Sunshine and more sunshine

2/20/14

Wow, we've certainly had a perfect weather here!

Here we all are back at Mike and Mary's. Poor Jill is still sick, not so much from the pneumonia as from the antibiotics. The first ones made her so sick that she couldn't function at all, so last night we picked up anti-nausea drugs and a different antibiotic for her. She was OK this morning, even spent some time in the pool. After lunch she took the new antibiotics, and now she's sick again.

Upside down jellyfish

Gerry and I had a fine time biking and kayaking around Lido Key yesterday. Two hours of biking through the neighborhoods of the very wealthy, and then two hours of kayaking. The bay is so shallow we weren't required to wear life jackets: The guide said, "If you fall out, just stand up!".

Mangrove tunnels

The cormorants here have learned that if they dive in the shadow of the kayak they can, for some reason, get more fish. So there they are, literally right up next to the boats, diving underneath us and resurfacing so close you'll hit them with the paddles if you're not careful. Cormorants have beautiful emerald green eyes. Who knew? We also got to see some "upside down jelly fish". which instead of floating around, plop themselves in the mud, with tentacles upwards.

Ibis on Sanibel

The mangrove tunnels were fun to paddle through, so narrow and winding that it's easy to get your kayak paddle stuck in the branches. I finally broke down my paddle and only used half of it, like a canoe paddle. These tunnels are actually manmade, as are most of the islands here, Lido Key being an exception. Our guide tells this story: Ringling, of the circus, is a big name here, and he apparently created some of these island thinking he would retire some of his tigers, elephants, and such to them. Until someone told him they could swim. Then, no one wanted to live here because of all the mosquitoes. So they used diesel oil to kill them off. Then no one wanted to live here because it smelled like diesel. Finally, the army corp of engineers had the idea of letting salt water into the formerly fresh water bay, cutting paths through the brush so that the salt water could circulate through with each tide, killing off the mosquitoes (and incidentally I suppose all other wildlife that doesn't like salt water).

Some sort of egg casing? about 8-12 inches Across

2/23/14

I've just been too busy, or too tired, to write.

Mike and Mary

Up until last night the three of us were still at Mike and Mary's, with Jill still recuperating. Gerry and I did a little riding around their neighborhood, and saw a bobcat mom and two kittens cross the road in front of us!

Hershey

Finley

Jill at the George resort

Then we spent a wonderful day out on Sanibel island. I would love to stay out there for a few days, but all of the lodging I could find on the internet was a bit out of my price range. I was on Sanibel 40 years ago and was afraid I'd return to find it all built up with skyscraper hotels and tourist ticky-tacky. But instead, at least a third of the island is now wildlife refuge. There are bike trails all over the island, and we rode at least 30 miles....until almost dark, in fact. Although Florida has a reputation for being a dangerous place for bikers, the cars where the trails cross the street have been unfailingly polite everywhere we've ridden. The only car that did not stop for us was on Sanibel when it was almost dark, and even then he stopped after I waved at him.

The only disappointment was that the main road through the Ding Darling wildlife refuge was closed for the day, closed every Friday to give the wildlife a break from the traffic.

M & Ms beautifully decorated home

Yesterday Gerry and I took the short drive up to Venice, to ride the Legacy trail. It's only 7 miles long but worth a visit, a bit like riding through jungle, all palmettos and pines and palm trees. We did the 14 mile round trip and then rode a bit further along the intercostal waterway. We had planned to ride the five miles or so out to the beach but we both just ran out of steam. Then we ended up riding another 6 miles out of our way to find a coffee place, only to discover that it had closed at 3pm. These savages down here!

In Sarasota

Yes, it's a rail trail

This morning Mike, Mary, and Jill drove up to meet us and have brunch. We loaded our three bikes back on the car and sent Mike and Mary home, while we drove back to Clearwater to drop off the bikes. If you every need to rent bikes down here, I highly recommend Chainwheel Drive. It was $100 to rent a nice hybrid for a week, and another $25 for a rack to carry the three of them. They were very accommodating and, even though it is not there normal, policy, let us rent racks for the back of the bikes for about $10 each.

Now here we are back in Tampa, awaiting our flight home tomorrow. The hotel near the airport is unexpectedly very nice, right on the water in fact, with its own tiny beach and, lo and behold, a Starbucks just a 10 minute walk away.

This trip was an experiment in seeing if I could do a WomanTours trip on my own, for a lot less than WomanTours charges. The answer is yes, with a lot of buts:

But you need at least 3 people willing to share one hotel room.

