Goodbye Marathon, crossing Gulf, again

Before we left for Ft. Meyers, we took another trip to Key West.  As you recall, we forgot our camera the last time and we remembered it this time.  We met Frank and Bonnie.  We traveled with Frank on his brothers boat (Woody and Judy) when we took our side trip up the Black Warrior river.  They were so nice and took us to several places in Key West that we might have missed.  Here is a picture of Frank and Bonnie with Erwin.  We were taking in the arts and crafts of the area.

Here is one of the boats in the harbor at Key West.

We also went to a nice restaurant for lunch right on the water, very nice.  We took in a local art exhibit at a beautiful location.  Here is a picture of a little gecko and an iguana on top of a very prickly cactus.  It appears the only predator he needs to worry about would be from the sky and he is watching carefully.

Here is all four of us enjoying the day!

They took us to one of the highest points in Key West.  Here are a couple of the pictures that we took on the roof of the hotel. 

This is a picture of a Norwegian cruise ship that was in the harbor for the day.

We had taken the bus to Key West but Frank was gracious enough to provide a ride back to Marathon which is 50 miles away.  It was a very enjoyable drive and he stopped at Big Pine Key to show us the key deer.  Many of the residents of the island feed the deer and they are very tame.  As you can see they were right next to our car, we did not have a telephoto lens on the camera.





It was a great time in Marathon but all good things must come to an end.  We had a wonderful time and met a number of great folks.  We will return next year as we take our boat down and then up the east coast of Florida.



We had another successful crossing on the Gulf of Mexico as we proceed north from the Keys toward the Port Charlotte area so we can store our boat.  We are going to hang out in Ft. Meyers as we have several family members coming to visit us.

This is a picture of the shore along the gulf and the city of Naples as a view from the Gulf.

This is an example of the some of the very expensive homes along this area.

These are along the Gordon Pass on the Gulf.

Pretty amazing.  I can not imagine trying to keep up with the cleaning and the yard work, and I would think you would have many more friends to visit you if you lived here.



Busy, busy, busy in Marathon

Well we now understand why all of our cruising friends stay here in Marathon for weeks or months at a time.  We have been here since the middle of February and never been so busy.  Every day there is at least one or two or more activities.

We have caught up on some of our boat things including a couple of trips to West Marine, Home Depot, the Winn-Dixie grocery store, the Publix grocery store, and many side trips to museums, and local sites.

We first took a bus up to one of the towns further up the keys, it is Islamorada.  It is always interesting taking the bus as we have not done much travel (like rarely) by public transportation.  The bus drivers are great and will usually drop you off at a location and not just the bus stop.  After we visited the History of Diving Museum, one of the locals explained that you can flag the bus down.  This alone is quite interesting as US1 is the major highway through the keys and is extremely busy with trucks, cars, motorcycles, and very large motor homes with their tow behind vehicles.  Mind you the bus just pulls off the highway and picks you up.  The only thing you need is $2.35 in exact change to ride back to Marathon.

So the diving museum was one of the attractions that interested us since Erwin has recently started to be re-certified in scuba diving.  The museum was a fascinating collection of diving equipment and history beginning all the way to the 1600's.  It was very well organized and a real delight to see.  It was amazing as it is a private collection of a husband and wife doctor team that wanted to share this collection.  The museum is run by volunteers and was well worth the admission.  Here are some of our pictures, although we did loose a few pictures as one of the cameras was messing up.

This was a very interesting functioning mailbox.

This was the beautiful murals that were on the building at the museum.



This is one of the murals on the wall inside the museum, just like the one in the kids movies.

On Saturday last week we were so pleased that one of the local cruisers, Larry and Carolyn offered to take us to the Nautical Flea Market at Islamorada.  This was an entire morning of so much fishing, boating, jewelry, and anything else you can imagine!  If you have not gone to a flea market in Florida you really should try it, they are quite a bit to take in.  It was so sweet of these two to drive us up there.  We did not plan on purchasing anything, but of course, we found some treasures we could not live without.  One of the treasures was a 2M dive suit for Erwin.  It was perfect the day we took the boat out to the reef.

