Sanibel & Captiva Islands & Everglades

It has been a while since I updated. We are thoroughly enjoying our time in Florida. The pictures below is just a sampling of what we have been doing the past few weeks. While in Ft Meyers we drove over to Sanibel & Captiva Island such a beautiful place white sand beaches and homes unbelievable homes, we found a chapel by the sea that was quaint had lunch at a funky little place, food not so good, but, sometimes that happens. We met up with Steph in Miami had a nice brunch at the Savoy Hotel in South Beach (groupon find) then afterward Steph and John took an air boat ride, I didn't go to chicken, I guess that was a good choice. John and Steph both said that while viewing an alligator it lunged at the boat. Yeah that would have done me in. LOL

We then drove to the Big Cypress National Preserve and saw so many alligators. They are the scariest looking creatures I have seen. They seem to have this little smirk like come a little closer and then snap got cha...

We are now in the Keys and just loving all this wonderful sunshine.
Click on the picture to enlarge it

Mexico Beach, FL

and surrounding beach communities

The sun is shining and the weather is great. We got up this morning and decided to check out some of the local beaches an of course head over to Apalachicola for some local oysters. We had read that one of the top 10 oyster bars was about 30 miles from us we had to check it out... We also noticed that out of 10 we had been to 2 of them. Boss Oyster is a funky joint the restaurant sits right on the Apalachicola River and we sat outside on the deck. The oysters were quite big, very tasty, but, I prefer the smaller oysters, of course this did not stop us from each having a dozen. We then headed over to Cape Sand Blas, because that is where the #1 best beach in the US is, well its beautiful, but, so are all the beaches we have seen on the gulf including Alabama. We actually preferred the beach in Mexico Beach FL the sand was snow white much softer no rocks. The sunset picture was taken at Mexico Beach. The Lighthouse picture is from St George Island. We stumbled across the worlds smallest police station- in was in Carabelle, Fl that is the picture of the phone booth it was the police station until 1960. Now that is a roadside oddity.

We had a busy day and it was a lot of fun checking out a lot of funky little beach bars and restaurants. On our way home we stopped at shrimp stand and bought some fresh shrimp for dinner.

Tomorrow we will be moving on... Orlando is our next stop .....

Out n About in Alabama

An Easy drive from Biloxi today. Staying at the SKP park in Summerdale, nice park. The gulf beaches are spectacular and all the colorful house very picturesque. Notice on the pictures how white the sand is, it looks like snow, while its cold enough to snow, it is sand. After a full day of traveling we headed over to Lamberts Cafe in Foley and had some buns thrown at us. John had the fried Chicken, I had catfish the portions are more than plentiful and we had left overs, Yep, even John…. We found some wonderful restaurants while in Alabama, Bimini Bobs in Daphne not a chain restaurant owned by a local. The food is fresh and cooked and seasoned to perfection. The menu is mostly seafood with a little Caribbean flair. The coleslaw had mangoes in it really good. We also went to the original Oyster house in Mobile, The oysters we so good and so was the seafood gumbo. Both restaurants sit overlooking the bay.

We drove over to Pensacola to tour the National Aviation Museum at NAS Pensacola. Home of the Blue Angeles . GREAT museum, we had a tour of the flight line, and then took a guided tour of the museum. This is always fun to hear personal recollections'. One of the most interesting facts about the museum is that no tax payers $ are used for funding. One major contributor is the owner of Enterprise car rental- the story goes something like this…. Fellow joins the Navy and is a fighter pilot assigned to the USS Enterprise, after his tour of duty, opens up a car rental business and names the business after the ship he loved that is how Enterprise Car Rental got its name, then hears about the museum and donates 10 million $$$. as told by the tour guide. One last interesting bit of info- the restaurant in the museum Cubi Bay Cafe, This was an actual officers club in Cubi Bay Philippines until a volcano erupted and destroyed the base. When the navy went over to clean up they brought back what was left of the officers club tables, chairs, plaques, portions of the walls and the entirebar. Thus recreating the restaurant inside the museum. I suppose you could say it’s a museum inside of a museum.

That just about concludes our visit to Alabama's Gulf Coast, except to say we will be back BUT it will be during the heat of the summer. Its a shame its been to cold to really enjoy the beautiful beaches.

Gulf Coast

Mississippi

Finally the sun is shining in the south again... all is good...

We toured The Stennis Space Center. This space center was established in 1963 to test the stages of the rockets that took Americans to the moon. Today the space center tests all space shuttle main engines as well as rocket engines for future spacecraft. In addition to engine testing this complex also houses more that 30 different agencies; department of defense, the national data buoy center, and the EPA. The Naval Oceanographic Office houses one of the fastest supercomputers in the world!!

