Key West – As Far South as We Can Go!

 

Thursday, Jan. 7, we drove the short distance from Marathon to Key West and checked into Boyd’s RV Park on Stock Istand before lunch.  Jim and Hope took their Yorkie Mac to the vet in Marathon before leaving so arrived a little later.  (Mac is doing much better now).  We all got settled in and went to dinner that evening – at an indoor restaurant because it was too chilly to eat outside. 

Friday was a good day to bicycle and by mid-morning George and Jim were on their way into Key West.  George picked up a loaf of fresh bread from the bakery.  We all went to lunch  -  outside this time – and then bicycled into Key West, taking a break on the dock near the Westin Hotel.  By the time we returned to the RV Park, George had ridden 24 miles – maybe overkill because his calf muscle has been painful since then.

The weekend was cold and very windy – about 25 mph winds – and Sat. was rainy as well.  Driving into Key West along the bay the row of palm trees looked like umbrellas that had been turned inside out.  We saw a couple of movies – Up in the Air and Did You Hear about the Morgans? and picked up a few things at Publix.   Several years ago we were told that people in the Keys cook a lot when it’s cold since many don’t have heat because it’s needed so rarely.  I can’t say if that is accurate, but I can tell you that Publix on Sat. afternoon looked like Kroger in Rome on Wednesday before Thanksgiving.

While the weather here is mild  compared to most of the country, record lows (in the 40’s) have been set twice since we’ve been in Key West.  A 131 year old record was broken Thurs., 1/7, when the low was 47 degrees.  Much of the Florida citrus crop and produce have been damaged by the freezing temperatures throughout the state.  Today was warmer and sunnier here, and hopefully we’ll all have more seasonable weather soon.

Heading South . . . but is it warm?

 

We left Rome on Monday morning, Dec. 28, the last week of 2009.  Our first stop was Fayetteville to visit Mary Jessica and her family and her brother T. Harley who stopped by to see us on his way home to Virginia.  It was great to see all of them, and we are really enjoying the delicious goodies they gave us.  Richard makes mighty fine peanut brittle.

Then we headed to Jekyll Island to the 34th Annual New Year’s Bluegrass Festival.  We arrived early enough to park looking out at the Atlantic a short way from the Convention Center.   Jim and Hope arrived later in the day and parked opposite us.  George and Irene had time for a bike ride down to the campground and back through the marsh and then along the beach.  We all went out to eat at Crab Daddy’s on St. Simons Island that evening and enjoyed both the food and pleasant service.

Thursday, Friday, and Saturday  were mainly spent attending the Bluegrass Festival.  There were 18 groups performing over the 3 days, 6 each day.  Among our favorites were The Little Roy and Lizzy Show, excellent banjo and violin players respectively, and the Tennessee Gentlemen whose singing was outstanding with their lead singer able to hold high notes a  l-o-n-g  time.

Jekyll was well decorated with Christmas lights and a full moon – a blue moon.  Unfortunately the cold weather brought an end to bicycling Jekyll’s great bike trails which cover the island except that George and Jim braved the cool temps to take a bike ride to the south end of the island.  We can wish for warmer weather for the 2011 festival! 

On Sunday we drove to Ft. Pierce, FL, where on Monday we toured Natalie’s Orchid Island Juice Company, home of Natalie’s fresh squeezed juice.  It was a very interesting tour.  The only drawback is that we had to be there at 7:00 a.m. in order to see the bottling process.  George loves his fresh squeezed orange juice and was instrumental in getting the Rome Kroger to carry   Natalie’s juice which is bottled under Kroger’s Private Selection label.  Our tour guide, David Cortez, director of logistics and customer service, very generously sent us away with bottles of orange and grapefruit juice. 

Arriving in the Keys

 

Wednesday (1/5/10) we arrived in Marathon in the Florida Keys and FINALLY had sunshine and low-60’s weather.  While not exactly typical Keys weather, it’s much warmer than Rome’s weather on Monday which our neighbor David reported was 25 degrees, and 12 degrees is forecast for Sat. – not exactly typical for Rome, either.

