All of our days are watery while we're here at Upriver. For other WATERY WEDNESDAY posts visit this link.
Our little canal goes straight out to this beautiful river. Life is good.
We are still spending a lot of time working on the cottage. But it is worth it. Because we're here – on this River that we love.
When we took our boat down the channel here on Fern Ridge Lake this past summer, it was easy to forget exactly where we were. It's a day-dreamy kind of thing to do anyway and sometimes it reminded us a lot of when we were out on the water last Winter in Florida. There really are some similarities.
And a lot of differences.
OREGON (not an) ALLIGATOR
And here is one of the differences: We could tie our boat up to the "alligator" in the bottom picture. Not advised for the one on the top.
Click here for more water views (usually without alligators): Watery Wednesday
We took the boat up to the Caloosahatchie Regional Park the other day, just for a picnic lunch. It's past Franklin Locks, the first river lock we went through on our boat trip with the club. We did it all by ourselves this time!
These are just some other river pictures, mostly taken from the boat. We love this river; it's like another world out here — but not so far away from home that we can't go there often! The best kind of other-worldly experience.
Every few miles, you pass one of these "bird islands." There will be island after island with no birds at all, then one where all kinds and varieties seem to live. I don't know why they like this piece of real estate better than the one just next to it. We see egrets, ibis, herons, pelicans and others and this bird which we've never seen anywhere before. It's a wood stork.
The boaters from Upriver go to lunch about once a month. This is our "armada."
The restaurants we like are all the fancy ones, of course. (If you don't believe me, click to enlarge the picture below and read the classy decorations!) Seriously, we love being able to go to any restaurant (whether by land or water) without dressing up! We're from Eugene, so this stuff is right up our ally.
The Waterfront restaurant, which is at the southern end of St. James City on Pine Island, actually has excellent food and an interesting history. Ponce de Leon came ashore near here first on his unsuccessful search for the proverbial Fountain of Youth. Even without that though, its still a fun place to hang out.
Many of the restaurants that are on the river have a tiki hut theme. This one is called Coconuts. We even saw a place where you can buy a pre-made tiki for your backyard. There are tons of houses on the various canals around town, so they probably sell quite a few.
The house in this picture is for sale for five million dollars or so–but it doesn't appear to have a tiki hut. One of the ladies on our last boat lunch joked that maybe we could all go together and buy it. (She definitely needs to get some different friends!)
We all agreed that none of us needs this house anyway. Because we can see the same river from our boat — and even from our spots at Upriver Resort.
It really is a great life here.
Key West is all about the beautiful sunsets. Well, sure, that and some of the most tawdry T-shirt and souvenir shops you've ever seen and pretty close to the most places in the country to get Adult Liquid Refreshment. It's a fascinating combination of uber-tackiness and coastal charm.
The daily viewing of the sunset at Mallory Square encompasses both. Tourists and locals pick good viewing places and actually applaud the nightly sky show! Buskers provide entertainment leading up to the big event. There's also much free entertainment along Duval Street, the main shopping street (and famous for its bars as well).
(Click to enlarge these pictures.)
America's Southernmost City, Key West is only 90 miles from Cuba. (It's over 130 miles from Miami, closer to Cuba than to the nearest US big city.)
We took the Key West Express passenger ferry from Fort Myers Beach — a three hour one-way trip. As soon as we stepped off the boat we jumped on the Conch Train for a good guided tour overview. After that we took a cab to the inn where we were staying and from then on, we walked everywhere.
Key West is a great place to walk and during our two-night stay we covered most of the City's neighborhoods on foot. Lots of history and famous people to learn about, lots of very eccentric people (past and present).
Ernest Hemingway wrote many of his novels here, Jimmy Buffett sang, Mel Fisher found treasure and established a foundation and museum.
Key West is famous for the wild chickens that run around town. They used to be more plentiful — maybe somebody got hungry for more than eggs.
It was fun to see all the weirdness of Key West, but we also really enjoyed the quiet neighborhoods. It has been a while since we just walked around in an urban setting.
Here are a few more Key scenes.
