Down in the 'Glades

Happy New Year everyone! On New Year's Eve we packed up and moved from our cramped RV spot in Bradenton and headed south east. Our destination was the Everglades Holiday Park, the cheapest place we could find. The drive here was fine, the interstate six lanes wide, and we quickly crossed the state to end up just west of Fort Lauderdale.

Everglades Holiday Park is located on the eastern edge of the everglades. It is a tourist destination, with airboat tours of the 'glades, gator shows, store and fast food, as well as the RV park. Our first impression was not favorable. They tried to stick us beside the trash and the laundry! After some grumbling we got a much better spot. Over half the people in the park are here permanently, or at least semi-permanently. It sometimes feels like we're in a sequel to the movie Deliverance. On our first night here, we went to throw our garbage in the bin, and a family of five or six raccoons jumped out squealing. Marlene jumped right off the ground! We later found out that some of the residents are feeding the darn pests.

Last night Ben started running around and barking. I took him outside and he immediately got on the scent of some animal, but we could not find it around our rig, and I wasn't going to let him go searching. This morning Marlene spotted the critter under our neighbour's trailer: a possum. There are also a whole flock of beautiful peacocks and their hens living here.

The people here may not be wealthy, but they sure are more friendly than the snowbirds at the last place. They come up and introduce themselves, and make us feel welcome. Unfortunately, the air boats make a lot of noise, and they seem to go from about 6 am to 9 pm, with some running as late as midnight. It's like living at general aviation airport, all those buzzing propellors.

The last few days we have visited a huge flea market, and bought fresh veggies at the farmers market end. We have driven to Fort Lauderdale beach, and found it horrendously busy and congested with traffic. It has been cold for a couple of days, with highs below 60.

Today we went to Little Havana, in Miami, found not much to see, then we went on to Miami Beach, to South Beach to look at all the Art Deco buildings there. They are very cool, and a favourite of mine. We were lucky to find a parking space, so we could wander around. Eventually we got hungry and stopped at a Cuban restaurant for lunch. Marlene had the lunch buffet of Cuban foods like stewed pork, Cuban rice, plantains, corn soup, etc., and I had a Cuban sandwich, Cuban bread filled with ham, pork, cheese and pickles. The food was good, and the price reasonable at just $23 for the two of us. We saw places where a bowl of soup is $12.

In fact, the east side of Florida is expensive. You have to pay to park by the beach, sometimes as much as $10. Gas costs more here too, and you spend a lot of time sitting in traffic jams burning up that precious resource. No wonder we could see the brown smog haze hanging over the coast from 50 miles away.

We are always annoyed when we have to pay road tolls, and here there are a lot of toll roads. It doesn't sound like much, to pay $2 to drive 10 miles, but multiply it by two or four times each time you go somewhere and it starts to add up. Another annoying Florida thing is the llllooooonnnnggggg traffic lights. You can sit for 8 or 9 minutes waiting for a light to change.

The pictures above are of me at Miami Beach, Marlene being pulled by Ben in front of the art deco buildings on Ocean Drive, peacocks at our RV park, some other cool little green birds and one of the draw bridges that tie up traffic endlessly.

We get ready to move

The past few days we have visited Siesta Key (apparently voted the best beach in the USA), and found it to be upscale and very crowded for the holidays. We also went to Sarasota for dinner, courtesy of Miranda and Colin. We enjoyed a great tapas supper at Ceviche', and it was $4 tapas night so we still have half our gift card value left for another meal!

The food was excellent. We sampled clams, mussels, stuffed little peppers, calamari, bean salad, chicken liver pate', black cod croquettes and accompanied it all with a mojito for me and sangria for Marlene. We left pleasantly stuffed.

Yesterday we went to the beach to watch the sun set over the gulf. Today we've been cleaning and packing for our move to the east coast area tomorrow. Marlene took advantage of the pool here for the last time.

Pictures above are us at Siesta Key (notice the fine boat in the background), us and some of the food and surroundings at Ceviche', Marlene and the Hanukkah candles on the last night, and the sunset.

Stay tuned to hear about our next stop on the edge of the everglades.

Marlene and Jesus celebrate their birthdays

On the 19th. we went shopping at several different grocery stores, rounding up what we needed for Marlene's birthday dinner, and Christmas dinner too. We got some nice vegetables but were not able to find seafood at any of the stores, so we decided to go the next day and shop at the marina.

The next day we went seafood shopping. To say we experienced sticker shock would be an understatement. The exact same seafood is available in Louisiana for 30% less. Oh well, we picked some nice sea scallops and some oysters, gritted our teeth at the cash register, and went home. That evening we lit the Hanukkah Menora.

