’s take warning.  It was foggy too

But none the less, a beautiful morning to be heading back.  We again traveled about 8 MPH.  The boat we were traveling went traveled at his slow speed, 10 MPH.  We had to plane off every now and again to catch up to him.  Going thru the locks this time was much better as they were letting the water out instead of letting it in.  We did see our final alligator of the trip right as we came out of the 2nd lock

Peek!

See him hiding on the little island?  We did see another tow.  This time they were pulling a boat instead of pushing a barge   The boat they were pulling had people on it and was a piece of crap.  We figured they must be using it as some kind of housing for a work crew and were taking them to the next job.  Luckily, we were able to pass them at a wider area of the river  so the boat we were with didn’t have to worry about hitting anything again.  We saw a few interesting things, like this tri-hull sail boat which is actually called a trimaran.

Tri-hull/Tri-maran

And we saw these unusual things on the side of the river 

 They looked like they were putting in rip rap on the shore line.  I’ve never seen anything like them before.  Pretty cool vehicles though.

We parted ways with our buddy boat after we got closer to Fort Myers.  They had their dog they had to walk and we were going to bump up our speed to 18 MPH.  We got home around 3:30.

Well, we had a really good trip.  As far as the boat club goes, I don’t think we’ll be going back to that place any time soon ;).

Our boat club decided to take a trip to Clewiston.  Clewiston is located in the middle of the state by Lake Okeechobee, which is a fresh water lake.  We’ll have to travel thru 4 locks and 2 bridges that will have to lift for us for a total of 75 miles, one way.

We left Smokie home this time

Bye Bye Smokie

because there are a lot of alligators where we are going.  We wouldn’t want the little fella to get eaten :(.  Hopefully we’ll eventually get him on the boat to see how he does.

We started our trip with 10 boats.  We don’t travel all together as everyone travels at different speeds.  A few of us left a day early, some to go right to the Roland Martin Marina, we on the other hand were planning on checking out  the town of Moore Haven which was right on the way.

Of the 10 boats that started out, 2 of them had to turn around because of engine troubles.   That is one of the main topics at all our gatherings.  Boat issues….what broke when, how it broke, how they ran aground, how much things costs.  Wowzer!  Either these are the most unluckiest people or they just use their boat so much that things break.

We left Tuesday around 8:30 A.M.  We had a lovely day to start out

Beautiful day on the Caloosahatchee River

This was one of our two bridges

OPEN Sezme!

We left early in the day so we could do our usual meandering speed.  We also stopped for gas.  $66.40 to fill this tank :).  Gotta love the smaller tank.

A couple of our fellow boaters caught up to us at the 2nd bridge.

Quest on the left, Tropical High on the right

Tropical High really needed to have the bridge raised, we might have been able to eek by and not leave too much fiberglass on the bottom of the bridge.  After we were thru the bridge, they took off.  They asked us what a good traveling speed was for us, 20 or 25 MPH.  Gary laughed and said we travel at 18 MPH.  Needless to say they left us in the dust :).

As we continued our meanderings, (we like to really travel at 8 MPH, that way you can see such interesting stuff ;)) we saw this really big boat down one of the canals

Big but not loved anymore

Here is another example of a boat someone doesn’t love anymore.  Why don’t they just sell it before it becomes a derelict?  Poor boat.

Then we saw cows!  Really!  We saw cows drinking out of the river

Moooo

Lets hope there aren’t any hungry alligators close by or he’ll be someone’s lunch.

We had to travel thru 2 locks today.  They didn’t raise us too far but the way they raised the water in the lock was they opened the front door a crack and let the water pour in.  The first lock we only had to be raised 2 feet so it was no big deal, the second lock they raised us about 8 feet.  Holly Tamolly Andy!  The water came pouring in.  We were kind of close to the front door and we were pushed around quite a bit by the water flow.  That wasn’t too much fun.  I guess we’re out of practice.

We finally arrived at our destination, River House Marina.  Now this place is under new owners so I won’t bash it too badly because they are working to fix it up.  But….

