Spring Has Sprung!
Go out there, weather permitting, and welcome the arrival of Spring. I pre-celebrated by going for a walk.
Spring Has Sprung!
Go out there, weather permitting, and welcome the arrival of Spring. I pre-celebrated by going for a walk.
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A pair of signs that made me smile. |
What?!? You thought we wouldn't get more travel magnets on our recent roadtrip? Of course we did. We did keep it more under control limiting the number to sixteen new magnets. Actually, we could have bought more. We never got a Florida, Tennessee, or Missouri magnet (we did get an Arkansas one). We didn't get any in Mobile or Birmingham (we did get a few in Memphis). But we did get a few cool magnets this time around.
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Hemingway House. |
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A nice piece of Key West art. |
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The semi-3D Lorraine Motel magnet. |
I enjoyed our roadtrip but it was tough, emotionally and physically. There is no way to visit three Civil Rights Museums without being torn up emotionally. These are not happy places. The rest of what we did - Key West, manatees, NASA, diamond digs, visiting family - didn't quite balance it all out. It's hard to balance so much injustice.
Our roadtrip felt a lot harder physically than other roadtrips we've done in the past. This one was 4,360 miles (7,016 km). The longest, probably our Route 66 trip, was longer but not by much ... 300 miles or so longer. That one went from Omaha to Chicago to Santa Monica, CA to San Francisco and back to Omaha. I don't remember it feeling as hard as this latest roadtrip did (this could be selective memory's doing). Part of it may have been age ... Route 66 was almost twelve years ago ... but I think how we arranged activities and driving was a major part.
On this trip we arranged the activities for the mornings and saved all the driving for the afternoons. I think this made the driving portions too long. If we did it again, planning the activities for the early afternoon would work better as it would split the driving into morning and afternoon legs. The activities, be they digging for diamonds or visiting a museum, would break up the long and tedious driving.
There is evidence for this. The days between Birmingham, Memphis, and St. Louis were all shorter than four hours driving and none of them felt terrible. It was the ten, eight, and seven hour driving days that exhausted us.
Things don't stay the same. We are getting older. What was once easy may not be so easy anymore. Live, learn, and adapt.
I've gone back and updated the Roadtrip posts. I added pictures to a couple and altered the text a little bit on a few more. I added pictures of the mangrove kayak and the manatee snorkeling to my 2023-01 Key West Roadtrip Google Photos album.
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The Gateway Arch looking east. |
We went through the museum portion fairly quickly before watching a movie documenting the construction of the arch. The movie felt like the cheesy films we used to watch in school in the pre-VCR days which is probably when it was made.
After the movie we got in line to go up the arch. Getting here early on a Tuesday morning has its advantages as the line was only eight people long. The elevator/tram that takes you up 620 feet (189 m) to the top consists of five tiny cars that hold five people each. The Wife and I had a car to ourselves. The door is glass but, since the tram runs on the inside of the concrete and steel arch you only see the interior staircase on the way up. Apparently before 1967 walking up the one thousand and seventy-six stairs was the only way to the top. The tram is described as a combination of an elevator, escalator, and a Ferris wheel. You can feel the cars rock a little as they follow the curve of the arch.
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St. Louis, Missouri looking west from the top of the Gateway Arch. |
After coming back down we raided the gift shop for shirts and magnets before heading back to the road. The Wife had developed a wicked cold over the past day so I would be doing all the driving today. The sixish hour drive back home was uneventful as the ice storm that had been forecast went south of our route.
This roadtrip felt very long and I will confess that I was ready to go home somewhere around day nine. Not sure why it felt so long. I may have some thoughts about that in a later post. Suffice it to say the Wife and I learned some things this trip.
Photos can be found in my 2023-01 Key West Roadtrip Google Photos album.![]() |
The Lorraine Motel where MLK Jr. was assassinated. |
The museum, located next to the Lorraine Motel where MLK Jr. was killed, gives the place more meaning. As you work your way through the museum, knowing what is coming at the end, gives more importance to all the exhibits.
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True then and true now. |
UPDATED 02-04-2023
Day Nine
We had some breakfast and headed to the Kennedy Space Center. We arrived right before the parking lot opened and thirty minutes before the gates opened. We ended up being first in line. They opened the gates and we walked to the bus tour terminal. We were following advice the Wife had read suggesting it was best to do the Bus and the Apollo/Saturn V exhibit along the route first before it got crowded. The advice turned out to be right.
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The Saturn V rocket with the insignia of the moon missions. |
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A SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket being transported for reuse. |
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The Space Shuttle Atlantis. |
We ate some lunch and hit a few smaller exhibits about Mars and commercial space partners. We finished with an attempted shopping spree in the "Largest Space Store". I say attempted because nearly every shirt I liked was not available in my size. We still managed to leave with three shirts and several magnets.
