A Full-time Life

WAY DOWN ALONG THE CALOOSAHATCHIE

April 26, 2009

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. Silly looking thing!

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, IT’S ALL ABOUT THE SUNSET..

April 19, 2009

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.
PALM ISLAND BOAT TRIP (the rest of the story)

April 11, 2009

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

April 4, 2009

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.

(Click on the pix)

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!
AT THE BEACH – CAPE HAZE

March 28, 2009

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.
A REAL WINTER POST (GUEST PICTURES)

March 15, 2009



Winter is simply not something we do any more. In fact, we've been spending the season where it's warm and dry for so long now that the idea of snow and cold has completely lost its appeal. (Although we used to ski a bit, that appeal was never terribly strong anyway on my part.) And now, like all snowbirds, we both really really hate getting cold.  Sometimes it's even hard to remember what time of year it actually is.

BUT when our grand-daughter Kelsey sent pictures from an Oregon trip she and her husband took in January, it made me long for a magic carpet. It would have been so much fun to spend the day with them (from the warmth of the ski-lodge of course).

Kelsey and Bradley live at Vandeburgh AFB in California — and they had gone to visit their folks (our daughter and son-in-law, Cyndi and Jeff) in Alvadore, Oregon. These pictures are from their family day-trip to Hoodoo Ski Area, which is about two hours east of where our Oregon kids live.

So just to celebrate the end of real Winter everywhere, I thought I'd share these pictures.

Left: Three ways to get down the slopes at Hoodoo Ski Bowl. That's Cyndi on the right, with the snowbike, and Kelsey and her husband Bradley — with skis and snowboard.

Our son-in-law Jeff and grandson Jacob, just before they hit the slopes.

These pictures were so much fun to look at because, of course, there are times when we miss seeing our family and it's great to have their pictures.

But when I look at the snow and remember that it is as cold as it is beautiful — and that the rain in the lower elevations of western Oregon lasts such a long time….and can be so wet and dismal ….

and then remember how much we've enjoyed Florida sunshine this whole winter, it makes me feel pretty darn good about where we are.

Still wish I'd had that magic carpet though.
MATLACHA

March 7, 2009

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.
OUR FLORIDA BOAT

February 28, 2009

As soon as we reserved our Winter spot at Upriver RV Resort — and saw that it was on a canal — we started talking about buying a boat when we got here. It took us a while after we arrived to find the perfect one (where perfect means: runs well, has a cabin,galley, and head, is clean and well-kept AND is affordable). In other words, one that cost less than it was worth.

Bill did the research and had a couple of brands picked out. We looked at those (and some others) at every dealer in the Ft. Myers area and made two out-of-town trips to look at boats that were advertised on the Internet.   We bought our boat from one of those advertisers, a private owner in Titusville (where Cape Canaveral is). She was clean and well-kept, but needed some work. The boat (that's it, above, docked at its spot here at Upriver) is a 1990 Carver 23.7. She's about 26 feet long overall, and 9.4 feet wide, powered by a Volvo/Penta outdrive with a 260 hp 5.70 liter engine.



The table makes into a V berth bed, and there is another bed behind the curtain under the clock.  The enclosed head has a marine toilet, sink and shower. The cooktop operates on 120 volts or alcohol, and the refrigerator on either 120 or 12 volts.

We made an as-is offer after finding some things that we (Bill) knew would need immediate repairs. As soon as we got back to Ft Myers, we took it directly to the boatyard.   Of course the repair work cost a little more than we'd thought and (also of course) it took a lot longer than we'd expected.

But even including the extra repairs, we think we still did OK cost-wise. We are so happy to finally have her in the water! We are already planning to come back next year so that we will have a full-season of boating fun.

These picture are from when we went for our test drive (sea-trial we mariners call it) at the "boat hospital" after all the repairs. They put the boat into the water with the forklift, then used the slings to pull it and place on our trailer.