Docks need a little work

Although they had some docks that had just rebuilt, the dock they put us at had 1/2 of it roped off with yellow caution tape and the part we tied to didn’t look too good either.  But as with any dock, you have to be careful where and how you walk.  Ya never know….

They had 1 uni-sex bathroom

Bath House

And I am not sure what this will be but if you want internet, you had to sit on the porch

House?

But they did have this really cool cactus

See the truck it hides?

The main problem with this place was, we were getting ash on the boat, the dock and the grass from the sugar cane fields.  Apparently, as part of the process to harvest the sugar cane, they burn the leaves off so all you have left is the cane.  Well that makes for a messy boat.  I had to use the head and so I walked over the grass/mud to get to the one uni-sex bathroom.  By the time I got back to the boat my shoes where filthy.  And because the docks were so high, I had to get on the front of the boat.  I ended up traipsed mud and ash all over the boat.  Oh Oh!  Hopefully Gary won’t keel haul me.

Clean Boat

Luckily it just washed off.

We did go out to eat for dinner that night.  We found Moore Haven to be a poor town as was evident by the buildings we passed 

Apparently a by-pass was built and killed the town.  We did have a good dinner at a place called Cafe 27 that used to be an old gas station.  Good food and good service.  On the way back from dinner we saw this really tall Norfork Pine

Tall Boy!

When we arrived back at the boat, we received a text from one of the people who had gone ahead of us.  One of the women had fallen on the dock and was taken away in an ambulance.  Crap!  That is 3 of the 10 down.  We’ll have to get that scoop when we arrive tomorrow.  So off to bed we went to get good nights sleep, which we did when the trains weren’t blowing their horns and the dogs across the river weren’t barking their fool heads off.  We were off early the next morning to finish our trip to our final destination.

We have been searching for a “coat rack” for the condo.  Instead of hanging coats on chairs during the “colder” season, I wanted a place to hang the coats right by the front door.  I know, I know.  That is what the closet is for.  But you know what?  They don’t have coat closets by the front door like they do up in Minnesota.  If I want to hang up the coat, I have to do it all the way back in the master closet, and that is soooo far ya know ;).

Anyway, we finally found one we both agreed on and to sweeten the deal, we got it for 75% off!  Now that’s a deal!  So we got it home and Gary proceeded to measure and eye ball where it would be placed

Let’s see…..

Then we have to measure where the screws will go in

Right about here.

Then double check to make sure it will be hung in the right spot

Of course there is always the little bit of modification to the product to make it fit properly

Gotta screw this a little bigger and round off those edges.

I think he likes to modify things just so he can use all his tools

A handy man’s dream 🙂

But in the long run, it looks perfect

Coat hanger shelf

See how they are all level 😉

Good job Captain!

We always take 3 days to travel the 1700 miles from Minnesota to Florida.  We have 2 long days and 1 short day.  Some people we talk to beat feet and make it in 2 days, others to it in one.  We figure, what the heck, we’re retired, lets not kill ourselves.

So the first day, our short day, all was pretty uneventful.

On the second day we left the hotel at 6:30 in the morning.  Everything was smooth sailing until the little battery light came on.  Crap!  That means things aren’t charging.  So we quickly turn off everything except the Garmin.  Gary was driving so I Googled the nearest Dodge dealer.  I called them to see if they could help us.  They told us that if  we could get there, they probably could help us.  If huh?  Hopefully we’ll make it.  The place turned out to be 20 miles behind us in Bloomington, Il.  So we turn around, which was no mean feat.  You know how many exits there are on the highways when you’re in the middle of no where.  So after another 5 miles, we found an exit we could turn around on.

We pulled into Sam Leman Chrysler, Dodge, Jeep, Mazda dealership by about 9:00 and were greeted by Charles Ridgeway.  He was the same person I talked to on the phone.  As he was asking us questions, I told him there was a cat in the car.  He said that was fine, the cat would be OK in the car.  He walked over and looked under the hood, then he got in the car and inserted one of those little hockey pucks under the steering wheel.  When he was done, he put the window down, stepped out of the car, left the door open and proceeded to tell Gary what was wrong with the car.  Hello!  Remember the cat running loose?  As he was telling us what was wrong, I stepped over to the car, closed the window and closed the door.  “I don’t want the cat to get out”, I remind him.  “Oh, I forgot” he says.  Great, I am thinking, if they can fix the car, some guys is going to leave the door open and the cat is going to get loose in their garage.  Poor Smokie!