Marlene's birthday we cooked up a storm, butterflying shrimps, breading oysters, and wrapping scallops in bacon. We enjoyed a feast fit for a king, or in this case a queen.

Over the next few days we visited the beach, where we got sandblasted by the winds. We also spent quite a bit of time improving on our rum punch recipe.

Christmas eve day, Marlene started preparing the traditional perogies. We dragged out our cassette player and listened to Ukrainian Christmas carols. Later, we watched Miracle on 34 st., and enjoyed the fruit of Marlene's labours. By tradition we watched Scrooge, the Alistair Sim edition. We toddled off to bed around 11:00, and a half hour later got an excited text message from daughter Miranda announcing her engagement to boyfriend Colin. An excited hour then followed with texts, pics, and phone calls. When we got back to bed we were too wound up to sleep, so we had a restless night.

We slept late on Christmas morning, then opened our gift from Miranda, a gift card for a cool looking tapas restaurant. We'll report back after our dinner there this week. The rest of the day was spent preparing the stuffing and turkey for Christmas dinner, and watching Its a Wonderful Life. We were so hungry by the time the turkey was ready we forgot to take a picture before carving. The dinner lived up to its aromas, and was delicious. I especially liked the stuffing!

If you are wondering about the title of this post, we saw a huge sign at a church that says "HAPPY BIRTHDAY JESUS"

The pictures above are Marlene in pre-birthday party mode, opening her gift from Miranda (pants), showing off the pants, the birthday vittles, lighting of the Hanukkah candles, our $5.95, ten pound turkey, Christmas dinner ready to eat.

We have a little celebration

Thursday we celebrated 28 years since the day we met. First we went to the beach, and soaked up some rays. That evening we went out for supper to the Grand China Buffet, which was quite an amazing experience. We were attracted to the restaurant by the reviews, and the price, which was listed at $9.99 for supper. After the beach we dropped into the restaurant just to look, and we were stunned by the selection on the lunch buffet. We decided it would do for supper. As we left to go home, the host at the door told us they were having 20% off today!

We had a great dinner, and could not try everything, although I made an attempt. Just a sampling of the foods: 15 different types of sushi, seafood stuffed mushrooms (Marlene's favourite), fried pork and shrimp dumplings, marinated baby squid salad (my favourite), sea weed salad, frogs legs, shrimp 4 different ways, oysters, clams, mussels each in a couple of different ways, salads, noodles, rice, soups, and the usual Chinese favourites like sweet and sour chicken, beef and greens in oyster sauce, and on and on... There was also a "Mongolian" grill, where the chef will grill up any of the foods off a large cold table in front of the grill. Steaks, shrimps, fish, burgers, vegetables, etc.

All that, plus a pot of interesting black Chinese tea, for $7.99 each. We left stuffed and happy.

Friday we took Ben for a walk by the water. Marlene spotted a beautiful parrot sitting in a tree above us. Ben really doesn't like to get too close to the water, and he shows no interest in any of the many birds we come across.

For dinner we BBQ'd a piece of London Broil that I had been marinating for a while, and Marlene made a dish with cabbage, onions, peppers and tomato. Very nice dinner.

Yesterday we went to the beach and worked on our tans. It was not crowded when we got there, but by the time we left a couple of hours later it was getting busy. Later we sat out on our "deck" (our car trailer) and had a drink and socialized a little with our chatty neighbours. For dinner we had Spaghetti Bolognese.

In the pictures: Marlene and I on the beach (notice Marlene's cool hat), me eating a marinated baby squid, Marlene hanging out with Captain Hook in front of a beach shop on Anna Maria Island, me and Ben with the Hanukkah bear?? on the Island.

A lazy week in Florida

This past week we found a nice little stretch of beach with parallel paved sidewalk where Ben is welcome. Ben was pleased, and so were we. We visited it twice this week and took long walks along the shore. Across the bay are some lovely large homes, almost mansions. I took some pics with the telephoto, but they were really far away so the pics aren't that good. You be the judge.

On Saturday it was blustery and cool, so we decided to just go walk along the beach and enjoy the pounding of the rough surf. We saw people clustering along the sidewalks, and realized that a parade was slowly approaching down the main road. We stood and admired the passing floats, from which people were tossing beads and candies to the spectators. Marlene caught quite a haul, including about a dozen bead necklaces and a bag full of candy. Now we have beads strung everywhere in the motorhome for Christmas decorations. After Santa Claus passed, we continued our walk.

I'm glad we only paid $280 for the month in this park. This same spot goes up to $927 on January 1. This week the laundry has been closed, and the water in the park was off without notice for several hours. Luckily we had a full water tank, so we were OK, but others weren't so lucky.