Here is the sign posted outside Founders Park.  There are so many folks that attend, there is not near enough parking, so they all park at the local high school and then they run a shuttle bus.

So we have taken the boat out to the moorings on the Sombrero Reef.  You can not anchor your boat because the anchor can disturb the fragile coral.  The first time we went out there was quite a bit of ocean swell, but the water was crystal clear and Erwin was able to snorkel and I could see the tropical fish right off the side of the boat.  My pictures of the fish did not come out good, but here is a picture of Erwin doing his snorkeling bit.

Do you think he is in his happy place?

The next adventure we went on was to walk up to the Sea Turtle Hospital.  Yes, they actually have a hospital for the sea turtles, there are several in the state of Florida.  Our other new friends from Massachusetts, Ruth and Steve, booked our tour in advance and we all hiked up to the hospital.  It was fabulous, however, I am very partial to turtles of any kind.  This facility was actually supported by one of the local motel owners.  He donated the land for the building and the funding was provided from the guests and profits of his motel.  It was a wonderful program that educated us on what dangers and threats there are for these awesome creatures.

So the hospital actually will pick up injured or sick turtles.  Here is a picture of the ambulance and the sign outside the facility.

So this facility will actually perform surgeries or any other needs of the turtles.  It gets them back to a healthy state and releases them back to the sea.  If the turtles are unable to fend for themselves, then they become permanent residents.  The turtles each have a name.  Some of them are named for the folks that assisted in the rescue!  There were 28 turtles at the location the day we visited.  Here are some pictures of the turtles in the pools that keep them isolated when necessary.  Some of the larger pools have 5 or 6 turtles in them, but the personalities have to match in order to be in those pools.

I also took this picture of the resort at the hospital, this is looking at Florida Bay.

Not a bad view, huh?

Well all four of us agreed that this was a great facility.  We were all hiking back to the marina (less than a mile) and we came upon an interesting local attraction.  There is a restaurant here called the Stuffed Pig.  It has an interesting array of pig memorabilia on the walls.  There were having pig races, yes, pigs were racing.  It was sponsoring a local school and they were selling raffle tickets, etc.  You could buy lunch and T-shirts,etc.  It is an annual event.  Here is a picture of one of the pig races.

What a hoot!  Each of the pigs has a name and a silk number on its back.  They are like Bacon, Bacon or side of pork, just hilarious.  It was great fun.

So just so you don't think we have fun all the time, this picture may require a little explanation.  The dinghy motor smelled quite warm on our way back to the boat last night.  Erwin checked and sure enough there was no water coming out of the outboard.  This is never a good sign and it never happens at a good moment in time.  It was just past dusk and getting dark fast, no other dinghies around,  the wind was blowing like snot, the dinghy has oars but does not row well at all.  The only thing going for us was the wind was blowing us toward the boat. Well we made it to the boat and today Erwin is repairing the engine.  If you have to make do, that is what you do.  This is his invention of pulling the motor (while the dinghy is underneath).  Pretty smart as if he drops any tools or parts they do not go into the bottom of the anchorage.  He is so smart he had it fixed in a couple of hours!  You got to love that.

Marathon Magic

Here we are in Marathon Florida, among the great keys of Florida.  It has been sunny and warm since we arrived.  It is usually in the 60's at night and in the mid 70's during the day, just perfect.  We arrived after a couple of passes on the outside.  For those of you that are not familiar, that means instead of the waterway or the river system, we actually were in the open waters of the Gulf of Mexico.

It was a beautiful trip and took us a couple of days.  We traveled from Ft. Meyers to Goodland and then to the Little Shark River.  At Goodland we anchored by the Coon Key and it was very peaceful.  The 2nd night we anchored at Little Shark River with half a dozen other boats, it was just outside the Everglades National Park and was very nice also.  We sure had great weather and were very thankful for that.

As we crossed under the famous 7 mile bridge the seas from the Gulf of Mexico were building and also there was quite a bit of current coming at us from the Atlantic,   however we made it under the bridge and turned into Boot Key Harbor.  This is an anchorage unlike any we have been in and it was quite a culture shock for the Captain.  There are mooring balls provided by the City of Marathon marina (226 in all) and there are probably another 100 boats that are anchored in the harbor.  We waited a few days to get a mooring ball as it was quite windy and the weather had to change in order for some of the boats to move on.  Here is a picture of sunset at the anchorage.