Since our trip to Palm Island Marina Resort, we've put an uneventful boat trip or two under our lifebelts. So I've stopped shaking and now we can tell the rest of the story. (Click Here to read about the fun part of the weekend.)
Truly, we had no problems getting to this beautiful resort and, as the post says, we loved our weekend there. This picture is of our friends Don and Patty in front of us going through the Boca Grande swing bridge on the way. The water was smooth and the sun was shining.
Coming home Monday morning after our lovely weekend, though, it was a different story. We hit high winds and big waves in Charlotte Bay. Water was coming over the top of the bimini and suddenly we completely lost all power. It was too rough to go out on the bow and release the anchor. Bobbing around in the water was NOT fun at all. We were in radio contact with the other boats in our party and we had our Boats US Insurance card. We used our radio to call for a tow. It really didn't take much more than an hour for the trusty rescue boat to arrive. But it seemed like forever. Don and Patty stayed with us circling around until they knew we were safely on tow. That was above and beyond the call of duty in those conditions. We were so grateful. I guess it really wasn't as long as it seemed because they were able to catch up with the rest of the group at their lunch stop.
Here we are under tow. Not really the way you want to go into port, but we sure were happy to see him.
The Tow Captain decided conditions were much better to the north–(back the direction we had come from) and took us to Gasparilla Island Marina, about a two hour tow. Going as slow as we had to on the towboat line, the waves and water didn't seem as frightening, so the scary part of the trip was over at that point. (Except for wondering how many dollars we would spend.) Thank goodness for having that towing insurance though. The Tow Captain told Bill it would have cost $700.00 without the insurance.
The problem was fuel again. We had dirty gas in the tank because we had filled it with gasahol. The sloshing from the waves caused the alcohol to loosen the accumulated crud in the tank, and the fuel lines plugged. The Gasparilla Marina let us stay overnight in a boatyard slip. It was actually an interesting afternoon and evening. Lots of boats and activities to see and interesting characters who work there to talk to. The picture below is part of the marina's massive three and four-story covered boat dry storage facility. Some yacht-owners pay as much for for storing their boats as we do for living in our RV.
We walked to a grill-type restaurant across the lot from the marina to eat and in the evening walked about a mile into the tiny village of Placida just to look around. We talked to some people from Germany who had gone out to near where we lost power and decided it was too nasty to continue, so they returned and docked their rental sail boat in the transient side of the marina. They were hoping for it to clear up because they were only on a short vacation. (It's good to be retired; we had plenty of time!)
Very early the next morning the fuel people arrived and wow, here's a job I don't think would be fun at all. They crawled into the mid-berth of the boat, took out a hatch,opened the tank at the sending unit and circulated all the gas through a hose to a filtering machine. In about two hours,they were able to clean out the residue in the corners of the tank, polish the gas and put it back in. If it had been too fouled up to be saved, they would have disposed of it properly. Because of the new fuel standards, this has become a new full-time industry for a few people around marinas.
Bill also took the props to be reconditioned and replaced them before we put her back in the water. So we're good to go now.
Florida boating has been quite an adventure so far — moments of sheer beauty and complete calm punctuated by moments of sheer terror! We are working to eliminate the latter.
Lover's Key is just one of dozens of natural areas that are an easy day trip from Upriver.
It's a Florida State Park on Black Island, one of a string of barrier islands that used to be accessible only by boat. The story is that the Key was named because, back when it was more remote, only lovers had the incentive to boat out to this solitary beach.
It's a lot easier to get to now — just a few miles down the Fort Myers Beach road. And there are amenities that make it easily usable — maybe not so romantic for young lovers, but easier for the rest of us.
The boardwalk above leads to a two-mile long beach. There are also over five miles of walking trails on the Island. When we first started our walk on one of the trails, we spotted this gopher tortoise digging her trench. These tortoises have shovel-like front feet, which they use just like the animal they're named for. This one was about 15 inches long.
There were gumbo-limbo trees along the trail we were on. It is also known as a "tourist tree" because the bark is red and peeling like some tourists. This one looked like it had a snake in it:
We drove to Lover's Key on a Sunday afternoon after a lazy morning of reading the paper over breakfast and vanilla lattes. We like knowing about natural areas that are easy to get to without a lot of advance planning. Sometimes you just want to go outdoors and play!
