THE COCKTAIL HOUR: South Florida Drinking Tour

(Please read our Covid 19 Statement first - Ed) You regulars might be a bit disappointed but we really didn't hit too many bars on our recent foray to the Keys but we did hit three you might be interested in checking out.

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We start off in the Conch Republic of Key West, home of the perpetual Spring Break. I had a goal here to try a true daiquiri in the land of Hemmingway.

My unscientific method of finding that...consisting of talking to the local coffee shop owner where I had breakfast...confirmed that I should skip Duval Street and the usual tourist joints like Sloppy Joes and head to a backwater bar.

Blue Heaven was the recommendation I got for Key West's most authentic version. Made from scratch using only local Key lime juice, rum, and simple syrup, these hit the spot on this very hot, southern Florida day.  The bar itself sits in the back courtyard of a few buildings, a tropical garden hidden from the street.

Great place to spend a few minute escaping from the maddening crowd of Duval Street.

But, we can't come to Key West and not take a stroll down the infamous Duval Street. When our whistles need wetting again, it's over to the Flying Monkeys Saloon. Here, a bank of frozen drink mixers sit behind the bar with a dozen or so alcoholic concoctions and one non-alcoholic blend to slake the heat and thirst that this city inspires.

Tim has their non-alcoholic drink, a glass filled with an extra sweet blue goo (which is where he gets that very blue tongue in the picture above) while Letty and I go with the Yuengling beer that is so prevalent in Florida.

Later in the week, it's mojitos at Mango's Tropical Bar in South Beach where we find a quiet spot to sip and watch the beautiful people walk by.

It's all in the video, above, come along and take a ride with us as we sip our way up from the Keys.

-Darryl Musick
Copyright 2017 - All Rights Reserve

It's a Never Ending Spring Break - Spending the Day in Key West, Florida

Another travel goal for me has been to drive the Overseas Highway in Florida from end-to-end.  Now that we're at the northern end in Key Largo, it's time to take a day to drive the 100 miles or so to the southern end in Key West.

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While I had pictured miles and miles of driving over open water between little islets over a vast bridge built across an ocean, in reality, most of the time is spent on solid ground with little bridges connecting the islands in the stream.

It's only when you get to Seven Mile Bridge (exactly as the name implies), between Marathon and Big Pine Keys, where that vision of driving over the ocean meets with reality but the other ninety or so miles is not like that at all. Off to the side, we can see the original railroad bridge that has since fell to ruin.

There is little in the way of traffic congestion today and the GPS takes us straight to the monument marking the southernmost point in the continental United States.  I only wish it could point us to an open parking spot.

After letting my wife out to take pictures (there's a block-long line of people wanting to take portraits with it, that's why none of ours are close up), Tim and I drive around the block and pick her back up when we return.

We do manage to find a spot, a handicapped spot at that, along the curb on Whitehead Street which runs parallel to the most famous street...Duval Street...but one block south.

Skipping breakfast at the Hampton Inn, I notice a nice looking place near the corner. On one side is the Six Toed Cat, a nifty little cafe with ramped access through the back. The name comes from the edifice on the other side of the corner, the Hemingway House and Museum, which is known for the colony of six toed cats that live there.

The food is delicious and the coffee strong. My wife digs through her fish Benedict while I have the All American bacon and eggs breakfast.  I share my bacon with Tim in exchange for a few bites from his pancakes.

It is a very good way to start our day in Key West and, considering where we are, a very reasonable priced one at that.

The owner is very friendly and easy to talk to. This comes in handy. The one thing I wanted to do while here in Key West is to try an authentic daiquiri. I have a real hard time finding a bartender...including in the Caribbean...who can make one. This was Hemmingway's drink and this is Hemmingway's town, I'm sure someone here can do it right.

I ask the owner where I can find an authentic daiquiri. "Avoid Sloppy Joe's and all the tourist bars on Duval Street. They all make it from mix," he tells me. "Go two corners down, turn left, and go a block. Look for the Blue Heaven Bar. They make a very good and very authentic daiquiri from scratch using only the top ingredients."

I thank him and we wander off to the Blue Heaven.

A lushly overgrown walkway invites us to the open patio in back where we grab a table by the bar.

Three daiquiris are made from scratch and, yes, they are heavenly. Attitudes properly adjusted, we head a couple of blocks north and head down Duval Street.

Duval is the touristy heart of Key West, running from the Atlantic Ocean in the east a little more than a mile to the Gulf of Mexico in the west.

It's like a permanent Spring Break here, lined with bars, restaurants, liquor and drug stores, and souvenir shops of dubious quality.