The rest of the day we drove back to the Wife's cousin's place for the night. Google Maps tried to steer us away from congestion but just managed to add an extra hour to our travels. The algorithm does weird things sometimes. We filled up the car with family heirlooms to take back home to distribute to others in her family.
Day Ten
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A manatee and friends. |
We found one early and we all got in the water. It turns out it was warmer in the water than on the boat. I got some good pictures of the feeding manatee and large fish in the area. The manatees are huge. Almost hippopotamus size fully grown. I won't post pictures until I get home and have a chance to process the pictures on my camera.
We got back in the boat and froze out patootees off. I developed the most severe case of the shakes I've ever experienced. We did get some relief when we poured cups of hot water inside our wetsuits.
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Momma and baby manatees ... they stay together for almost five years. |
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A memorial to the victims of water cannons made more poignant by rain water running down her face and chin. |
Day Eleven
It was raining off and on this day when we drove into Birmingham to take a civil rights tour of the city. We met with the guide and one other tour member and had an interesting combination of walking and driving tour of the civil rights history of Birmingham. The area was in iron country and back during the civil rights struggles the Klan had access to dynamite. The result was fifty - sixty bombings against civil rights leaders giving Birmingham the nickname of Bombingham.After the tour we drove towards Memphis, Tennessee in the pouring rain. We were grateful that the hard rain held off until the end of our tour. We stopped for the night just outside the city.
Tomorrow we drive into Memphis to visit their civil rights museum and the Lorraine Motel where Martin Luther King Jr. was assassinated. We are hoping the upheaval caused by the recent killings by police there doesn't hamper our plans.
Photos can be found in my 2023-01 Key West Roadtrip Google Photos album.Today was a driving day. We slept in late and left the Keys heading north-east towards Titusville, Florida. The last twenty-four hours have resulted in a few changes to our Itinerary. We decided to cancel our crawl through a cave near Birmingham. We moved the Civil Rights tour a day earlier. This gives us a less hectic final four days of our roadtrip. The cave may have been interesting but I don't think it's going away anytime soon.
We arrived in Titusville a bit earlier than we usually do each day so we looked for things to do. There is apparently only two things to do in Titusville. One is to watch rocket launches from Kennedy Space Center - there are none at the moment. The second is night kayaking through bioluminescent plankton which really looks cool - the plankton is seasonal and peaks between July and September so none for us. We ended up just driving around looking for a cute downtown (none was found and what we found was closed early for some unknown reason) until we stopped to get milkshakes.
Speaking of hectic, I don't expect I will be posting over the next couple days. I will try to catch up when things slow down a bit.
Over the next few days we will be visiting the Kennedy Space Center, snorkeling with manatees, and doing a Civil Rights tour in Birmingham, Alabama. Hopefully I will find time to post after the tour.
Photos can be found in my 2023-01 Key West Roadtrip Google Photos album.![]() |
Sailboat. |
The day started with a flash. My alarm went off. I turned it off and got back in bed. We both just laid there with our eyes closed trying to decide if we wanted to get up when we both saw a flash. Since our eyes were closed we have no idea what the flash was. The sliding glass door was covered with a heavy curtain and the bathroom door was closed blocking the only other window in our room. We both got out of bed but saw nothing (no sparking or scorching) and smelled nothing (no smoking electrical fire) so we decided it must have been Robert the Creepy Doll's fault and we got dressed.
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Which way? |
From there we went to Fort Zachary Taylor Historical Park ... not for the fort but for the connected beach. We spent four hours sunning ourselves. Well, the Wife sunned herself. I sat in the shade of a rented umbrella while I read my book (My feet and calves were exposed and they did burn to a crisp). It was a bit windy but it was a nice 85℉ (29℃). We had some rain yesterday and there is rain in the forecast tomorrow so things worked out for us. (Thank you Robert?)
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How I spent my Key West vacation. |
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Kayaking through the mangroves. |
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Southernmost point. |
First stop here was the Southernmost Point Marker. Not much to see here really except a large painted marker. Still cool though. So far we have been at the most southern, western, and the most central part of the United States on our travels.
Next we walked to the Hemingway house and learned about the writer, his life, and his wives. We saw the famous Hemingway cats - there are now fifty-seven of them - who are famous for having extra toes. One cat we saw had one extra toe on the front paws and two extra toes on the back paws.
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Where Hemingway did a lot of his writing. |
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Robert the Doll. |
We returned to our car and drove to the Fort East Martello museum home of Robert the Creepy Doll. This museum actually was fun. We usually don't like museums but this was an eclectic mix of all sorts of random stuff including Robert who was, in fact, a very creepy doll. The scary music right out of a bad horror movie set the atmosphere perfectly. We also saw junk art and a few iguanas sunning themselves on the fort grounds.
We ended the day with a relaxing sit on out back porch watching the sun go down over Duck Key.
Tomorrow we return to Key West for some beach sitting and, perhaps, a few more stops in town.