But it takes a couple of 8 hour days to plan the hotel, car, bike, and plane reservations,

But you need someone to drive sag, or all of your bike rides will be out-and-back, as ours were.

But, you probably won't be able to ride directly to your hotel to shower and collapse, because you've got the car to deal with, and loading and unloading the bikes.

But, you've got to shell out the extra bucks to rent an SUV, to insure that your vehicle has space in the back for your luggage, as you won't be able to access a trunk with the bike rack on the car. Plus another $11 per day for each extra driver.

But, it's about another 8 hour day to research bike routes, print out or send for maps, make kayaking reservations, etc.

But, you have to find your own place for dinner every night, which can be a royal pain in the butt in the tourist areas (aka everywhere) down here.

Overall we probably saved about $800 apiece over the WT trip. Personally ( since I did all of th organizing) I think I would gladly pay them the extr $800 for the joy and relaxation of having to do nothing but bike, eat, and sleep.

 

 

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Piña coladas on the beach

The only hills on the trail

We had piña coladas on the beach earlier, followed by two drinks with dinner, and now I'm having a bedtime brandy. If I'm not entirely coherent, that's why. I promise to cut back again next week, honest....

Sunshine skyway

Tonight Gerry and I are at the Helmsley Sandcastle hotel on Lido key. Jill, on the other hand, is recuperating from bronchitis/ pneumonia at wonderful Mike and Mary's house about 40 miles south of here. The three of us stayed there last night after Jill's diagnosis at the walk-in clinic in st Pete yesterday . Gerry and I dropped her at the clinic yesterday morning before taking off on a 35 mile ride out to Fort Desoto. On the way back I called m & m, who graciously agreed to let Jill recuperate there for a few days.

Dali museum, st. Pete

Vickie at lido beach

Sunset, Lido beach

Yesterday's ride was the nicest so far, all on trails or marked bike lanes, much of it through St. Pete residential areas, raised trails through pond areas where it seems ilike we should've seen manatees or alligators, and then a long causeway out to Fort Desoto, with white sand beaches. Then we had a sunset drive over the beautiful sunshine skyway (some of you may remember the top section of this breaking due to a freighter collision, in 1980, aand a few cars driving over the edge. They've fixed it since then.) and down to m&ms house in North Port.

I quite like st. Pete and would have liked to spend more time there. It is definitely a "living" downtown, with lots of sidewalk cafés, restaurants, museums ... The Dali museum is impressive even from the outside....And many bike trails both along the waterfront and through town. And of course the climate doesn't hurt.

Skyway trail, st. Pete

As for where we are tonight: although the beach is lovely, I don't think I would come back here. The Helmsley sandcastle is not at all what I expected, doesn't look like anything has been updated since the 80s. We tried to get epresso at the hotel this afternoon and they wanted over $9 for a double espresso!!!!! So, we ended up walking almost 2 miles back to St. Armand's circle, which was just a total zoo, with cars line up in both directions and every place crowded with people. After asking for directions 3 times and finally finding Starbucks (apparently the only coffee place in the whole town), we waited in a long time and then there was no place to sit. I couldn't get anyone to give me a glass of water, they had no napkins,and their toilet wouldn't flush.

Still, the walk back, barefoot on the beach watching the sunset made for a lovely day.

Tomorrow: kayaking through mangrove tunnels.

 

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Spoonbills, Starbucks , and Sun Sun Sun!

I've been too busy, or too lazy, to blog the past few days, so here's a bit of catch-up.

Kris and Max

Thursday morning I got to see Sam, Kris's son, get his drivers license. He got 100% on the test! Way to go, Sam!

Afterwards, Kris and I took off for North Port, where we spent the night at cousins Mary and Mike's house. They retired down here five years ago from Flint MI, to a beautiful home in the country. Mary is a consummate garage saler and decorator, and the house is like a museum, but a very comfortable one. They call part of the house their "guest wing", with two guest bedrooms equipped better than the finest B&B. There is also a large screen room, an outdoor extension of the house, also beautifully decorated and with a heated pool. Their two dogs, Hershey (labradoodle), and Finley (Scottish terrier?) are just sweethearts. I especially fell in love with Hershey, who kept looking adoringly at me with her big golden eyes. Mary fixed us a fine salmon dinner and we spent the evening talking, about an hour of which was the three of them trying to convince me that all my liberal ideas are wrong, and vice-versa. We called it a draw.

