Southern Camping Trip 2024 / Day 30

Moore Haven KOA

Moore Haven , Florida

Wednesday, February 29, 2024  

Monarch Butterfly at our friend Roberta's garden in Ft. Myers.

Marc-  Happy Leap Year.  Glad to have an extra day to enjoy this year.  We used it to visit our friend Roberta who lives in Ft. Myers.  The traffic was heavy at rush hour but without the crazy aggressive driving of the Ft. Lauderdale area.  We spent some time walking around Roberta's Cypress Cove residence and her garden.  We also went out in search of Florida oranges and found some "honeybells" at Sun Harvest.  Ft. Myers also has an excellent New England Restaurant named "Clam Bake" where we had dinner (the owners are from Rhode Island).  I could not believe that they had Ipswich clams.  

Hawk at Cypress Cove.

Partial view of Roberta's garden.

View of the Cypress Cove Residences from the gardens.

Happy after our soft serve orange/vanilla ice cream at Sun Harvest.

Sue-  We visited Kay's Quilt Shop in Ft. Lauderdale.   It had a good amount of gorgeous fabric and more beautiful batiks than I usually see in a quilt store.  There was a sailboat batik that called to me, and a fun cat fabric, but I resisted.  I do not need a thing and I did not buy a thing for a change.  This store had a few quilts hanging up.  Several of them were their "Sassy Sunflower Half Pack Kits," which are 5 half yard cuts that will make any of their sassy sunflower quilt patterns or a "cute tote."  None of them did anything for me.  There were some nice old sewing machines used as decorations.  The ladies who worked there were very nice, and kindly let me know of a couple of quilt shows coming up.  In theory we could go to the one in Naples that is March 1 and 2, but I don't think we will.  Overall I was either not in the mood or just didn't get a super awesome vibe.  I will give them a B+.

Quilting space in camper.

Southern Camping Trip 2024 / Day 29

Moore Haven KOA

Moore Haven , Florida

Wednesday, February 28, 2024   

Moore Haven campground sunset.

Marc-  Today was another travel day so there is not much to write about. We left Fort Lauderdale in late morning and stopped for lunch at a small park in the village of Moore Haven on the banks of the Caloosahatchee River that connects Lake Okeechobee to the Gulf of Mexico.  We found a nice picnic table with a roof for shade from the strong Florida sunshine.  The town provides free dockage to visiting boaters.  We saw only one trawler tied up and saw no boats traveling on the river.  Our campground is about 15 miles East of the village in Cattle Ranch country.  On our way up from Fort Lauderdale we passed through about 100 miles of sugar cane fields.  We passed by field harvesting of the cane and a processing plant.  The fields are burned before harvesting to decrease excess foliage and to sweeten the resulting sugar cane.

One of many trucks seen today transporting harvested sugar cane.

Offices of the largest Sugar company in Clewiston.  This town is also known as Sugarland.

Young sugar cane.

Turtle that kept us waiting to enter the Moore Haven campground.

Some of the large campers here.  

These huge coaches are towing huge trailers.  Wow!

Southern Camping Trip 2024 / Day 28

Fort Lauderdale KOA

Davie, Florida

Tuesday, February 27, 2024   

Mission accomplished:  a new anchor windlass from a marine surplus warehouse in Fort Pierce.

Marc-  We left early this morning for a rush hour drive 2 hours to Fort Pierce to obtain the long sought after windlass.  Traffic at rush hour here is just as bad as Boston traffic except the highways here are massive things with 10 lanes across.  We made sure to return to our campground before the start of the afternoon rush hour.  There was one very pleasant stop on this trip at Lake Worth Beach where we met up with our friend Annie Donnelly for lunch.  Cafe Tecun is a wonderful Mexican restaurant with great tacos right in the downtown.  After lunch we visited Annie's shop called Bali Importers.  The name describes the place well since almost everything there comes from BALI at very affordable prices.  

Decoration on the wall at Cafe Tecun.

The City had many street paintings left over from last weekend's Street Festival.  Annie pointed out that local businesses do very well when the City makes several streets "pedestrian only" during the festival.

Southern Camping Trip 2024 / Day 27

Fort Lauderdale KOA

Davie, Florida

Monday, February 26, 2024  

Margaritaville Resort, Hollywood, Florida

Hollywood Beach

Incredibly clear water.

Marc-  Lest you all think that we are just wasting away in Margaritaville (we did visit the new resort today), we are on a mission to find salvaged boat parts to repair or replace our non working anchor windlass on our boat CODA.  We have been visiting various marine salvage and/or surplus yards looking for the elusive parts for our 1996 Lewmar Windlass.  Today we discovered that the parts are no longer made and very difficult to find in the used market.  What you do is go to these places in look in various bins for gears and gearboxes and shafts.  The diagrams and photos below will help explain.

This is our old anchor windlass (above deck).

These are the windlass parts, some of which have either corroded away or bent.

The working end of the actual windlass.  The gearbox to the right of the motor is frozen. 

The circuit breaker that helps identify the windlass we need.

We did get a lot of help from the Parts Manager of the Sailorman salvage yard in Fort Lauderdale today.  Unfortunately we came up empty handed except for him finding us a new replacement for big boat dollars.  We didn't buy.  The search continues.  We moved on to Hollywood Beach.