We spent last weekend at Palm Island Marina at Cape Haze. What a beautiful place to welcome spring.
Cape Haze is about a four hour boat trip from Upriver. For this trip we went down the river, following the Intercoastal Waterway north across Charlotte Bay to the cape.
The beach is on an island across from the Marina that is accessible only by boat. It is covered with shells! We took a water taxi to Sunday brunch there. There are some condos and just the one restaurant and gift shop. There are no cars; the condo people get around only on golf carts. Brunch was good, the company was wonderful and the beach was absolutely beautiful. Below are some pictures of the Marina where we stayed.
Our group had the pool and deck to ourselves on Saturday night. There was a nice barbeque grill and we had a potluck for the rest of dinner.
A manatee whom the harbor-master has named Miss Molly hangs out at the marina. She is huge — about 12-15 feet long. She likes to hang around the docks because the boats provide a source of fresh water, which manatees love. You are not supposed to treat these endangered sea creatures like pets, but this one is old and lazy and won't leave her sheltered place. On her tail (below), you can see scars from past encounters with boat propellors. Which of course is why you shouldn't encourage them to think boats are their friends. Anyway, we did finally get our Manatee pictures.
(I couldn't back up far enough on the dock to get a picture of all of her at once.)
Our boat still is not working perfectly, but that's another post. We made it home safely and we had a great time at Palm Island.
Matlacha is a colorful artist and fishing village near Pine Island about 20 miles from Upriver. (The best way I can remember how to pronounce it is like it was a guy's name – 'Matt Leshay'.) There are a whole series of islands in this area. Every time you cross a bridge you are on a different one.
Pretty much everything in the village is on water, either on Matlacha Pass or a canal. The houses and shops on main street are mostly wood-frame old-Florida style. (Although there are some mansions as well.)
Andy's Island Seafood at Matlacha sells fresh and cooked local seafood. It is a really cool place that buys and sells only sustainable local fish. Click on the link — it's worth it.
We had a grouper sandwich there that was baked instead of fried and it was absolutely delicious. Another time, we brought home filleted fish of a kind we'd never eaten before–Pompano.
The owner of the market gave us a great recipe for cooking it. He said to melt a lump of butter slowly so that it wouldn't burn. Then put in a handful of sliced almonds and cook them a little bit. Then let that pan just sit on a cold burner for a while until the butter congeals. (At least long enough to have a glass of wine.) Preheat the oven to 375. Put each fish fillet on its own piece of foil, skin side down. Salt and pepper to taste. Spread the butter paste on top. Wrap the foil around the fish fillet in a sealed package and place both of them on a baking sheet. Cook 10 to 15 minutes. He said to serve the fish right on the foil, but I took it out and carefully poured the yummy butter/almond sauce on top of the fish and rice that I made to go with it.
I can't usually remember any recipe unless I write it down. I thought I would need a pencil, but he said I wouldn't need it and he was right! This was so good. I'm sure it would work with any mild-tasting white fish. Our fillets were about an inch thick.
Here is the "back yard" behind the fish market.
We took a good trip on our new (used) boat last weekend. We went with three other couples and boats from the resort and we had a great time. On Friday, we traveled from the dock here at Upriver Resort to Forest River, a new marina about 30 miles up the Caloosahatchie River. We docked here and spent the night on our boats. We found that we'd forgotten to pack a few things, but nothing we couldn't live without. Not bad for a first trip.
Saturday morning we traveled from Forest River to the town of Clewiston, about 35 more miles. This leg of the trip went through Lake Okeechobee at the edge of the Everglades. Lake O is the second-largest freshwater lake located wholly within the United States and it is a major part of Florida's water management system. It's beautiful through there, with lots of birds and alligators and beautiful scenery.
It's a good thing that there was a lot to look at, because it was on the Lake that the fuel filter on our good old boat got completely clogged up. It was the one thing that wasn't changed when we had the boat serviced. So we had to limp across the Lake on idle speed, restarting the boat many times when it died and hoping it would restart before hitting the rocks. The other couples we were with were good enough to limp along with us. Bill did a great job of piloting the slightly disabled boat and he really wasn't stressed at all. I did that part for both of us! I really did not want the boat to die in this alligator-filled lake, no matter how beautiful all the birds were!
