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