Nauti Nancy's

Friday morning I drove Kris back to the outskirts of Orlando and dropped her at a mall where husband Bob would pick her up later. Then I headed back to Tampa, in plenty of time to pick up Jill and Gerry at the airport. The three of us then spent two nights in Tarpon springs. Yesterday we picked up our rental bikes, and Gerry and I rode the northern half of the Pinellas trail. Unfortunately, Jill came down with the flu a couple of days before this trip, so she spent most of the day resting and did not ride.

Gerry on a scenic diversion from the trail

This morning Jill was feeling a bit better, so the three of us started out on the southern half of the Pinellas trail. Jill turned around after an hour or so, which worked out perfectly, as she then drove the car into downtown St. Pete, where we are staying tonight, while Gerry and I continued on the trail to meet her.

Warm, sunny, scenic

Someone's valentine

The Pinellas trail is wide, smooth, close to 40 miles long, flat except for overpasses, and very easy to follow. Parts of it are quite scenic, and parts of it aren't. It's a nice enough ride, but I wouldn't go out of my way to do it again. I think living in the PNW leaves me a bit jaded.

 

This made Jill feel better...

I do think the southern part of the trail is the nicest, much of it through tree lined residential areas. Crossing a long bridge, we stopped to watch a dolphin and many brown pelicans. A roseate spoonbill sat down and visited with us briefly, as did a flock of Ibises and a big turtle.

Starbucks are few and far between here, but we did manage to find one in St. Pete, just 3 blocks from our hotel. We are staying at the Ponce de Leon boutique hotel, right in the center of downtown. This is a very active downtown with lots of sidewalk cafés and restaurants, and the hotel is one of those delightful shabby chic places. I thought the rooms might be tiny, but we have a two room suite with two bathrooms and plenty of room for our three bikes. Somewhat worrisome is the fact that we have no way to lock our rented bike rack onto the car and we are just parked on the street. Oh how I hope it's still there I the morning!

 

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Vacationing at the dentist

Here I am at cousin Kris's house, sitting by the pool in my shorts and sandals, eating a starfruit that we picked up from under a tree down the street. Life is good.

We went to Hamburger Mary's for Hambingo.

Yes, life is good even though I spend the first morning of my vacation and the dentist. I've been having some pain for the past few weeks but by Sunday night, when I was at the hotel waiting for my flight the next morning, it had become severe. So I called Kris and asked her to make me an emergency appointement here in Orlando. They poked and prodded and determined that the pain does indeed seem to be coming from the new crown I had installed recently. They sanded on it a but to adjust the bite, and if that doesnt do the trick I guess I am in for a root canal. Dont know if I will be able to delay that until I get home or not. Right now I am still in a fair amount of pain, but hopefully that's mostly because they torked on the tooth quite a bit this morning. I am taking regular infusions if ibuprofen and hoping for the best.

Meanwhile, I have been doing a bit of self medicating with whiskey and a warm cat.

"

We did some nice walking, talking and shopping today, with 17 year old Sam as our chauffeur. He's a pretty good driver, if a bit of a lead foot. But he is a teenage boy, after all. This morning he's going to get his license!

 

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Trip logistics

Here I am at Seatac, awaiting my flight to, hopefully, warmth and sunshine. They're forecasting another big winter storm to hit a good part of the south today, but theoretically it should be staying up in Alabama. And Chicago, where I change planes, is sunny with only a 10 percent chance of snow, so perhaps I will squeeze through this narrow window of decent weather.

It's certainly not decent here. We had an inch or two of snow yesterday morning, our first (and probably only) of the winter. And although the snow is pretty much gone now, it's 38 and raining this morning. A good time to get out of here!

I will be visiting cousins Kris in Orlando tonight and tomorrow night, then driving to North Port, just north of Fort Myer, to visit cousin Mary for a couple of days. Then back up to Tampa to pick up Gerry and Jill, who are flying in from Seattle to meet me. The three of us will spend about ten days bicycling, mostly on trails, along the Gulf coast.

I am the tour director for this trip, and I've used WomanTours' Florida tour as an outline. They charge about $2800, and I think we will come in at a little over half of that per person. Still, we certainly don't have all the benefits they do, and I would highly recommend any tour that they offer. Just the effort of organizing this trip is probably worth a good $400.( Luckily, I do mostly enjoy the organizing.)

We will rent bikes in Clearwater, and they have promised me a rack that will carry three bikes to go on the rental car. With the rack on the back, we wouldn't be able to access the trunk, so I reserved an SUV. When I first made my reservation a month or two ago, the cheapest SUV I could find was close to $1200 for two weeks. But I checked again a few days ago and got one for less than half of that! I've found it's always a goo idea to check and recheck car rental prices.