We were only a couple hours late for lunch. We tied up at the Roland Martin Marina and had lunch at the Tiki Bar, where two other couples who had driven from Upriver were waiting for us. They said they didn't mind that we were late because the Tiki Bar was such a great place to wait.
I felt a lot less stressed after lunch. Because all of our friends were so nice. And because the Dockmaster found a mechanic to replace the fuel filter on a Saturday (at what turned out to be a reasonable cost).
And also the Tiki Bar makes a great Bloody Mary!
This is Little Man, the Dockmaster at Roland Martin Marina, talking to another couple that were with us. That really is his name; it is embroidered on his shirt pocket. This local character is a legendary dockmaster with a personality befitting a legend. He yells and screams and tells everybody what to do and when to do it, but it is OK because he is so good at his job — and because watching him really is quite entertaining. He used to be a cowboy in Montana and that is where he developed his skill with a rope. He ties up boats by throwing the rope around the cleat in a loop and figure eight from about six feet away, as if he were lassoing a cow. I would definitely not want to travel with Little Man, but I wouldn't mind if he were at the dock wherever we came in.
After lunch we went back to River Forest Marina again to spend the night. It was a quick trip that time. As one of the guys said "what a difference $100 makes."
On this trip, we had three locks to go through each way. You can see Bill hanging on to the rope as we go up this lock. You have to nose the boat alongside the concrete wall of the lock and then grab two ropes for the trip up (and down when we were coming back).
Sunday morning after breakfast we traveled back to Upriver. Docking the boat in our canal was a lot easier this time than it was a week ago when we took her out for a trial spin.
New experiences are supposed to be good for aging brains. Last weekend, we built up a pretty good store of them. And we had a great time doing it.
Lots of people spend their holiday vacation in this part of Florida and the roads near the Beach area are crowded. Since we're living here for now, we're going to wait until the tourists go home to visit more of the local attractions.
So we've spent the first week of the New Year in quieter North Ft. Myers, where Upriver RV Resort is located. Most of the time, in fact, we've just been hanging out at the resort itself. 
Staying home is definitely not a sacrifice! The weather has been beautiful. We're getting acquainted with a lot of nice people. This is a very friendly park with a lot of activities — some of which we have enjoyed already and others that we are signed up for. Things really start to get active in January in snowbird resorts. This is near the boat landing and informal group gathering spot. There is also a rec-hall building for scheduled activities. The Canal goes out to the Caloosahatchie and here you can see across to the power plant which is the one that warms up the river across from us, where we went to see the manatees during Christmas week.
The swimming pool is plenty big enough to get some exercise, or just float around looking at the blue sky. Which is pretty fun to do in January.
(Really, I'm usually wearing a swim suit when I'm here, but on this morning I was out on a photo-safari and just stopped by to say hi to people.)
The West side of Upriver borders on the Caloosahatchie Preserve. The official entry to this County Park natural area is down the road, but we found out last week that it's possible to walk into it from one corner of our park, making it easier to explore. It's a wetlands park, with a great variety of semi-tropical plants. So many that I'm going to do a supplemental picture post. It makes a lovely walking area.
The Upriver Canal is on the south side of the resort. The homes along it are mostly park models; we've rented a dock space for the boat we hope to have operable soon. (We're waiting until we get it into the water to post about it. So more to come — with any luck at all!)
Our RV is parked in the center area of the resort, so we have no view. It is euphemistically called the super-site area, or as some of the people in other parts of the resort call it–The Land of the Giants–but it's really just a parking lot. The sites are big enough so that you aren't right in your neighbor's space, and as the name implies, are long and easy to get into. It's very close to everything, so it isn't hard to walk to the canal or the natural area when we want a view — or to the pool or recreation room for the activities.
Below is the park egret surveying our house on his daily walk.
It's a nice place here. We'll be spending lots of winter days "at home" even after the holiday tourists leave. We're happy to be here.