Our RV park is at Curry Hammock State Park and has large sites on the water with attractive native plants surrounding the site. Set well back from U.S. 1 the park is very tranquil and is across the highway from the paved bicycle trail  which currently runs intermittently thru the Keys and will eventually be complete the full length of the Keys.  We enjoyed biking on it this afternoon.

This morning we took a stroll around Curry Hammock State Park and along the beach.  Along with Jim and Hope, we went to lunch in Colony Key and bicycled through the residential area afterwards and enjoyed seeing the upscale homes and very attractive landscaping.  The wind was chilly despite the sunny day.

10/22-26 Seeking Warmer Weather in Florida!

Rome has had unseasonably cool rainy weather for mid-October, and we’ve headed south to Florida to find sunshine and warm weather.  Just kidding – not about our weather, but the reason for heading south.  We’re in Kissimmee, FL, at the 20th Anniversary Rally of the Overland Trailblazers.  Our previous motor home was an Overland, and we’ve maintained our membership with this group. 
We arrived at Tropical Palms Resort and Campground on Thursday afternoon and have been enjoying seeing the Trailblazers and all the rally events.   In addition to “just visiting,” the rally has had a catered dinner at Tropical Palms and dinner at Capone’s dinner theater Friday evening.  Today included an afternoon gathering and seeing the car show at Old Town on your own. 
In addition to rally events, we bicycled on the West Orange Trail which runs through  Winter Garden where we also ate lunch and visited the railroad museum.  Irene is enjoying riding her new bicycle which has excellent brakes, wonderful suspension, and 21 gears – though it took a lot of encouragement from George for her to “retire” her 22 or 23 year old Schwinn cruiser. 











































Saturday we bicycled from Tropical Palms to Celebration and rode around that community, returning there for dinner at the Columbia Spanish restaurant.  En route back to Tropical Palms on our bikes, we heard a crackling sound and at first thought something was wrong with George’s bicycle but soon saw the real source – an electrical fire and arcing above a transformer on a power pole.  A fire truck soon arrived and blocked off the immediate area around the pole.  Eventually, the power company apparently turned off the power and ended the “fireworks.” 

Days 50 - 53: Southeast Country Coachers Rally

 

Our last stop on this summer’s trip is the Southeast Country Coachers rally at Holiday Trav-L Park in Chattanooga.  The highlight of the rally was the dinner cruise on the Tennessee River aboard the Southern Bell.  We had great views of the city and its bridges including the marvelous Walnut Street Bridge which we had biked on the day before. The food was great too, and we were lucky that the heavy rain had stopped.   Earlier in the day, the women toured the Hunter Museum and ate lunch nearby at Tony’s.  The men’s outing was to the International Towing and Recovery Hall of Fame Museum.  The rally also included happy hours, pizza, info from Lee-Smith coach repair facility, and a talk on “how to save yourself from disaster” if your coach has to be towed given by SECC member John Hawkins, owner of Miller Industries, the world’s largest tow truck manufacturer.  John had a huge tow truck on site and demonstrated to the group how a Country Coach should be towed. In addition there was free time to enjoy some of the many attractions Chattanooga has to offer, and we bicycled on the river walk.

Sunday morning, we headed home to Rome on the 53rd day of our trip, having covered a little over 3,000 miles . The happy bus is in the barn, and it has been a great trip. It’s good to be home, but thankfully it is only for three weeks before we head out to Orlando for an Overland Trailblazers rally.

Sweet Appalachia

 

This morning we galloped out of the Kentucky Horse Park above Lexington and headed south on I-75. Soon we encountered  long grades taking us over 2,000 feet into Appalachian ridge country. We saw layered sedimentary rock that is characteristic of this region similar to that in the Nashville, TN area. The hazy, blue mountain vistas looked mighty good to us and the lady on the radio station didn’t have a funny accent like what we’ve heard over the last 40 some odd days.

We are at Buddy Gregg’s campground. Irene is shopping at nearby Turkey Creek Mall while George warms a leather chair in the  Panera Bread shop working on the blogg.