And airfare too, if you're flying Southwest, as I always do. If you find one, you can change to a cheaper flight with no penalty. You also get to check two bags for free, and my experience has been that if I stop at the restroom before going to the baggage area, my bag is usually there on the conveyor waiting for me. Flights are on time, flight attendants are friendly, checkin is easy. Last fall I left my coat on a plane, and they actually found it and sent it back to me! Southwest, you're welcome for the advert!

Back to the bike rental. Oddly enough, I could not find any place that rents bikes with racks on the back. The place I finally rented from wanted us to buy racks for $55 apiece. I finally got them to agree to loan us racks for the price of installing and uninstalling them, which will be $40 total for the three bikes.

Following the WomanTours outline, we will be kayaking one day, through mangrove tunnels where manatees hang out, but probably not this time of year.

I've got hotels all reserved, all but one either through hotels.com (a couple more and I will be elegible for a free night), ChoiceHotels, or Best Western. The one exception is a boutique hotel in downtown Tampa. I've used hotels.com quite a bit in the past and have had good luck with it. I have NOT had good luck with Priceline.com for hotels, but sometimes with cars, although this time Priceline wanted a lot more than Alamo.

As long as I'm doing free advertising, Dish Delish has become my favorite place at Seatac to buy food to take on the plane. They package stuff so it doesn't leak, they don't use those stupid clumsy clamshell things for their sandwiches, they have a great Mediterranean quinoa salad, and their water bottles have the nice close able spouts on them instead of just a screw top.

And while we're on that subject, if you fly through Chicago Midway, be sure and stop at Nuts On Clark for possibly the best popcorn in the world. Just follow your nose.

Ok, enough with the advertising. Gotta get on the plane.

 

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Winter in Michigan

View of my dad's house from across the frozen Chippewa River

More frozen river

My favorite tree, winter version

More frozen river, and my favorite branch of my favorite tree

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Michigan trip report, very late

As I am just about to leave for Florida, I'm finally getting around to publishing stuff I wrote about my trip to Michigan,which I returned from 3 weeks ago.
Jan 21st 2014
It was clear blue sky and just below zero when I left my dad's place this morning. The drive to detroit had more sun than I've seen all week, but that's fine as the clouds kept the temperature mostly I the 20's. I have really enjoyed my one-week winter in Michigan this year. This is the way I remember winters here as a child. Snow on snow on snow, river frozen, 2 feet of ice on the lakes. The river would've been excellent skating (if I wasn't afraid I'd kill myself doing it), as a thaw and some rain a couple of weeks ago refroze to create a surface like a mirror. One year when I was a kid I remember skating up the river on a moonlit night, smooth ice under 2 inches of fluffy new white snow. Bonfires on the river. My dad clearing a skating rink for me with the tractor. Snowmobiles buzzing up and down the river at all hours.


I did go for a short walk on the river this year, but turned around when I fell. Too slippery for an old lady to walk safely. But I did plenty of walking in the woods. 8+ inches of snow (and no snowshoes) makes for a good workout. I bought a great Cabela's down coat (at my thrift store, for $15) to bring back here, but I got too hot wearing it when doing any activity outdoors. Most days, near the midpoint of my woods walk, I had do shed my coat entirely.

My poor old dad, who can barely walk anymore, had managed to use his snowblower to clear paths to the garage, trash barrel, and bird feeders. Unfortunately the remaining snow on the sidewalk to the garage had hardened into nasty, bumpy ice. I spent about an hour per day salting, picking at it with various shovels, re-salting, until I finally got down to mostly bare pavement, so hopefully he can get out to the car safely.
The trash and the bird feeders are another story. I bought him 3 big garbage cans to sit right next to his door, one each for trash, junk, and garbage. These, for you city folk, are three totally different animals. "Trash": Anything that will burn; "Garbage": Anything that will either compost or, more likely, be eaten by various critters; and "Junk": tin cans, stuff too toxic to burn,and anything else that will eventually get hauled to the dump. My dad will literally burn anything that can burn, including all kinds of plastic, old polyester blankets, old radios. I've begun to veto a few of those but really have little hope of changing his mind on cottage cheese cartons and the like. At least he does save his newspapers for recycling, and Michigan's "bottle bill" has him returning most drink bottles to the store for money. The birds will likely have to forage for their own food until there's a thaw. Traditionally we have the "January thaw" but I think that's come and gone this year without much effect on the snow level.

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