Miami With Scott and Rachel

Scott has turned out to be quite the tour guide.  He had all of his and Rachel's days here planned out and we were invited to join them for gators and Biscayne Bay.  We do appreciate the invitation and the opportunity to spend some time with them.

We had about an hour car ride to the airboat rides in the Everglades.  Scott had researched all of these in the area and Buffalo Tiger's got the best recommendations for very personal tour guides and up-close looks at the gators.  This is actually part of the Miccosukee Indian Tribe's reservation and it was a really great tour.

 We saw about a 4-footer before ever leaving the dock.

Our guide was fantastic, nicknamed "The Beastmaster" - you'll see why shortly.  He grew up on the reservation here and is 61 years old now.  He was quite a character, had all kinds of stories, and could speak the dialect of peoples from all over the world.  Before we left the dock he told us how to tell the male gators from the female gators - "The males have the larger heads and more of a square shape OR you can pick them up, turn them over on their backs and feel around.  If you find something soon it's a male, if not, it's a female."  He said the "easier" method is to check out the size and shape of their head!!!!

The ride through the glades is definitely fast and loud.  We had a family from Korea on the boat with us.

Our first stop had a baby alligator.

 And a "chicken bird" - got it's name from the feet.  Check out the beautiful colors.  However, The Beastmaster said they do not taste good!

The Beastmaster then stunned us all at the next stop.  He started making a clicking noise with his mouth and a 6-footer starting heading our way.  He assured us some good photo shots were coming up.  He also attracted them with bread - we thought gators were strict carnivores.  He assured us they eat "anything."

He said the gator's vision is poor straight ahead, but very good toward the sides.  So, he began patting the gator from straight away and talking to it, getting its jaws to open and its head to raise up a little.

The next thing we knew, he was holding this gator by the throat, lifting it out of the water!  He said he has known these gators since he began playing with them at age 6.  Made my childhood sound a little dull and boring, or maybe his was a little crazy and dangerous!

Rhonda and Rachel thought about getting closer, but this was about it for them, and everyone else.

Our next stop was an actual former village of the Miccosukee tribe, but it has not been inhabited now for 45 years.  He assured us it was for real and not just a tourist attraction.  One of the other tour boat guides while we were at the village was a woman and he said it is tradition for one to never leave the village without starting a fire.  He also said the women do all the work and sure enough, she started a fire before their group left the site.  Now the upside to them doing all the work is that if there is ever a divorce, the woman gets EVERYTHING and the man gets NOTHING.  The lady tour guide actually lives in a similar site about 6 miles from this one.

 The Beastmaster said most of the gators generally stay in their own localized area most of their lives. One of the gators lives close by here, an up-close-and-personal shot for sure. 

The Beastmaster told us some great stories - you could tell he loves women.  He said European women always want to see his arms, legs, and chest - he wears long-sleeve shirts and long pants.  He said they naturally associate Indians with their long thick black hair and they want to see if he's hairy all over!  So, he showed us all three and they are not!  Bare as a bone and somewhat fair-skinned without the sun tanning them.

I think The Beastmaster may even be hitting on Rhonda in this pic but Scott and Rachel are keeping a close eye out for me.  Seriously, he was a really funny guy.

This was interesting - an aspirin tree.  You take the stems of the tree/bush and boil them in water, giving you pure, natural, uncompromised aspirin, not a laboratory-developed version.

Some closing thoughts on the Miccosukee tribe.  He said the Indian languages have no curse words in them as they respect all life on earth, but he has a couple he has created on his own!  On a sad note, he said the Indian tribes are now dying out, succumbing to diabetes and alcohol.

This was definitely a great stop - good job, Scott.  We left the wild and uninhabited state of the Everglades for the big city of Miami, enjoying a Greek meal at Maria's in between the two.  Scott had us planned for a tour boat ride in the cruise ship part of The Port of Miami.  Here's our boat, Miami Lady.

There were about 5 or 6 cruise ships in port.

The skyline of Miami is pretty spectacular from a distance and up close.

 A special part of the ride was a tour of famous people's homes.  Here is (was) Liz Taylor's.  There is a rabbit statue in front that was a gift from her good friend Michael Jackson "representing her jumping like a rabbit from one marriage to the other."

Here's a closeup of the rabbit statue.

And this one belongs to the founder of Viagra - you can imagine all the one-liners that were out there on this one.  I believe the price was around 50 million and it took 3 years to build it!  The palm trees out front were shipped in from Africa at a cost of $10K each.  Here's the house, or in Miami vernacular, the "mansion."  Hope you can see the color of the water also.

Some of the other names that were mentioned during the cruise were Shaquille O'Neal, Sylvester Stallone, Jennifer Lopez, Rosie O'Donnell, Al Capone, and a bunch of Latin-American singers I've never heard of.  The tour guide specifically mentioned Puff Daddy also (I have no idea who that is), noting that he had more names than hits!  Several of the homes were also film locations for movies such as Scarface and Cocoon.  It was fun and a good time was had by all.

Scott and Rachel dropped us off at the boat and I immediately went to the couch for a nap.  Later in the evening, Scott and Rachel surprised us with another visit to deliver our Christmas present.  They have been making fun of our out-dated camera and decided to upgrade us to new levels.  Thanks Scott and Rachel.  And you blog-followers can now expect better pictures starting with the next post.

Scott and Rachel are taking today to tour some art galleries and the beach I think.  Rhonda is out on a bike and walking tour on her own to see what we have missed and is trying out the new camera.  

Ft. Lauderdale

After 5 days at the Sands Resort and Marina, it was time to move on.  Rhonda did some investigating and found a nice new option for us. Heading south down the ICW, we were greeted by this reminder.

