In and Around Islamorada Florida

Hi Everybody,

I have taken a little break from the posts since the last one but we are close to getting ready to leave to start North on the Intercoastal Waterway (ICW). We have had a great winter in Florida and the weather down here has been spectacular.  I have keep tabs on the winter back home and I am glad we are where we are this year.

We have done a lot of things.  We have been to Key West and Marathon several times.  We have been North to Florida City, Homestead and Kendal on various occasions.  We have had some work done on the boat with update to the salon sofa and new canvas over the cockpit. A little more mundane, we had to have a new water heater put in, Lenore did not want to take cold showers.

The events at the park have been good and pretty entertaining.  We had a nautical flea market that drew in excess of 5,000 people. There was a Bluegrass Festival and we did have an unscheduled duet encore one night during the week a little while ago.  We have had “Pops In The Park” (a couple of times) and Candy and I have watch some high school baseball and Wednesday night is slow pitch softball night.

Today(Saturday) at Founders Park is Woofstock. This is essentially a dog event that started 5 years ago and just keeps growing.  They have musical groups every hour during the whole day on 2 stages and several events for the dogs like a tank for the dogs to see how far they can jump into the water and a race track like a greyhound track with a mechanical rabbit and you can enter you dog, pretty entertaining.  A lot of booths for pet adoption services, pet supplies, souvenirs and a couple of food booths. There are dogs all over the place and Candy did pretty good walking around Woofstock.

We have made some new friends with Phil and Jeannie from Georgia/Tennessee and we were re-acquainted with many of the long term marina residents.  We even had a visit from John and Deni from Blarney Castle.  We traveled with them on the first loop on the Mississippi/Ohio/Cumberland Rivers.  Great couple but unfortunately they ran aground in the lower section of the Tenn Tom and it took several months to repair their boat.  They are on the east coast of the US moving north with the summer and south with the winter while going back home for family weddings/graduations/etc.  They are going to take several more years to complete the loop.

All the restaurants down here with patios(most) are dog friendly.  Candy thinks that is a great idea.  We don’t do it all the time but she has been to a number of different places and enjoyed them.

Stay tuned for the postings as they will start next week.