George and Jan Sanders are about 300 miles behind us and we are hopefull they will make Knoxville some time tonight. We’re both due to arrive in Chattanooga tomorrow for a Southeastern Country Coach Association rally which will be the grand finale for the Busbloggers Great Lakes tour.

Days 45 – 47: The Henry Ford

 

Saturday was a travel day from Holland 200 miles east across Michigan to Monroe, about 30 miles south of Detroit and Dearborn.  We arrived at our RV park, Sterling State Park on the shores of Lake Erie, in the afternoon after stopping for diesel and a few groceries en route.  Having sat all day, we set out on our bicycles on the paved trail that winds through the large state park which is sandwiched between a large coal burning power plant and two giant cooling towers that appear to be part of another power plant.  It was quite windy and white caps adorned Lake Erie. 

We came to this area to visit The Henry Ford, the collective term for the Henry Ford Museum, Greenfield Village, and the Ford Rouge Factory Tour.  It was highly recommended to us and was compared to the Smithsonian.  Having spent Sunday at the Henry Ford Museum, we concur with that statement.  There is an amazing assortment of cars, trains, airplanes, industrial machines, agricultural equipment, furniture, and much more.  George enjoyed seeing Henry Ford’s private railcar, the Fair Lane (the same name as his home), which he used from 1921 – 1941.  Ford came to Rome in his private car to visit Berry College and made a donation which funded Berry’s Ford Buildings, originally a girls dorm, dining hall, and classrooms.  George was also impressed with the very extensive collection of antique steam engines, some of which were huge, that were housed in the museum. George commented that this must be the largest collection of steam engines in the world. We also saw a number of early R.V.’s including the one that Charles Karault used for his “On the Road” TV segments.

Tuesday morning we toured the Ford Rouge Factory.  The original Rouge complex was a mile-and-a-half wide and more than a mile long.  Henry Ford attracted employees by offering $5 a day pay, twice the going rate.  At its peak in the 1930s, more than 100,000 people worked at the Rouge.  One new car rolled off the line every 49 seconds.  

The Rouge, which now makes F-150 pickup trucks, was rebuilt in 1980 to be a “green” factory and has a roof planted with15 types of sedum which helps cool the building, protects the roof, and uses water that would otherwise  be run-off.  The plants also clean the air by using carbon dioxide and provide a habitat for birds.  Seeing the assembly line at work was the most amazing part of the tour.  It demonstrated the level of refinement and technological advancement of Henry Ford’s basic idea of mechanizing the assembly of automobiles.  It not only has evolved to a more efficient system of assembling cars, but provides safer and healthier conditions for the workers.

Our next destination was Greenfield Village which Ford began during his lifetime by collecting important historical buildings and artifacts to record the “sights, sounds, and  sensations of the American experience.”  It’s similar to Williamsburg, VA, in that it seeks to  recreate a time of the past.  In Ford’s Bagley Avenue Workshop, an early pre-assembly line  plant, we enjoyed talking with the host who had worked for Nissan in Tennessee.  He was  quite knowledgeable about Henry Ford. He showed photos of several autos Henry Ford designed, but the businesses behind them failed for various reasons. Some of his partners wanted to build an expensive car, but Ford wanted a car that was reliable and inexpensive that people could afford. His Model T was that car and the rest is history.

Now we’re leaving behind the Great Lakes region that was the focus of our trip.  We’ve seen how the economy of this region revolves around the iron ore mines of the Iron Range of Minnesota west of Lake Superior, railroads that haul the ore to processing plants where it’s made into taconite pellets, the Great Lakes freighters that carry the taconite to the end user, the automobile industry in Detroit.  There’s also the traditional fishing industry that we became aware of as we enjoyed local fish like walleye, trout, Atlantic salmon, and whitefish.  And we’ve seen much beauty and amazing geological features like waterfalls, Pictured Rocks, sand dunes, and three of the Great Lakes. 

Happy first day of fall to all!  We’ve seen a few early signs of fall in Michigan, including the maple tree in the adjacent photograph which we shot on September 14 at Sleeping Bear Dunes National Lakeshore.