Photos can be found in my 2023-01 Key West Roadtrip Google Photos album.![]() |
Sunset over Duck Key. |
UPDATED 02-04-2023
Day Three
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Mobile - Home of Mardi-Gras |
The tour took us to places where once stood successful African-American businesses that were destroyed and turned into parking lots and vacant lots in the name of 'urban renewal'. We learned a lot of history on this tour and it was all heartbreaking.
Outside the welcome center, where we started the tour, was Mardi-Gras square. Mardi-Gras in Mobile, Alabama pre-dates the one in New Orleans. The Christmas trees in the square and welcome center had been redecorated in the purple, yellow, and green of Mardi-Gras.
We left Mobile around noon in the rain and drove to Tampa, Florida to visit with the Wife's aunt and cousins. That drive felt like it took forever. This was likely because a lot of it was either in the rain or in the dark ... or both.
Day Four
Day four was spent with family at Mass and eating lunch at a great tapas bar/restaurant. Most of the day was spent chatting about all sorts of things which is what we do when family gets together.
We walked around the block, bought lemonade from some girls' lemonade stand (we overpaid on purpose), and ended the day with a homemade chili dinner.
It was nice having a day where the Wife or I didn't have to drive.
Day Five
Day five was a travel day. We drove from Tampa to Long Key in the Florida Keys. The drive wasn't that bad until the last hour. A bus had stalled on a bridge between keys. The traffic was backed up ten to twelve miles and what should have taken us less than twenty minutes took over an hour.
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The view from our back patio. We share it with a few other rooms and at least one pelican. |
The day ended with a steak, mac'n'cheese, and asparagus dinner at the Florida Boy Bar and Grill. It was one of the best steaks I've had in a long time.
Tomorrow we kayak in a mangrove forest and explore Key West. I forgot my SD card adapter so pictures I take with my waterproof camera will not be posted until I get home. Sorry. Silly me.
Photos can be found in my 2023-01 Key West Roadtrip Google Photos album.![]() |
Our stop of the day. |
We arrived, rented our screens and shovels, and headed out to the plowed field to look for our fortune in diamonds. I figured we would be there for two to three hours. After about an hour I was done. We kept at it for another half hour maybe before we decided to quit. We didn't find any diamonds. The Wife found some quartz and some calcite that both look very diamond-like but aren't valuable. I found out I wasn't patient enough to be a prospector.
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The diamond field is periodically plowed to help stir up the diamonds. |
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It was a chilly day but the filtered sun was warm while we unsuccessfully hunted for riches. |
Tomorrow we take a tour of Africatown and learn about the Clotilda, the last slave ship before driving on to Tampa, Florida to visit family.
Photos can be found in my 2023-01 Key West Roadtrip Google Photos album.
UPDATED 02-04-2023
I got up early to clear the half inch or so of snow and spread deicer before we got on the road. The road conditions were not nearly as bad as we expected. Thank you Mother Nature for that.
The first part of the drive was kinda boring. The vacation feeling arrived when we stopped at a Waffle House for brunch. As the Wife says, the vacation doesn't start until you eat out in a restaurant you don't have back home. We aren't picky ... Waffle House fit the bill.
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The Waffle House ... the unofficial start to our vacation and famous for the Waffle House Index. |
The vistas continued into Arkansas. The last couple hours took us up, over, and around mountains and valleys. Small towns, where churches outnumbered the people, added variety to the scenery. The churches have names that look like someone tossed a bunch of semi-religious words into a bag and then randomly drew four or five and strung them all together.
Despite the gorgeous views, ten hours of driving through four states can be draining and I was drained (and a bit irritable) by the time we got to our hotel in Nashville, Arkansas. My only regret on this day was not stopping at the Walmart Museum in Bentonville, Arkansas. It was a long driving day and it would have been hard to fit in. (I'm only somewhat kidding here.) Looking back I think we should have divided the driving over two days to make it less exhausting.
As I upload photos, you will be able to find them in my 2023-01 Key West Roadtrip Google Photos album.
Today the Wife and I are heading out on a roadtrip. We are heading to the south ending up eventually in Key West. We will be visiting the Wife's Aunt and cousin who live in Tampa along the way.
The Wife has planned an incredible itinerary for us. Here are a few things we will be doing over the next couple of weeks:
Seventy-Five. That is the number of travel magnets we purchased on our travels through Israel, Turkey, Egypt, and Ethiopia. It was a long trip with many things to see but that number still feels a bit excessive, even for me. There are also some accidental duplicates (i.e. two magnets commemorating the same place) but that really doesn't account for the number. There were just so many places to commemorate.
The magnets are a mix of generic and unique. I always prefer the handmade one over the generic photo magnet but handmade ones can be hard to find. Here are a few of my favorite ones:
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Jars similar to the ones the dead sea scrolls were found in. |
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A hand painted picture of a Gulet. |
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I hated my camel ride but I like this camel magnet. |
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The face of an Ethiopian woman. |