We were anchored just at the bridge on the farthest point from the marina.  This bridge was supposed to be a fixed bridge and we would have to travel under it.  We were quite surprised to see that a section of the bridge had been removed in October of 2010.  This is what the bridge looks like today.

We did dinghy up to the main office and were surprised to learn that we could pay a small  fee and use the dinghy dock which provided us with pump out service for the holding tank, water at 5cents a gallon, ability to use the shower facility, lounge, and laundry service.  All in all it was a great deal.  Now we were ready to learn more about the keys so here is some of the pictures of our adventures.

This is one of the dinghy docks.  The soft inflatable dinghies are on the right and the hard bottom dingies park on the left.  There is 2 more full docks like these.  I guess if there are 350 or so boats of your friends that does have a lot of potential for dinghies.

Here is a picture of the anchorage.

Here is another view of boats, there are so many that you can not really describe it.

This is a mural on one of the buildings in Marathon.

Here is the road sign along the famous highway 1, we are hiking to town.

Like I said a few days at anchor and then the weather and seas were better so several boats moved off the mooring balls and headed for Key West or to the Bahamas/Exuma or up to Miami to the boat show.  This is a view from the starboard side and the port side of our boat on the mooring ball.



After a couple of days we got a call from our friends Corky and Rhonda  (they were coming from our home town where it was very cold).  It happened to work out for them and us that they were able to spend a couple of days and an evening with us on the boat.  It was great to catch up with them.  We even were able to view the international space station crossing over the anchorage the evening they were here.  What fun!  The next day we all hopped on the public bus and traveled 50 miles to Key West to take in the sites.  Well both Erwin and I forgot the camera, I promise we will go back and post some pictures.  For now though you will have to sustain on this picture of the Mile marked 0 (off the coffee mug I purchased)  Interesting fact is the highway starts there in Key West, hence the mile marker 0.  Marathon is at marker 50.


ENJOY

More Gulf sites from the Western shore of Florida

Well, sorry that we have not been posting a lot.  Here is a couple of the nature shots.  One of the sky with a light filtering through the clouds, the other is of a beautiful sunset at Pelican Bay in Cayo Costa State Park.

We took a week to enjoy the company of our old cruising pals, Tom and Sheryl.  We met with them in Palmetto and cruised around the area for a week or so.  I guess we were on vacation along with them as we did not take any pictures.  Here is a picture of our buddies on one of the other trips we took with them.

It was fun going back to some of the places that we cruised with the two of them several years ago.  We were on their boat at that time.  It is a sailboat, but we don't hold that against them as we used to be sailors.  We cruised around Longboat Key, Anna Marie Island, St. Petersburg, and Palmetto.  It was great to catch up with them on family and all.

We dropped them back at Palmetto and then decided to cruise toward the southern part of the Gulf.  We will be making our way to the Florida Keys over the next week or so weather permitting as we will be traveling the Gulf part of the trip and will wait for good seas.

Here is a couple of pics of the Sunshine Bridge.  One is of a freighter quite a distance away from our boat, the other is of a full size semi on top of the Sunshine Bridge.  This is a view that not all of the tourists see.

We traveled to Ft. Meyers beach and Estero Island.  Here is a picture of the mooring field.  Basically it is an anchorage but has these mooring balls that you rent and hook the boat onto.  There are over 70 mooring balls and so it is a busy place.

Here is a picture of the mooring field, Solitude on the mooring ball, and an interesting pirate ship which takes the tourists on a cruise a couple of times a day.  It looks quite different than the boats we are used to seeing.

We took the dinghy over to shore and walked over to the times square at Ft. Meyers Beach.  It was cooler and there was not as many people there as usual.

Here is a shot of the pier at the beach, as you can see by the waves, it was quite a windy day at the beach.

Doesn't take much to amuse the two of us as we have been on the boat awhile.  Here is a one man band performing at the square.  Check out the apparatus hooked on his feet to work the drum and a washboard on his back.  If nothing else you got to be entertained by the sheer work going into this!