Live music pours from the clubs. Loud, free spirits line the sidewalks. It's the last place you'd expect to find a quiet respite but yet, we do.

We almost walked right by it. We weren't looking for it but the sign promising the Oldest House in Key West and 'Free Admission' drew us in.

Built in 1829, and home of the Watlington Family, it was moved to it's current spot at 322 Duval Street in 1836.

Bahamian shipwrights built the house so well and so flexible, it has sustained no hurricane damage over the years. That's a big factor in how it ended up being the island's oldest house.

A docent takes us on the ground floor rooms (ramped and wheelchair accessible).

Afterward, we take a few minutes to meditate in the back yard gardens.

Outside, we continue onward to the west end of Duval Street where we meet a tour guide trying to wrangle her dispersed clients into an oceanside happy hour. 

We wander back to where we started where a salesman at the Mel Fisher gallery lets me hold a coin recovered from the wreck of the Atocha, a 600 year old Spanish ship laden with treasure that Mr. Fisher found and recovered hundreds of millions of dollars in treasure.

The piece I hold in my hand is priced well north of $25,000.

Before we call it a day here in the Conch Republic, we take one more quite break in St. Paul's Church, listening to the organist practice and taking in the spectacular stained glass windows.

One more stop commiserating with the owner of a nearby ice cream shop over cold treats before we head back over the ocean to our hotel in Key Largo.

Darryl Musick
Copyright 2017 - All Rights Reserved

Photos by Letty Musick
Copyright 2017 - All Rights Reserved

The Evolving Destination...How a Trip Decision Comes Together at The World On Wheels

Picking where to go on a trip isn't merely "hey, let's go there!" for us. Well, sometimes it is and everything comes together rather quickly. Other times, it's an evolution.

Take our latest travels...how does a Caribbean island vacation morph into a triple destination trip through the Lone Star state then over to the Florida Keys?

After last fall's European Grand Tour, we were talking over the difficulty of multiple air legs to reach destinations deep into Europe that didn't offer non-stop service to Los Angeles. Tim had some anxiety before leaving but did fine. The last leg, of three, on the way home didn't sit too well but he managed fine.

"I don't want to go anywhere where we have to take more than two flights," he told me, "but I wouldn't mind going to St. Croix even though that takes two flights."

That started the wheels spinning. We love St. Croix and, especially, the beautiful Buccaneer Hotel there. The only thing is it's a bit hard to get Tim onto the sandy beach (but not impossible), pool, and especially the ocean.

That got me searching for alternative spot where we could go somewhere in the Caribbean, tropical, and where we could get Tim to some crystal-clear ocean water. The Bahamas, Barbados, Curacao, and more came up where...maybe...I could get Tim to the water's edge and wade in. 

Harder yet was to find a boat that he could go on then go into the water from. We learned the hard way that advertising your dive boat as 'handicapped accessible' doesn't mean that it is in anyway, shape, or form accessible in St. Croix (one operator there plasters their web site with it but when asked said "yeah, you just need to be able to climb this ladder-like set of stairs onto the boat and off into the water").

My search did keep turning up one operator in the Florida Keys, Tranquil Adventures, who had installed a pool lift onto the side of a pontoon boat specifically to lower disabled people into the water to go snorkeling.

I'd put that in my memory banks for later use, if I needed it. In the meantime, I came across an ad for Southwest Airlines announcing that they'd just started nonstop service from our favorite local (but underused) airport, Ontario, to Dallas' Love Field.

Another long term goal of ours is to see every Major League Baseball stadium. We're up to 25 and the two stadiums in Texas are among the last five we need to visit. My brain clicks in to tell me that if I could get a cheap, nonstop, Southwest flight to Dallas, maybe we could get another cheap flight from there after a layover to the Caribbean allowing us to not only have an easy transit to the islands but get another stadium in along the way.

Perusing the flight schedules, there's not much from Dallas to the Caribbean but from Houston we could get a short and simple flight on Southwest to Fort Lauderdale...only 90 minutes from Captain Mick's Tranquil Adventures in Key Largo.  It's also a very easy and cheap add on to fly one hour from Dallas to Houston and...hey!...they have another stadium there with a very affordable Homewood Suites only a block from it.

We can do this!  Two Texas stadiums (plus a day or two at each city to experience what they have to offer) then an extended stay in the Keys...which would satisfy our itch for a warm beach at least adjacent to the Caribbean...where we can go snorkeling on a lift-equipped boat.

So, Tim's original comment about taking the two flights to St. Croix evolves through several permutations to become a trip to Texas' two biggest cities ending up on a Florida island for some warm, beach adventures.

Stay tuned for that...

