When We Could Travel – A Look Back (I)

Those were the days… Road trips!  Covid-19 hadn’t reared its ugly head, hotels and restaurants were functioning, group activities weren’t banned, no masks needed, etc. 

We’ve cancelled 2 road trips already this year and even extended day trips are a bit futile or risky, depending on your viewpoint.  However, we do realize that our ‘frustrations’ are of very minor importance in the grand scheme of the evolving crisis that faces the entire world.  We are lucky to have been able to travel in the past, to be where we are and to have each other.  So…in lieu of current travel, I decided that we’d just glance back at some previous trips and/or activities and enjoy the memories. 

This particular trip was in late February of 2008, a year before we retired down here in East Tennessee…

To begin with, you may be happy that a few years ago my computer crashed and my huge file of photos were lost somewhere in the ether.  As a consequence, all I have to work with are those photos that I actually had printed.  This considerably shortened my ‘virtual trip’ into the past.

So we were off to Florida for a break from Chicago’s winter and a bit of sunshine and a couple of family visits.  In Fort Lauderdale, we were wandering around the waterfront when I saw this ticket booth and decided that we’d take a river and harbor cruise.

I’m not sure whether we went on our cruise using Carrie B. Cruises/Harbor Tours Inc., or if I took this photo of the Jungle Queen because that was the boat/cruise line we used… I’m guessing that our tour was on the River Queen, a smaller cousin to the Jungle Queen.  The Jungle Queen can carry up to 385 passengers while the River Queen only carries 110.  In any case, you can see that it was a beautiful day for a ride down the New River in Fort Lauderdale and then over to Port Everglades.

Near where the New River meets the Atlantic Ocean and Port Everglades, there is an area laced with canals and luxury homes.  Those along the main channel are the ones that get the attention.  The cruise captains provide a narration as they go letting passengers know who owned or still owns some of the more notable homes.  Owner's names included Ray Kroc (McDonald’s), Herb Kohl (Kohl’s Department Stores, Wayne Huizenga (Waste Management) and Oscar Mayer and they are mixed in with celebrities and famous folks such as Burt Reynolds, Nick Nolte, Gloria Vanderbilt, Lee Majors, Dan Quale, Connie Francis and Michael Bloomberg.  Some of the homes are spectacular and others can be spectacularly garish…

For some reason I don’t have many yacht photos but they were lined up all along our route.  Steven Spielberg’s “Seven Seas” docks here as does the one owned by Paul Allen (Microsoft).

The yacht shown in the photo is the Itasca.  This 176’ long ship was originally built as a seagoing tug boat (Thames III) in 1961, but in 1981 she was converted into a luxury yacht.  She has a range of 13,000 nautical miles and she’s circumnavigated the globe 3 times.  When she was owned by former US Treasury Secretary William E. Simon, she crossed through the Northwest Passage across the Canadian north coast.  The Itasca is currently up for sale and the price was reduced before the pandemic.  It’s listed at $9,950,000 but I’m sure that you could make an offer!  It offers 5 guest cabins and you’d be served by a crew of 12…

To see just how the super wealthy enjoy their largess, you can check out a video and photos of the Itasca on-line at https://www.boatinternational.com/yachts-for-sale/itasca--89831.  I’m guessing that the helicopter comes with the yacht!

As we neared Port Everglades, the cruise ships loomed over everything although not being a cruising type person, I was more impressed by that big drawbridge but I did enjoy looking at that busy harbor.  Port Everglades is a truly critical economic center for South Florida.  Until Covid-19 reared its ugly head, it was the third busiest cruise home port in the world, handling more than 3,800,000 passengers a year.  It was also the busiest container port in Florida.  As for Laurie and I, we’ll continue to avoid those huge 3,000 – 5,000 passenger petri dishes…but Carnival Lines has a fully booked cruise set to go this coming August.  

The Clay E. Shaw Memorial Drawbridge was completed in 2002.  It opens on schedule every half hour and hour if needed but with a 55 foot clearance, it doesn’t open that often as many boats can just pass underneath it. 

Traffic in Southeastern Florida was and is a disaster…especially if you want to stay off the growing number of toll roads.  We just don’t like the traffic hassle and that’s why we rarely venture into the traffic overburdened big cities. I can handle it easy enough but it’s just too much of a hassle that we don’t need…especially when there are so many back roads across America for us to explore.  This bumper to bumper photo from 2008 was bad enough but our more recent ventures into the area, (visiting Key West for example), proved that traffic is even crazier now.

We drove on down US Hwy A1A for much of the way passing past a big boat show and all of the cool architecture in Miami Beach.  We didn’t stop though and taking photos from a moving car, albeit slowly moving, is rarely satisfactory.  Laurie did grab a photo of this famous (notorious) home along our route.  This was the home of famed fashion designer Gianni Versace.  Fifty year old Versace was shot execution-style on the steps of this mansion as he returned from a morning walk.  Andrew Cunanan was a ‘spree killer’ who had murdered 4 other men.  He then killed himself.

