Fort Lauderdale

Next year Trish Kelly and I are going to sail from Toronto to the Bahamas. We will leave during the last week of August and return around the last week of June 2015. Plan A is to arrive in Fort Lauderdale around the middle of December and fly home for Christmas. If we do this we would like the children to visit us in the Bahamas. For the teacher/parent kids this means March Break. They would have a week to fly down get a tan and fly home. The trip would require at least two airplanes which is a nuisance with two young children.

Plan B requires getting a larger boat as seen below.

Just kidding. Plan B would have Trish Kelly and I stay in Florida and have the children come there for Christmas. With this in mind we had a road trip to Fort Lauderdale. We were looking for a marina with a hotel. We needed a pool and possibly an easy walk to the beach. The first place we found was Coral Ridge Yacht Club. I had thought it was more marina then Yacht Club, but turned out to be a real Yacht Club. A very friendly Dockmaster showed us around. She said they had reciprocal arrangements with a number of clubs. They also had a number of Canadian members, no one I recognized.
Coral Ridge was perfect, but a bit of a walk to the hotel and a long way to the beach. The next place was Bahia Mar Yachting Center. It was a large marina where the Dockmaster told us she should have no trouble fitting us in this December. I have included a couple of pictures below.

The pool has a nice place to have lunch and is beside the gym.

Kelly and Trish at lunch

The hotel is nothing special but very nice and perfectly acceptable.

Fort Lauderdale beach just across the road.

The hotel behind their walkway over the road to the beach

You can never have enough pictures if boats

Lets play ball

For some time now I have wanted to go to a spring training game. I am not a big baseball fan. If I am at a game in Toronto I will root for the Jays, but I seldom go to games. This is part;y due to the fact that our family is very busy sailing during the summer.

once a year we try to get our good friends the Thurbers to a game. Bill was raised in New England and is a true Red Socks fan. He has indoctrinated our youngest daughter Kelly, who is a big Red Sock fan now.

Our rental home is in Bonita Springs which is about 20 minutes from Jetblue Stadium the home of The Red Socks. This past Tuesday we headed out to see Boston tale on the Marlins. The day was perfect and the seats were excellent. The game was made even more enjoyable by our neighbours who while being Boston fans did not gloat over the Maple Leafs collapse last year in the Stanley Cup against the Bruins.

I will stop talking and let you see the pictures.

Jetblue Stadium It was built 4 years ago

Trish and Kelly ready to cheer

Game on

Boston is ready to hit it out of the park, but did not

Not even Ortiz could save the day

The stadium is built to be a Fenway with good weather. This is an exact replica of the Green Monster

Boston was safe here but lost the game 5 - 4

The fans leave satisfied that at least the defence was good. If you look closely you will see Tor is tied with Det

Some of the critters we have seen

I thought I would send you some pictures of animals we have seen.

A frog in Key Largo

Some kind of Bird in Key  Largo

A Pelican in Key Largo

A Crane in Bonita Springs

An Alligator just around the corner from the house we are renting

A Cormorant bathing in Aligator water

A Turtle swimming in Alligator water

A Turtle in the pond at the mall

Gold fish in the mall pond

More turtles in the mall pond

A better picture of our neighbourhood Alligator 

On to Naples well not exactly more like Bonita Springs

We regretfully left the Keys and headed north west. On the way we went right through the everglades were we saw a number of air boat rides but no where you could just stop and see alligators. With Sally our GPS we had no problem finding the home. As we arrived Ella the neighbour was waiting for us with the garage door open.

We had a brief chat but said we would have her and her husband John over but for now stand back. When we open the trunk it might explode. It was very full.

The first morning we went to the gym and did our exercise routines. Our next job was to pay the rent. Our kind landlord said just send a check. We realized that we did not have a check, we use checks very seldom. We went to a Wells Fargo, but they had no understanding of a bank draft or money order. They had no idea at all how we could send money to Chicago.

Our next step was to visit a Bank America branch. They were much better. The teller and the manager knew exactly what we were talking about, but there is always a but. They could not sell us a bank draft because we were not customers. What are we going to do we asked. They scratched their heads and said this is a tough one. Wait a minute we could give you $5000 in cash.

So Trish said OK lets get the cash. We showed them our drivers licence, but here we go again. Their policy was two pieces of identification. We needed picture ID. Our American Express Card has our picture, no that doesn't count. Do you have your passport. Yes but not with us they are back in the house.

So we go back to the house get our passports and back to the bank get the money. We cross the road to the Post Office and ask to buy a money order. Sure they say how much? More then $3000. Oh you have to give us personal information. Do you have a Passport. Yes. Excellent do you have an American drivers licence? NO! Don't worry just give us your social insurance number. We are Canadian, you know your faithful ally from the north. We could give you our SIN number. OK but first I have to phone to check if the computer will accept that. Thirty minutes later the nice lady returned to say she had checked and the computer would not accept a SIN number.

What to do. OK just give us $3000. Done. Now my husband wants a couple of thousand. OK could you have him fill out this form. I assume he has an American drivers licence or a Social Security Number. NO! Well then NO! We were stymied. I now cannot tell you how we got the rest of the rent money for fear of being deported. By the way the money order cannot be for more the $1000. This means we, Trish, had to fill out a number of forms, three at the first Post Office. It took us over 4 hours to get a money order to send to the landlord to pay the rent, who would have known.

The house is not in a golf community which I would have preferred, but is excellent. Plenty of room for the three of us. I will include some pictures which will help you understand the home and community we find ourselves in.

I will do a post on the wild life tomorrow.

One of many bridges over the lagoons

One of the many lagoons

The club house across the lake

Jacksonville and on to the Keys

After visiting Charleston and Beaufort we had an uneventful trip to Jacksonville. We did get a picture of a plan tree in front of our hotel 

Palm tree in front of The Holiday Inn in South Jacksonville.

 Tuesday the home we had decided to rent was not ready, so we went to the Keys. It is a long drive to Key West so we decided that Key Largo would be a good representative  for the keys. On the way we stopped at Palm Beach to see the houses and the beach. We saw no big homes but did get to see the beach and Atlantic Ocean.  Just as we got to the west side of Miami we hit a toll road. The nice lady in the booth asked for 45 cents at the first stop. From that point on we had our picture taken. The signs said they would mail us a bill.

Palm Beach

Palm Beach looking at the beach

 When we got to the hotel it was not all that impressive. It looked tight and one story. The store in the lobby was closed and there was no action around the bar and dinning room. A very nice lady said that because we were card holders she had upgraded us to a pool room. As she was telling me the best way to get to the room was to drive to the back of the hotel we saw Trish and Kelly coming in the front door. The nice lady said leave the car were it was at the door and take the bags to the room. The three of us had a very nice walk to the room.

This is the walkway to our room.

The pool

 The hotel while on the main Florida Keys road also bordered a lagoon. Boats in the lagoon came in from the ocean. They were met by the pelicans.

Pelicans

The boat in the picture below is the African Queen built in 1912 and featured in the movie with Humphrey Bogart, Katharine Hepburn, Robert Morley, Peter Bull.

More pelicans and the African Queen

The lagoon

The street behind the hotel

A pelican

A little frog I almost stepped on.

The other end of the pool just in front of our room

Just as we were leaving Trish noticed we had a banana tree outside our room.

At the end of one of the roars there was an opening and we could see some of the nicer homes with there private beaches.

Right behind me as I took the shot above was a coconut tree.