Darryl Musick
Copyright 2017 - All Rights Reserved

Year in Review - 2017

Our travel year started off with a road trip up to Morro Bay for Tim's birthday ( he turned 30 this year) and our anniversary. It's always a fun place to go, one that everyone in the family can agree on and have a good time. A four hour drive to another world.

We decided this year, we would also spend more time out and about in our local area, starting with a visit to the Huell Howser Archives down in Orange County. It's no secret that he was a big inspiration for what we do on this blog.

Other days out had us on a fruitless search for last spring's "superbloom" of wildflowers; the Commemorative Air Force museum in Camarillo; and a light rail dining tour here in Los Angeles.

Our first extended trip of the year had us looking for an unusual hybrid of Texas baseball and Caribbean tropics. That ended up starting us in Dallas for a visit with the Rangers as they took on our home team of the Angels...who lost. After seeing JFK history and having one of the best cheap steaks we've ever had in Fort Worth, we got to go to Houston to see the eventual World Champions make up for the Halos loss in Dallas by beating cross-state rivals, the Rangers, at Minute Maid Park.

A pre-hurricane Houston also treated us with some very good food like the crawfish boil we had and the southern specialties at Natachee's. A visit to Johnson Space Center wrapped up our time in the Lone Star state.

Before Hurricane Maria devastated the Caribbean and the Florida Keys, we got to spend a short week there, based in Key Largo and visiting Key West and an offshore reef.  An afternoon in South Beach wrapped up our Florida adventure.

The summer had us back up to the Central Coast of California for a few days of wine tasting, music, and great food in Atascadero...just a few miles south of the wine Mecca of Paso Robles.

We also snuck in another visit to Morro Bay while we were there...anything to take our mind off of the very disappointing hotel room we had.

The fates and finances looked very good as the summer was winding down so we scheduled another major trip, this time up north to Alberta, Canada.

This was two destinations, starting with another short week in Jasper National Park where we saw the beautiful turquoise colored waters of the lakes and streams, great cataracts of water, the Northern Lights, and even a trip up to a mountain top.

Followed by another week in Calgary where we were delighted with the fall colors, hockey, and some history.

That was the conclusion to this year's travels but we do want to mention some highlights and lowlights...

Hilton Hotels were still mostly top notch, especially the Homewood Suites in downtown Houston, Fort Lauderdale, and Calgary airport. Still nice but just a shade under those were the Homewood Suites in downtown Calgary and Dallas. Of all the Hilton properties we stayed at this year, only the Hampton Inn in the keys was a bit of a letdown.

Becker's Chalets, a cabin resort along the Athabasca River in Jasper, was very nice and super relaxing. The accessible cabin with roll in shower suited our needs very well.

Holiday Inn Express in Atascadero was a major disappointment with the accessible room having a view of a wall and no one at all understanding why having the only wheelchair room robbed of the view all the other have is a big deal.

While we had fun everywhere we went in Texas, we have to give the nod to Houston as our favorite city visited there.  A knock on the traffic in both Houston and Dallas, which was very bad and construction going on everywhere.

The Florida Keys were outstanding as a destination. The weather is very unpredictable and did have some impact on us but it was well worth the visit. We didn't spend enough time in Miami to really form an opinion but we already have plans in place to go back and rectify that. Seems like a great place for a visit.

Morro Bay, what more can I say? We absolutely love this funky, little beach town and would put in in our road trip hall of fame destinations.

Other than the hotel, Atascadero and Paso Robles came through as they always do, a great place to visit.

Jasper National Park is, in a word, gorgeous. We liken it to a super-sized Yosemite...our favorite U.S. national park...with giant glacier-carved valleys, turquoise lakes and rivers, and some very fun activities.  Access could be a little improved here and there but we were able to improvise our way around the obstacles encountered.

Calgary is a great city with a fun-loving population and attitude. We'd love to come back and explore more some day.

...and, while Canada is just a tad behind the U.S. in accessibility, we'd love to do a lot more exploring of our neighbor to the north. It's easy and cheap to book a short, three-hour flight from our town.

Speaking of flights, Southwest Airlines was again superb in getting us to our destinations in Texas and Florida. They really know how to work with special needs passengers and each flight was efficient and enjoyable.

The Canadian airline of Westjet flew us up to Calgary and they were another great way to fly. Comfortable seats on modern and clean jets, plus a very friendly and helpful crew and airport staff. We recommend them for any flights up north and would probably look for us to fly us to the Caribbean someday as that's another major part of their network.

And that's a wrap for the year of 2017...look for more adventures, soon, in the new year.

Darryl Musick
Copyright 2018 - All Rights Reserved