Because of Versace’s fame and the notoriety resulting from his murder, his home is now the third most photographed home in America…after the White House and Elvis’s Graceland.  Today, the property has been converted into a luxury hotel and restaurant, known as “The Villa, Casa Casuarina”.  It’s priced ‘a little’ above my pay grade.  If you’d like to dine here or stay in this famous former home, go to http://vmmiamibeach.com/,    

We were glad to get beyond the crazed but interesting Miami area.  Our next stop was in Everglades National Park.  This 1,508,976 acre National Park was created in 1934.  Unlike most other US National Parks that preserve unusual geographic features, the Everglades National Park was created to protect a fragile ecosystem.  It is the largest tropical wilderness in the USA and it’s the largest wilderness of any kind east of the Mississippi River.

The park is a ‘river of grass’ punctuated by sloughs, marl prairies, hardwood hammocks, pineland, cypress and mangroves.  It has a stark wild beauty to it… We spent the better part of the day exploring and taking photos.  Sadly, man-made structures meant to serve visitors to the park did not seem to be well maintained.  Underfunding of our National Parks is a huge problem that never seems to be addressed.  I’m sure the financial issues caused by Covid-19 will make this problem much worse… A hurricane that hit the park in 2009 damaged many structures to the degree that they were beyond repair…

We did see lots and lots of birds…but our best photos were of the alligators that seemed to be just about everywhere.  Some of them were huge!  I wonder who placed that warning cone next to the big gator on the trail… That big critter could really put a big crimp in a nice hike!

The park is the most important breeding ground for tropical wading birds in North America.  There are 36 threatened or protected species in the park including the Florida panther, American crocodile and the West Indian manatee.  It is also the home to 350 species of birds, 300 species of fish, 40 different mammals and 50 species of reptiles.

 

Note: In the last few years, a specific ecological disaster in particular has decimated both the reptile and mammalian population in the park.  Pet pythons have been turned loose is South Florida and they will attack and eat just about anything that they come across.  They can grow up to 20 feet long plus...and they have wiped out the small mammals in the area. To see a photo of an alligator and a python in a life and death struggle, check out this photo: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Everglades_National_Park#/media/File:Gator_and_Python.jpg.

For information about the Everglades National Park, just go to the website at: https://www.nps.gov/ever/index.htm.

Our next stop on this road trip was in Bonita Springs Florida where we met up with Laurie’s oldest sister Glenda and her husband Ken.  At that time they were regular winter weather visitors, escaping to Florida to ‘miss’ the worst part of winter in St. Louis Missouri.

Yes…this was us just 12 years ago.  We still called Mt. Prospect Illinois (the Chicago area) our home.  I was wearing long pants, something I almost never do anymore if the temperature is 55 F or higher.  No beard either!

One day when we were visiting Ken and Glenda, we decided to visit the Naples Zoo at Caribbean Gardens in Naples Florida.  This 43 acre zoo houses about 70 species and the main path through it is about a mile long. 

Tiger Forest provides a bamboo forest, the natural habitat for the zoo’s Malayan or Southern Indo-Chinese tigers.  The zoo is a participating member of the AZA’s Species Survival Plan for these tigers.  In the wild, there are probably no more than 200 mature breeding individuals remaining.  Other big cats at the Naples zoo include cheetah, lions, clouded leopards and Florida Panthers.  

The zoo features a lake called Lake Victoria which contains several islands that are home for the zoo’s primates.  Visitors can take a cruise around the islands or just view the animals from the ‘mainland’.  Most of the species featured are endangered in the wild.  Primates on exhibit include black spider monkeys, black and white colobus monkeys, brown lemur, buff cheeked gibbon, red ruffed lemur, ring tail lemur and Siamang.

We all had a nice time wandering through the zoo and I’m sure that you would too.  They are in the process of reopening as I publish this post.  To learn more about the Naples Zoo at Caribbean Gardens, you can just go to https://www.napleszoo.org/.

Our last stop before we dashed back to the airport for the flight home was in Englewood Florida.  That was the winter refuge for my son David II’s godmother Mary and her husband Henry.  Way back when, Mary was married to my stepfather’s second oldest son, Smith Thomson…but that’s a long and twisting story.  Mary has since passed on…

When we arrived back in Mount Prospect (just northwest of Chicago and north of O’Hare Airport), you can see what was waiting for us.  It was a pretty sight but it was like our punishment for leaving town!  While we do miss the restaurants and butcher shops along with the variety of dining options Chicagoland has to offer…we much prefer the mild winters, beauty and relaxing atmosphere that we now enjoy in East Tennessee…

Just click on any of the photos to enlarge them…

Thanks for stopping by for a brief and sketchy virtual road trip!

Stay Safe and Take Care, Big Daddy Dave