Luckily it is the alternator, and they have one in stock.  He thinks they should have us on the road by noon.  As we go to the waiting room, I stop to use the head.  Look!  Paper towels!  I grab one and write “CAT LOOSE IN CAR, PLEASE KEEP DOOR CLOSED!”  I take the paper and go back to the car and put the window down and then roll it back up with the paper sitting where everyone can see.  Hopefully that will keep the cat in the car.

Good to their word, they actually had us out of there by 11:30.  So not too bad of a delay.  Back on the road again.  I am amazed that as we are traveling down the road at 70 MPH, we can ask our phone for the nearest car dealership and then use the phone to direct us where to go.  Modern technology.  Ain’t it wonderful????

As we continue on our way, we ran into what appeared to be road work, as they were running us down to one lane.  Turns out there was an accident with two semi’s by a bridge.  Both trailers were tipped over, one was cut in half, and their stuff was strewn all over the side of the road.  The cabs were gone already, I hope the drivers came out ok.  You could tell this was just the clean up portion.

Well between the accident slow down and the alternator slow down and the sheets of rain that slowed us down some, we ended up in Nashville at 8:00 at night.  It was bumper to bumper traffic.  What the heck?  You people should all be home by now.  What’s going on?  We were at a section in the highway where there was a fork in the road and our side was creeping along and the left side was moving faster. We had a BMW in front of us and he kept letting people from the fast lane cut into our lane.  I was getting pissed, Hey guy!  I’d like to get to my destination before midnight!  Gary was driving.  I told him to honk at the guy.  But Gary being the cool Captain, he just drove on.  Finally after the BMW let in his 12th car, I reached over and honked at him.  He of course flips us the bird.  So I of course flip him back and yell at him, which he can’t hear but it made me feel better.

We finally arrive at our hotel at 10:30.  Smokie was not appreciative of the long day in the car.  We jumped into bed for a quick night sleep so we could start the last leg of our journey.

The next morning, the Smokie DID NOT want to go in his cage.  We had to stuff him in while he meowed at us loudly.  He wouldn’t have been happy if we left him behind.  At least the last day was better.  We made to Atlanta and although it was rush hour, there wasn’t much traffic.  We figured most of the people had the day off.  Even the cops were going 80 MPH in the 55 MPH city.

Once we crossed over the Florida state line, look out!  There were tons of snow birds!  I think there are more out of state plates than Florida plates.  I suppose, tis the season :).

Well we made it home safe and sound.  No one had robbed us blind and Smokie’s dishes were still there.  All is well on the Cape.

Let’s face it.  We were up there 6 weeks.  I couldn’t cram all that fun into just one post could I?  So while we waited patiently for Santa to arrive, Gary decided he wanted to experience all the joys of winter up north

Shoveling and salting the walk

He can’t clean the pool deck so he might as well shovel the walk.

The cat was a great supervisor in the morning, making sure we prepared the coffee correctly

Supervisor Smokie

One of the kids wanted to make sure he didn’t put on any weight over Christmas so he did his exercises

Jaz-er-size for toddlers

I passed.  I am, after all, on vacation :).

So after much preparation and gift wrapping, Christmas time finally arrived!

The boys must have been very good cause not only did the one get his two screw drivers, he got a whole tool chest!

Whoop, Whoop!

And the other little guy looks pretty happy with what Santa brought him

We must have all been very very good this year cause Santa was very good to everyone.

While we were up north, we did miss some fun things back in Florida.  Like the giant Christmas decorations that they have on the street corners

Giant Christmas Tree ornaments

See that red ball.  That person walking down the street could have used that as a bouncy chair if they wanted to.

We also missed the lighted boat parade

Oooooo, pretty!

But Christmas only comes once a year and it was fun seeing the little ones eyes light up with joy.  Not to mention the big kids ;).

But Christmas is over, the stockings have been emptied and all the cookies have been eaten.  It is time to head back to Florida.