A few miles later, the New River branches off of the ICW and runs several miles west through some beautiful homes, downtown Ft. Lauderdale (FLL), and on to a large area of marine service facilities. The first part of the river has some fantastic homes.  Rhonda loved this one with the gazebo.

Some still had their Christmas decorations out.

The city runs 2 docking areas in the downtown stretch close to Las Olas, FLL Historical Society, the Science Museum, IMAX, The Center for Performing Arts, and lots of glitzy shops and restaurants.  Here's a distant shot of the city as we are approaching the area.

The New River in this area is more like a narrow concrete-walled canal and several signs in the area designated this area as "Venice in Ft. Lauderdale."  And here's a gondola for hire to prove it!

We followed 2 larger boats all the way to our slip (larger boats is quite an understatement - "Invicta" was 120 feet!).  This is such a crowded stretch with huge boats moving through constantly, you don't even have to contact the bridge tenders for openings - they just stop vehicle traffic as the the boat traffic demands.

I had asked the city dock folks to give me some pointers on finding our slip.  The guy said "You'll be next to Chosen One."  I asked for some detail on it and he said, "Don't worry, you can't miss it."  He was right, here she is.

And the strangest thing here - they have several young men and women, all dressed alike in little uniforms, constantly working, shining, and polishing on this boat.  It must be a service the city provides and I keep waiting on them to get to ours, but so far they haven't made it!  Hey, we are perfectly content with our relatively small 44-footer, cleaning and maintaining her ourselves, and here she is positioned behind "Chosen One" with some of the other "regular" folks.

Here are a couple of shots from the historical area.

And the condos of course.

Here's a stark contrast between the historical and the new.

A view of the canal from one of the bridges overhead.

I just happened to see a couple of iguanas on this platform while out on a morning bike ride.  The second one is around the corner.  Probably "pets" that got away or were released after the novelty wore off.

There are small park areas galore.  You never know what your "backyard" will look like when you dock at a new location but it will be hard to beat this one.  All of the locations you see in this post are walking distance or a short bike ride away.  The winding river/canal and all the sights you see here are quite a stunning combination - definitely one of the favorites of our trip thus far.

These are for our granddaughter Alexis - she loves elephants.

And the baby Dumbo.

Rhonda likes the large tour boats coming through the bridge just downstream from us.

And the highlight of the day - Scott and Rachel are in town for a few days.  Scott flew his company folks into Miami for the BCS championship game, so he gets to sightsee while they enjoy the Orange Bowl.  We went to dinner at The Cheesecake Factory.

Tomorrow - gators and Biscayne Bay.

Pompano Beach and Boca Raton

It's been a while since the last post, even changed years from 2012 to 2013.  So, let's get caught up on our visit to Pompano Beach and Boca Raton.  We lived in Boca from 1987 to 1990 when I worked at West Palm Beach approach and tower, probably my favorite of the 9 facilities I worked at in a 26-year career with the FAA.  It was my last full-time controller job before moving into supervision and then managing 3 facilities before retiring in 2005.  Those were some great years.  I had been selected to work at Charlotte or West Palm (PBI), the FAA gave me my choice, and we chose PBI just to do something different. We had never even been to south Florida before Rhonda and I came down for our house-hunting trip.  We started looking at Hobe Sound and worked our way south to Boca.  We found a new development in Boca called "Main Street" and bought a house that was still under construction. Unlike our home in Ft. Myers which has since been bulldozed, this one is still standing. Here it is today at 22146 Flower Drive.  "Main Street" is now "Boca Woods."

Those were some great years.  Adam was 6-9 and Scott was 3-6.  Rhonda and I still had our first boat which was a 16-foot Neuman bowrider and I'll never forgot one of our early trips down to the Keys.  We had found a great snorkeling spot off the coast of Bahia Honda Key.  The reef was called Looue Key and was about 11 miles offshore.  We were out there in this 16 footer and a storm rolled through.  I promised myself and family if we ever made it back to shore that day we would have to get a bigger boat!  We did and we did - a new 220 SeaRay Sundancer that we bought at the Ft. Lauderdale Boat Show.  It was perfect and we had some great times in it.

We found a great church at Boca Glades Baptist and still have great friends from there to this day.  Tying the church and boat together, meet Sandy and Mickey Panella.  They had kids about the same age as ours, Lee and Cheryl, and we've actually had both families on that SeaRay (4 adults, 4 kids, and our Golden Retriever) at one time, overnighting at Boca Chita Key on the south edge of Biscayne Bay.  They visited with us 2 separate times for food and Sequence/Dominoes while we were at Pompano and also picked us up for church.

Speaking of Boca Glades, when we found the church, the members were meeting in a school on Sunday mornings and a warehouse on Wednesdays.  We were later able to build our first building which today is the building just for pre-school!

Today, add lots more buildings to the left and to the right, including a beautiful new sanctuary.

We got to to see lots of our friends and another special couple is Gil and Donna Covey.  They took us to lunch after church and also joined us on the boat on 2 occasions for catching up and some Sequence games also.  (I had to edit Rhonda and me out of this pic - we both had strange smiles/expressions on our faces for some reason).  By the way, Donna has an absolutely beautiful voice!  They have recently built a second home on Lay Lake in Alabama (near Birmingham) so we'll be visiting with them some more in the future.

We rode around Boca and checked out the schools that Adam and Scott attended and some other old friends' homes, stirring up a few more memories.  All in all, a very nice reunion time and trip down memory lane.  We also got some nice shots of a pelican that decided to perch close by on one of the pilings on the aft port corner of the boat.

And before we said our final goodbye to Boca/Pompano, I got some shots of HMR at the dock, and the beach which was only 2 blocks away (shortly after sunrise and the morning cleaning/leveling of the sand by the beach crews).