The picture at left shows the front of our boat; we are approaching the railroad drawbridge about 3 miles from our house. We were on our first trial run the Sunday after we brought the boat home from the repair shop. (This was the week before we went on the overnight trip with the boat club.) We just went out our canal and onto the Caloosahatchie.   This is all familiar territory that we pass on the road several times every week —

                                      but on the boat, everything is more fun.
OVERNIGHT BOAT TRIP

February 23, 2009

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.
FROM OUR LITTLE KITCHEN

February 14, 2009

There are millions of good recipes on the Internet. But those aren't as much fun as the ones that are connected to a story — when you remember where you got the recipe and maybe when you cooked it. A must-have in our little kitchen is a version of the family cookbook our daughter put together for us as a Christmas present years ago. She got tired of hearing me whine "someday I'm going to organize all those recipe clippings" and so she did it for me.   Her gift gave me the incentive to keep the book up-to-date and I've done that ever since, adding new favorites and food-sharing memories along the way. Its fun to remember people and places while I cook.

When we started our RV life, I updated the book by removing supersized recipes that easily fed a family of teenagers. Although I might never cook some of those early recipes again, the original version of the book is stored in Oregon with our photo albums and other priceless memories that we don't have room to carry with us in our home on wheels.  Here's our modified version with the original dedication page. (It really WAS quite a few years ago!)

The recipe below for refrigerator muffins is a "litened up" version of one we have in the original recipe book.

Here's something wonderful that I learned last summer. Muffins can be cooked in the microwave.   Wow! Why didn't I know this trick back in 1976 when we had six people who needed to get out of the house by 7 a.m.? It works just as well for two people with no particular schedule though (and is especially handy if we don't happen to be breakfasting at the same time).

I use a 6-oz pyrex custard cup and fill it a little less than half. It takes about a minute and a half in our nuker.   Last summer, I baked a dozen the old fashioned way because we were having company for breakfast. And it was our breakfast guest, our friend Anne Dryman, who told me about microwaving them. So I used the refrigerated half of the batter for microwaving individually. (The recipe says that the batter keeps up to two weeks — I kept it a little longer and we're still alive and well.)

The recipe calls for two cups of buttermilk. I can only find it in quarts — but you can freeze it for next time. Just pour the unused half into a freezer bag, seal and pop it in the freezer. Last week, I made the recipe again with the frozen buttermilk and it works fine. I have too much in the refrigerator this time though, so next time I'm going to halve the recipe.

Enjoy breakfast!

Lighter Version Refrigerator Bran Muffins

Ingredients

2 cups All-Bran cereal
2/3 cup wheat bran
1 1/3 cups boiling water
2 2/3 cups all-purpose flour
1 tablespoon baking soda
1 teaspoon ground cinnamon
1/2 teaspoon salt
1/4 teaspoon grated or ground nutmeg
Vegetable cooking spray
2 cups low-fat buttermilk
1/2 cup pasteurized egg substitute (The second time I made these I used 2 whole eggs beaten lightly)
1 cup granulated sugar
1/2 cup firmly packed light brown sugar
1/2 cup vegetable oil
1 teaspoon vanilla extract

(I added raisins to the batter at the end.)

Instructions

1. Mix cereal and wheat bran in a large bowl. Add boiling water, stir well and set aside 1 hour.
2. Whisk together flour, baking soda, cinnamon, salt and nutmeg in a medium bowl.
3. Preheat oven to 375F. Coat muffin cups with cooking spray.
4. Add 1 cup buttermilk to bran mixture; stir well with a whisk. Add remaining buttermilk, egg substitute, granulated sugar, brown sugar, oil and vanilla, stirring until smooth.
4. Add flour mixture; stir until a thick batter forms.
5. Fill each cup with 2⁄3 cup muffin batter. Bake 20 to 25 minutes, until puffed and lightly browned. Makes 2 dozen muffins.

Recipe by Bruce Weinstein and Mark Scarbrough, Relish the Healthy Table, "Waves of Grain," Sept. 2008.

Nutritional Information (with the egg substitute)

Per muffin: 150 calories, 5g fat, 0mg chol., 3g prot., 26g carbs., 2g fiber, 250mg sodium.