Where the heck have we been????  Up north visiting family and friends that’s where.  Here is what our first day there looked like.   Luckily we had arrived safe and sound before that storm hit.  Thank you Minnesota for the warm welcome ;).

Our main objective for the visit was to enjoy the little grand boys :), which we did.

Aren’t they cute?

The weather warmed up pretty quickly after we arrived.  But you know Minnesota, just blink and the weather changes again.  Here is how quickly the weather changed while we visited there

On December 6th

December 11th

Snow was kind of pretty but we didn’t appreciate freezing our little tuchies off and trying not to slip and fall and break something.  But we all know that Santa can’t come without snow, so it was a good thing it snowed.

Every morning while I read my Emails, I always had a little visitor that wanted to pay computer games.  Here he is trying to master the mouse and the key board.  Look at that concentration 

We had to keep busy while we were there and so we took a trip to the Mall of America. Man, we hadn’t been there in 15 years.  We used to go there with the kids.  We’d get them an all day pass to Snoopyland and Gary and I would hit the bars on the top floor.  Now that was fun.  This time I just did a little shopping for a new hat

Cute huh?  I look like the dogs do when the doctor puts the thermometer up their butt. Hee, hee.  They still have Lego Land there  Wow! just think of the time and number of legos it took to build this big boy.

Of course we always had to take plenty of naps

Nap Time!

And there were the trips to BearTrax to visit my brother and his wife.  They own this bait/tackle/hardware/grocery/gas station place.  There the ones who visited this fall. 

They alway decorate so nicely.  And the neighbors really appreciate it.  As did we :).

Gary tried on a hat while he was up there.   He looks like the dog at the vet too ;).  Must be something about wearing hats????  What you can’t see very well is that he grew a full beard while we were up there to keep his face warm.  I must say, his beard is surprisingly lacking in grey hair.  Pretty good for an old duffer :).  I on the other hand, am doing what ever I can to keep those little gray hairs at bay.  And I make sure I take care of my hair too ;).

Of course while we were there, we had to go visit Santa.  We went to the downtown Minneapolis Macy’s.  That alone was an experience as we NEVER travel to downtown Minneapolis.  Too scary for us country mice! Anyway, it was going to be Macy’s last year to have Santaland (after spending a day there, I can see why).  So we all loaded into the car

Car ride! Car ride!

Papa had to drive because the only way to get to those back seats was to crawl over the kids car seats.  See those two young flexible people in the back?  They had a tough time getting back there.  Wish I thought to record that.  Always good to have blackmail on your kids no matter how old they are ;).  Besides, if Gary and I had to do it, we’d probably still be stuck there ;).

After our hair raising ride to “the big city”, we arrived and navigated one of those parking ramps that are made for VW beetles, not an SUV.  The parking spot was so narrow, we had to off load everyone before Gary could back the car in the spot.  But, we finally made it.

Ready to go see Santa!

Of course we went there on a Sunday forgetting that everyone was off on Monday, which would probably have been a better day because everyone else in Minnesota decided to visit Santaland on Sunday too.

Once we got to Santaland, they had que lines like you were at a Disney ride.  You’d walk into one room  and then you walk like a penguin and follow the family in front of you.  Up and down the lines till you get to another room.  Where you do the same thing.  Then you get to the actual Santaland!  Oh boy!  Almost there!  10 to 15 minutes, they say, and we’ll be at Santa.  So we walked thru Santaland 

 What??? Come on people, this is supposed to be for kids.  Quit trying to scare them with these scary elves!

Then I got a picture of Gary toting he new purse, he kind of look like he likes it, doesn’t he?

It’s a man bag, really it is.

We finally got thru Santaland and we thought we were very close to Santa, but turns out they had a Candyland at the end of the Santaland exhibit.  So, of course after waiting and walking like penguins for 3 hours, people were starting to get hungry and thirsty so we had to stop there and pick up a few treats.  Then we had to find the line for Santa again.  What?  Another back and forth que line?  Some parents left cause they didn’t want to stand in another line.  Well, we waited and after only another 30 minutes, victory was ours.

Who is that bearded man and his two little elves?