We had to do laundry, so we went in search of a laundromat. We found one several blocks away in a largely Black and Hispanic neighbourhood. This was a very busy little place, and we faced a confusing array of machines. A large African American lady saw our bewilderment, and offered assistance, explaining which machines were which, and which ones weren't so good. At one point, the door flew open and a mother with 4 daughters in tow, and several other young women, dragged in dozens of bags of laundry and started feverishly loading machines while yelling at each other, as well as on their cell phones.

I was the only guy in the place, except for a later arriving gang-banger wannabe, hauling laundry for his pregnant white girlfriend. He went and got a Popyeyes lunch and they were feasting steadily on it. There was a surly Hispanic lady standing guard over her laundry which occupied 6 dryers! She had her lunch spread out on the folding table.

There was an old Chinese lady running the place, about four feet tall and 75 pounds. Marlene asked her if there is washroom, because the only one in sight had "Out of Order" on the door, along with a giant padlock. The lady yelled something in Chinese, handed Marlene a key, and waved in the general direction of Beijing. A befuddled Marlene summoned up her courage, and approached the lady using all those dryers, and asked her which restroom the key fits. The lady snarled, then muttering in Spanish took the key, and opened the padlock on the out of order restroom. Guess the sign is there to discourage non-customers from asking to use the bathroom.

We did our laundry in quick time, mainly due to the size and speed of these commercial machines. It was an interesting couple of hours. I wish I'd been able to take pictures, but I didn't think it would be well regarded.

We have mentioned prices here. Well, cigarettes are almost as expensive here as in Alberta. And no handy Indian reservations where we could buy tax free, like in Arizona. So, my Canadian smokes running low I decided to try a "make your own" cigarette place here in Bradenton. This place is like one of those "brew your own beer/ wine" places where you buy your supplies from them, and get to use their equipment and storage facilities to make your own beer or wine.

In this case, you choose your blend of tobacco, or have them custom blend one for you, then you choose a type of tube/ filter. You pay for these, then you load your tubes and tobacco into the next available of the three machines, and watch as it makes those 200 cigarettes in just 8 minutes. The machines are like the ones in a factory, except the cigarettes don't fall on a conveyor, and get packed in boxes. Here, the finished smokes fall in a bucket, and you scoop them out and pack them into the empty box from the filter tubes. Some people bring their own plastic boxes and cases. One fellow just scooped 200 cigarettes into a bag, and left. The place is busy, and when I was finishing up there were 6 people waiting to use machines. I commented to the little Mexican fellow who blended my tobacco that they could use another machine, and he told me that he can't afford it. Each machine cost $12,000. He also told me that people will wait a half hour for a machine, but after that they get tired of waiting. He's thinking of adding a custom service, where he would do the whole process for the customer, and have it waiting when they come in, like a laundromat offers dry and fold service.

This week Marlene outdid herself with a new dish. We had this bag of extra large shrimps that we had actually bought in Edmonton (they'd cost more here than in Edmonton). Marlene thawed them out, shelled them, then butterflied the whole works. She stuffed each shrimp with an herb and garlic brie cheese filling, then wrapped them in bacon and fried them in a very hot pan. Ready in 4 minutes, they were delicious. I've insisted that Marlene make them again.

We've also been to the beach this week. It really is lovely white sand, and so far it's uncrowded. Don't expect that to last.

We are finding ourselves uncomfortable here in Florida. We think it's because the whole state is so commercially focused on the incoming rush of annual snowbirds, that it is hard to find anyone who isn't either a snowbird, or working at a snowbird business. Our first contacts with people not directly in the snowbird business was at the laundromat, and later the smoke place. Here we were able to meet regular people, and they are not very friendly. We're looking for a place in the south east part of the state for a couple of weeks, so we can explore that area. Having a hard time finding anywhere for less than $800 a month. They just don't exist during "the season".

We'd like to explore some other areas, perhaps South Carolina, or maybe further west around the Gulf coast. Time to do some more research. Stay tuned...

We explore St. Petersburg

On Sunday (the 4th) we drove into St. Petersburg, a nice drive that takes you over a lovely, and very long, suspension bridge ($1 toll each way). Lots of boat traffic in Tampa Bay. We navigated our way into a deserted downtown St. Pete, to the Florida Holocaust Museum, where we used our Bank of America card and got free admission through a bank promotion.

The museum is very moving, and informative, with personal audio guided tours. We expected more artifacts to be on exhibit, but overall we were impressed. The second floor of the museum explains the huge role played by refugee European Jewish professors who could only teach at "colored" colleges. These teachers were able to instil a sense of pride in their students, and taught them a lot about their African heritage. These professors were heavily involved in the civil rights movement, starting in the early 1940's.

