Hitting the Water in the Florida Keys

Our primary objective in the Florida Keys has been cancelled due to the weather. That doesn't mean we still can't see what's swimming around out on the reef, we just have to tackle it from another angle. But first, we have to talk about another quirky find.

Watch the Video!

Yesterday, as we got rained out from one adventure to another, I was looking for something other than simply than going back to the hotel to watch TV. Traveling down the Overseas Highway near our hotel, I saw a small sign on the median simply saying "African Queen" with a symbol for a U-Turn.

I follow the sign to a tour boat dock and there it is, the African Queen. This is the boat used in the movie starring Humphrey Bogart and Katherine Hepburn. After the filming was over in Africa, the production left the boat behind.  Found partially sunk in Cairo, the current owners bought it and brought it back to Florida for a restoration.

Wandering over to it, we note that it's just like in the movie and, when the captain turns on the steam powered engine, sounds just the same, too.  

It's now available for tours of the Key Largo marina. Unfortunately, it is not wheelchair accessible, though.

Fortunately, there's a large glass bottom boat docked next to it that the operator says is so we plan on taking that the next morning for a tour.

Now it's a day later and we're rolling onboard the boat. Tim stakes out a spot near the front of the boat by the underwater window.  Other passengers board, the boat is maybe half full, and we launch towards the Atlantic Ocean.

Gently and slowly we pass big waterfront mansions with pools at the water's edge. One even has a waterslide built in to go right into the channel. Once we've cleared the marina, the captain boosts the engines for the half hour ride out to the reef which sits seven miles offshore.

Even though we're seven miles out, the water is still shallow...anywhere from eight to forty feet deep...and a skeletal metal lighthouse stands on the shallowest part of the reef.

Now, the captain puts the engines on idle as we drift lazily over the reef, taking in the damsel fish, parrot fish, barracuda, and more. The colors of the coral shine vibrantly in the sun-filled, clear water.

The guide on the boat picks up a mic and begins the description of what we see but starts with a warning to remove any sandals or anything loose so that they don't fall into the well where the underwater window is, followed about ten seconds later by a lady next to Tim dropping her flip flop in.

"...as I just said," the guide goes on, "please remove loose items so that they don't fall in. For the lady that just dropped her shoe, we can negotiate how much it will cost for me to go down and retrieve it later."

A kid at the other end takes this as his cue to toss his stuffed animal in, too.

Except for a couple of clueless fellow passengers, it's still a stunning sight to see all the sealife below.  No, we didn't get to actually get in the water to go snorkeling like we wanted to but this is probably the next best thing and it's accessible too, including the bathroom on board.

We drift this way for about an hour before it's time to fire up the engines for the ride back.

Tim and I take this opportunity to sit on the fantail and enjoy the ocean spray on this hot, Florida day.

Darryl Musick
Copyright 2017 - All Rights Reserved

Photos by Letty Musick
Copyright 2017 - All Rights Reserved

The Fates Are Angry in South Florida

When I booked this trip, the highlight was meant to be snorkeling at the coral reef located off of Key Largo. Tranquil Adventures charters a boat with a pool lift built into it to lower disabled passengers into the water.

Upon arrival a couple of days ago, I called Captain Mick...owner of Tranquil Adventures...to let him know we were here and when we should go. We settled upon today.

Today dawns windy and cloudy. It's still warm to hot. I call the captain and he says we're still on. I ask him a few questions...does he provide towels, what kind of sandwich he'd like us to bring him, etc...and then he asks if we plan to go in the water.

"Well, yes...that's the whole reason we booked so we could go snorkeling," I tell him.

He tells me the weather and water is way to choppy to do that. All we'd be able to do, basically, is to take a boat ride.  We agree to forgo the trip. Accessible snorkeling will not be on the menu for our Keys trip as we'd hoped (we'll try to make up for it somewhat in the next post).

Now we've suddenly got a free day with absolutely no plans. I jump on the computer Googling "things to do in Southern Florida" and find the Everglades Alligator Farm about an hour's drive away near Homestead.

I see that they also have airboat rides through the Everglades. Sounds like fun so we load up the car and go.

It's still cloudy and starting to sprinkle when we arrive.  Letty heads inside while a gentleman  sitting in a rocking chair on the porch warns me "they don't let handicapped people ride the boats."

"Really?" I ask him.

"Yeah, I'm a amputee from the knee down and they won't let me on."

I go inside to get more information. The lady at the ticket counter tells me that's not true and that they have an accessible dock and the staff will help lift and transfer the rider into the boat. She offers to let me inside for free to inspect the dock and boats to make sure.

Yep, everything is as she says it is so I head back in to make our arrangements except when I do I see a video monitor above her head with what looks like a weather map.  It shows a system full of yellow and orange spiraling into an area of red and a blue dot. I ask the lady what the blue dot is.

"That's us," she tells me.

"So you mean that red, orange, and yellow system is heading right towards us?"

"Yep!"

(Not the actual map we saw but similar)

This does not look even remotely good, thankfully we found that out before buying tickets.