We got to see the bearded man.  The little fellow on the left got to tell Santa what he wanted for Christmas……2 screw drivers!  Hopefully he has been a good boy so he can get what he asked for.  So after only 4 hours, we finally got to talk to Santa.  I will say, for small little boys, they were both really good and didn’t whine at all.  I can’t say the same for the adults, especially Mema ;(. I think next year we might visit him at the mall.

My brother and his lovely wife visited us back in October.  We had a lot of fun showing them around.  Of course we had to take them to some marinas 

No, she is not scared….it was just super windy that day LOL.  The parking ramp at the marina/condo/restaurants/shopping was made with pavers 

something they’d never seen before living in Minnesota their whole lives.  So I had to take a few pictures for all the rest of you Minnesotans that don’t get out much :).

One day we drove from Fort Myers Beach down to Naples.  We saw some really cool trees on our trip 

We had to stop and take a few pictures 

The people had a bunch of them in their yard.  That is some tree trimming if you ask me. While I was taking the pictures, someone from the house was standing outside their garage talking on the phone and giving me the stink eye.  I was hoping she didn’t call the cops on me.  I ran to the car and got the hell out of there.

Our next stop was the beach in Naples at the Lowdermilk park.  They have a really nice concession stand  so we stopped for lunch.  They even have parking meters that if you use your credit card at and enter your phone number, the meter will send you a text when your time is almost up and you can add more time to the meter just by texting back.  Now THAT is convenient.  Especially as during season, parking is tight and people practically get into fights over spots.

We weren’t really dressed for beach walking, so we just admired it from afar  I guess the water is not too cold for everyone ;).

After we went to Naples and did some shopping at Tin City (which by the way is a great place to shop if you are looking for beachy things for your pad) we headed back to Fort Myers Beach.  Ahhhh, the off-season.  Best time to go.  Easy parking, hardly any people, stores aren’t crowded, fun, fun, fun.  Although there aren’t any cute girls for the guys to look at.  Mostly Q-tips gettin a little sun ;).

The first place we stopped was at a beer place called Zushi Zushi, they had a bunch of stuff on tap

Beer list

The guy who was waiting on us was really quite helpful (another bonus for going in the off season).  He talked to us and found out what we liked and didn’t like, then he suggested different beers for us to try.  He even brought over a small sample to see if we liked it before we bought the whole glass.  My sister-in-law and I tried a sample pack.  We could pick 4 beers and then taste them.  I quite liked the Zombie Killer and found later that I could get it at Total Wine, which I did.

After we had a few drinks, then we staggered on down to Nervous Nellie’s for dinner.

Ahhhh, aren’t they cute?

My brother and his wife had to sit a spell to recoop.  We had a great time!

But before long their time was up and they had to go back to work.  No more palm trees for them until next time they come down to visit.  We’ll keep the lights on for them!

So all is not leisure down here in Florida.  We do have to get out of the house and do some shopping for necessities.  Some of our favorite places are the Dollar Store and St. Vincent DePaul’s.

On our latest trip to the Dollar Store we were cruisin the isles looking for what ever popped into our basket, when I saw this

What???

What the heck is potted meat?  Sounds appetizing doesn’t it?  So I just had to “Google” it. Google says: …..ingredients might include partially defatted cooked beef fatty tissue, beef tripe or pork brains.  Yum!  Good for you Armour for using every available part of the animal to make a profit.  And at only .50 a can….I think I’ll take a dozen!

Our next stop was St. Vincent DePaul’s.  This place is like Goodwill but better.  I don’t know if I ever mentioned in one of my previous posts, but when we bought the Navigator back in 2010, someone stole the turn table out of the microwave while it sat up in Michigan.  Well I am happy to report I finally found it down here in Florida  and for $1.99, I could have it.  Now how do you suppose that little turn table traveled from Michigan all the way to Florida?  These are not serving trays people!  Leave the turn tables in your microwaves!

They have snails down here.  

A lot of them.  

They seem to come out when it is very hot and humid.  One day they will be all over the place and the next day they’ll be gone.  And see those little baby snails?  If you’re not watchin where your steppin they go crunch! Euuuw!  I hope the snail season is over soon.