After our time at the museum we went to a restaurant with good online reviews, the Crab Shack, in St. Pete. It's an eccentric little place, with fish kitsch everywhere. The fish was good, and relatively inexpensive. I don't recommend the oyster stew, but two thumbs up for the fried oysters. Marlene recommends the cajun seafood chowder.

After our late lunch, we drove a couple of blocks to a fish market. We were shocked by the prices. We could eat a fine fish meal at a restaurant for about the same price a the raw fish!

Monday we went to the beach, and worked on our tans for a couple of hours. We were attacked by hundreds of seagulls when we ate our lunch. Marlene was so scared she put the blanket over her head! Like an Alfred Hitchcock movie.

After the beach we went shopping to Walmart to get some vittles. Bought a turkey on sale for 57 cents a pound. It's a nice, young 10 lb. bird, complete with giblets and gravy mix. We're saving it for Christmas. Walmart only sells wine and beer here, no liquor, so we'll have to find a reasonable liquor merchant.

For dinner, Marlene made a tasty curried chicken dish, with turnip greens. Sides of mashed potatoes and broccoli. Yum!

Tuesday we drove down around Punta Gorda and Ft. Myers, and points east. We were window shopping properties that are for sale. Amazing what you can buy for very little money.

Marlene went for a swim in the pool, and found the people unfriendly. Dinner was barbecued boneless pork chops.

Today we looked at a few more properties, and saw more of the area. I have observed a few things:
1. Drivers here are almost as bad as California, and most have grey hair.
2. Prices for food and essentials here are higher than Arizona.
3. Everyone here seems to be a senior citizen. Many from Ontario and Quebec.
4. There are many, many mobile home and RV parks, and they are all full.
5. Don't understand people buying gasoline. We see two gas stations on the same block, one with a price of $3.19 a gallon, the other one with a price of $3.39. Guess which one was busy? Yup, the expensive one.

Weather has been lovely, but now we expect a couple of days of rain and wind.

Finally, we arrive.

We left our soggy campground on Tuesday morning, and the sun came out as we were leaving. Of course! We drove towards the south east, and the scenery was changing with more water and lush vegetation. We pushed on further than we had planned, and ended up at the Walmart in Live Oak Florida. This was not the most pleasant Walmart we'd been at, with homeless people and their dog lounging around, and two nasty old ladies selling kittens, which I'm sure will meet a nasty fate if not sold. Some idiot parked his car right in front of us, and crawled in the back and went to sleep. Luckily he moved before us in the morning.

Wednesday we had a short hop to our next Walmart at Bushnell, Florida. Got lucky, arriving before noon, and grabbed the prime spot, with our own little patch of lawn, and a tree! The place rapidly filled up, and I counted 27 RV's in the lot in the morning. Seems like a lot of people had December 1st reservations at their RV parks. From Bushnell we rolled on down to our final destination in Bradenton, Florida. We are staying at Arbor Terrace because they offered us a great deal for December.. just $280 including power and water. In January the same lot will be $927. As with all these places the RV's are jammed in close together to maximize profits. There are lots of people from the northern states, as well a from Ontario and Quebec. Haven't run into any Albertans, or other westerners, yet.

Yesterday we went to a flea market, but there was nothing but expensive junk. Then we went to Target, to purchase a microwave oven to replace our defective Emmerson. Just put it in, in July 2009, now it is dead. We picked up a GE, figuring a brand name might last longer. Too bad that it was larger than the previous oven, and installing it required 4 hours of cutting, sanding, drilling, and cursing as I lifted the damn thing up and down time after time. Happy to report it is installed and operating, and only cost me one burn and three cuts.

Last night we BBQ'd a nice London Broil (half of a 2.5 lb. piece that we paid $10.24 for) served with mushrooms, baked potatoes and pickles and tomatoes. All accompanied by a fine Spanish wine purchased for $3.97. Grocery prices are higher here than last year in Arizona. Looking forward to hearing from Veronica on food costs in Lake Havasu this year.

Today we went to another flea market... more junk. We also went to get the feel of the area, and visited the beaches on Anna Maria island, about 15 minutes drive from our RV park. We found lovely white sand, set off by the gorgeous blue tones of the Gulf of Mexico. We also spotted a flotilla of little boats fishing in a frenzy just off one stretch of beach. They were casting nets, and thrashing around each other. It looked comical, and I shot a couple of long range pics, which are posted here. Also posted pictures of us at Bushnell Walmart, and a couple of shots of other RV's there too. And a shot of our trusty old Georgie Boy set up in Bradenton, Florida. After some 3448 miles, we are here.