We start to head back towards the Keys when we spot a produce shack called Robert is Here. Yes, that is a strange name for a fruit stand but Florida...

Letty wants to stop and buy some fresh fruit for later (check out the size of the guava she found). I pull in but while she's inside, I figure out this corner spot will be very hard to get out of so when I get a lucky break in traffic, I move to another parking spot about fifty feet away.

Oh, the hands of fate dealt with us then...that red and orange spot? It arrived while my wife was inside.  A deluge of Biblical proportions hit and hit hard. Visibility dropped down to about 100 feet.  The awning over the entrance funneled the rain into a water wall rivaling the majesty of Niagara.

Tim and I were waiting in the car. My options were to leave him alone and go find Letty to tell her we moved or to wait inside and try to spot her when she came out. I went for plan B.

A few minutes later, I see here come out, getting absolutely soaked, looking the other way.  I honk. Nothing. I honk again, a little more intensely. She walks the other way.

Only one thing left to do..."I'm sorry Tim, you'll just have to wait it out here for a minute while I get your mom."

I dash through the rain and find Letty knocking on the window of a similar looking van.  I grab her arm..."that's not our car," and run her back to ours trying futilely to get inside ours before we get too wet.

It's not happening, we're both soaked to the bone. The driver's seat of our rental van is mildly flooded but at least Tim's still dry and happy in the passenger seat.

When we hit Key Largo, the rain has gone. It was more focused on the Everglades than the Keys.

We call the day a wash and spend some time at the Happy Hour at our hotel's beachside Tiki bar before retiring to the room for the night.

Darryl Musick
Copyright 2017 - All Rights Reserved

Photos by Letty Musick
Copyright 2017 - All Rights Reserved

We'll Get There Fast So We Can Take It Slow: The Florida Keys

We're really racking up the miles on our Southwest Rapid Rewards accounts this week. This is the third flight in that time span, this time from Houston's Hobby Airport to Fort Lauderdale.

It's an early pickup from the hotel so we forgo breakfast there to get it at the airport. Unfortunately, Hobby..at least the terminal we're in...is not one of those that has a decent, sit-down breakfast place to relax it. It's yogurt and fruit in the terminal waiting area.

Warby Parker's Free Home-Try-On Program

Southwest again steps up to the plate with helpful access to the plane and a pleasant, on-time flight. A little over two hours later, we're deplaning in Florida.

While the flight was just peaches and cream, the car rental counter not so much. About 50 people in line with two agents checking in at a counter that was built to accommodate at least a dozen. 

Eventually, video terminals were set up so agents in remote areas could check us in online. My agent was in Arizona. 

It was a short stroll from there to pick up our Grand Caravan which, although nice, was not as nice as the two Nissan Rogues we had in Texas. A touch more expensive, too.

Programming our hotel's location into the GPS, we follow the on-board voice of reason to be on our way. Soon, we are not on our way too well. On the Reagan Turnpike, which has billboards along the way calling itself the "Less Stressway," we pay for the privilege of sitting in non-moving traffic. 

Eventually, we clear the clogged traffic south of Miami and finally get moving. At Homestead, the turnpike ends. The road narrows, and we get into the swampy area of south Florida and signs warning of crocodiles crossing the road before we get to the first bridge taking us from the mainland to the first of Florida's southern islands, the Keys.

This first key is to be our base for the next week, Key Largo.

After a couple of hours, we end up at today's destination, the Hampton Inn in Key Largo near the top end of the Florida Keys (at the top I referred to our accumulating points on Southwest, I should also note that our Hilton HHonors account is getting a very healthy boost these couple of weeks).

Not able to book an accessible room here, I took a chance after getting the details of the regular rooms and booked us a junior suite. It'll do, barely, at it seems they took a regular room, crammed a king sized bed along with a sofabed, a table and chairs, and a small coffee and microwave center. 

The bathroom will be adequate, though, and the manager sends up a bath chair for Tim.

Being on the beach, the room and the hotel in general smell a little musty but there's a nice beach here, a pool with a lift, and a tiki bar separating the two.

It's not near as nice as the hotel we just left in Houston but it is nice enough. It'll do.

One thing I promised Letty when we came here, she can eat as much seafood as she wanted (I'm not a fish lover) while we were here so our first stop is to go across the street for dinner.

"Street" is a relative term here. It is the only road to cross, indeed the only road through Key Largo, but that road is the heavily traveled Overseas Highway. It takes a little patience and planning but we do eventually find a spot to cross over between traffic.

Dinner is at the Catch, a laid back diner with a beach vibe to it although it's not on the beach side of the road. 

Letty has a very nice crab cake dinner, Tim goes with fish and chips, while I get the cheeseburger. We just missed happy hour so the beer is full price but it's still very delicious and reasonable.

After the afternoon of traveling, we retire back at the Hampton to relax and create a plan of attack for the rest of our time in south Florida.

Wine Tasting Party Kit. This kit contains everything you need to host your own wine tasting party, including invitations and the "How-To" manual. FREE GROUND SHIPPING in Contiguous U.S.

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