Margaritaville is a creation of the late Jimmy Buffet.  He has a number of these resorts in tropical climates based on his songs and themes for living the good life.

A wave flow machine "ride" at the resort.

This kid had great balance (all the adults fell soon after starting).

One of the lyrics of a Buffet song explains blowing out a flip flop and stepping on a pop top.

Margarita Glass Chandelier

Meanwhile back at the campground we have an ugly duck visitor.

Southern Camping Trip 2024 / Day 26

Fort Lauderdale KOA

Davie, Florida

Sunday, February 25, 2024 

Riverwalk on the New River in Ft. Lauderdale.

Marc-  We started out touring by truck this morning from Los Olas Boulevard to Route A1A up to the Beach and North to Del Ray Beach where we stopped for lunch in a park by the ICW.  I thought Sunday morning would be quiet but loads of people were out for early farmer's markets and walking as well as spending time on the beaches.  The weather was fantastic with a light sea breeze and temperatures in the 70's.  We came back on Route 1 seeing many shopping areas and stopping near the New River in Ft. Lauderdale for a walk on the beautiful Riverwalk.

Los Olas Boulevard

One of several canals that pass beneath Los Olas Boulevard.

End of Los Olas and beginning of Ft. Lauderdale Beach.

DelRay Beach Park beside the ICW with considerable free docking space.

Limitations on the "Free docking".

We enjoyed our lunch watching the ICW traffic.  I noticed that most of the boats were Center cockpit fishing type boats with massive outboards on the back.  Several of the boats were too large to fit under the nearby drawbridge that had only 6 feet of vertical clearance.  The highlight was seeing a German flagged sloop with pilot house cruising North.

German flagged sloop 

This sign was in front of the park and was a bit confusing.  When most power boats are making 25 to 30 miles per hour they are generating a large wake.  The ICW is quite narrow here yet if you are in the center you could be more than fifty feet from shore therefore this is not much of a restriction.  

Art along the New River.

Several bridges of this type along the New River.

You see a variety of boats on the New River.

A gondola

 A free water taxi.

Red Ginger along the New River.

We even saw Green Parrots that were squawking (apologies for the poor quality photo but I have never seen them in the wild before).

Perhaps best of all we found an excellent Gelato shop on Loa Olas boulevard.

(The raspberry chocolate was heavenly.)

Southern Camping Trip 2024 / Day 25

 Fort Lauderdale KOA

Davie, Florida

Saturday, February 24, 2024

Fort Lauderdale / Port Everglades Inlet from Dr. Von D. Mizell-Eula Johnson State Park.

Marc-  Today we explored areas where we had visited on a Holland America Cruise Ship in 2018 and on board Lucy III in 2020 and 2021.  The waters are incredibly clear and we cannot get over the aquamarine tint.  There were several large cruise ships in port and one was the sister ship of the Holland America ship from our cruise.  Our neighbors at the campground left today for a cruise on this Holland America ship.  They are from the Northern end of Vancouver Island, British Columbia.  

The Dr. Von D. Mizell-Eula Johnson State Park sits on the barrier island protecting Port Everglades where many Cruise ships and Container ships dock.  The Intracoastal Waterway also passes on the West side of the island.  It makes for a busy place. Fort Lauderdale International Airport is just to the West of the Port area and many planes were flying overhead today.  The Island is a fantastic resource here with its mangroves, sea grapes and gumbo limbo trees.  It even has a navigable creek that cuts though it: "Whiskey Creek." I do not know how we missed this place when we came South in the Lucy III.  The Island has a large launching ramp with tie up area in the North and a full service City Marina in the South (unfortunately a 20 foot vertical clearance bridge keeps sailboats out of the marina).    

Sue and I enjoyed lunch at the Whiskey Creek Restaurant (the fish and chips were excellent).  We also walked on several trails and the beach for 3.3 miles.

Holland America Cruise Ship across from Whiskey Creek.

Whiskey Creek Hideout Restaurant on the left.

View from our table.

Note jet overhead (jets kept coming every in a steady stream).

Several views of Dania Beach.

Northern part of Dr. Von D. Mizell-Eula Johnson State Park across from the Cruise Ship Terminal.

(Photo courtesy of Google.)

Sue-  Today we visited Once Upon a Quilt in Ft. Lauderdale.  It is a very nice full service quilt store.  The ladies who work there are so nice and helpful.  The 2 quilts pictured below have a lot of embroidery in them.  They were hanging up high, which is why the photos are not so great.  On the Halloween one Marc noticed something fun on the tombstone near the bottom right:  "Here lies an unfinished quilt.  May it rest in pieces."  Near the center there is a purple patch that says "Broom parking only.  All others will be stitched in the ditch."  Another says "Here lies Alma Scraps."   

They had a lot of gorgeous fabric, including Kaffe Fasset, Tilda, Riley Blake and Tula Pink.  I spent a lot of money on Tula Pink Alice in Wonderland fabric called "Curiouser and Curiouser."  I found a pattern awhile ago that is all books, and the woman who created the pattern made her quilt in this fabric.  It is a 2016 line, so I did not think I would ever find it.  I got 7 different fabrics in the line.  I am rating this store an A+.  They even had Cinderella's coach (full of bolts of material and other cool stuff) and a glass slipper, in keeping with their fairy tale-like name.