Below are pictures of the the shower facility and toilet in the space station . The pictures of the towers are the testing facilities for rocket engines the engines are strapped down and tested.

Diners, Drive ins, and Dives

The shed BBQ and Blues Joint was featured on an episode of DDD

The place was a fun and funky kinda place!! There was some disappointment of the food, however the Chicken and Ribs were absolutely the best very moist and smokey flavor, a bit sweet which was very different for us. Now for the bad... the brisket and pulled pork was dry and really tough not much smoke flavor, in fact we had a hard time distinguishing from the pulled pork and brisket all chopped up. Not to our liking. There is an outdoor stage and Friday & Saturday nights Blues music is featured. Right next door is a campground not affiliated with the shed... WE thought that would be a fun place to spend the weekend.

Until next time...

New Orleans/ Abita Springs

January 28- Feb 4, 2011

We spent a week in the New Orelans and surrounding area. The weather was great for the first part of the week, but, towards the end it was brutal, rain, tornado watches, freezing rain just plain cold. We took advantage of the "good weather" and spent one day in the French Quarter went to one of our favs Pat Obriens for hurricanes, listened to some great street musicians, popped into a couple of small bars, had lunch at one of our favs Cafe Maspero on Decatur. We found a small bar with a very unusual name you can see the picture below, its name was "Huge Ass Beers" for real that was the name. Too funny, but true.. they were big

Being big fans of Diners Drive ins and Dives we met boomer friends and went to Louie & The Redhead Lady it was featured a couple of weeks ago. I was dissapointed in the quality of the food. I had the fried green tomatoes which was featured on the show, it was just ok rather bland. While the service was top notch the food just didn't measure up.

We also visited the Abita Brewery (twice) for tours and free samples and when I say samples I mean you get at 12 oz glass and fill it up before the tour, during the tour, and after the tour. While the tour was good, it was really more about tasting the beer... and that we did-

Next stop Biloxi MS....

Welcome to Breau Bridge Louisiana
Crawfish Capitol of the WORLD!!!

We are staying at Poche Fish Camp and Rv Park. After getting settled in our campsite we headed out to Walmart to pick up a few items and have an early dinner. We drove by Crazy Bout Crawfish and the parking lot was jammed with cars all locals- no better place than where the locals go... We were not dissapointed.... The place was jumpin with cajun music and the servers were friendly as well as the customers. After at least 30 min of looking over the menu we fianally decided- John had the 3 lb crawfish platter, and I had the Blackend Catfish with crawfish etouffee, Wowzers, and for desert homemade peach cobbler. By the way that is not butter on top of the peach cobbler its peach ice cream....

Happy New Year,

It has been a while since I updated this blog.....

Travel Plans this year (so far)

Travel to Florida, Feb-Apr -enroute now
New Orelans Jazz Festival -May
Memphis Internation BBQ Championships Cook Off... Mid May

that is all we have in the plans. Not sure what we will be doing this summer...

Look for future updates.....

We sure do miss ya murph.....

A New Chapter.....

A New Home....

Look what we bought.....Today we closed escrow on a condo in Moreno Valley, CA . The condo is 4 years old its a 2 bedroom 2 bath.

We will continue to travel, in fact we have a very busy winter planned.

Girls Florida Trip 2010

Below are the pictures from our cruise on the NCL Sky to the Bahamas and a visit to the Atlantis Resort, Nassau Bahamas

Our Key West Adventure

Coeur d Alene Idaho/Spokane, WA
As our time is winding down here in Montana we took our last trip and went to Coeur d Alene, Idaho we did a boat ride on the lake, went to a biker bar not just a any old biker bar this one is a drive thru, yep the motorcycles drive right thru the middle of the bar. This was also the last stop for the 9/11 steel memorial which started in NY. (click on pic for more detail.) While in Spokane WA we went to the Spokane Falls, and toured and tasted Vodka, Gin, Whiskey at a local distillery.

Montana Western Fair/Rodeo

Ever hear of a tater pig or a viking? Below are pictures of the Tater Pig- baked potato with a smokie sausage baked in, and the Viking- meatball baked then fried in a batter. It was kind of interesting to have a food booth at the fair you had to be non profit. Lots of farm animals some had never seen before like the lamb with the black face and legs and white body very pretty. The rodeo was good there was the usual, bull riding, bronco riding, steer roping, clowns etc. The carnival was very crowded. We spent most of our time in the beer gardens :)

The Hiawatha Bike Trail

Montan/Idaho Border

"One of the most scenic rail to trails in USA" I totally believe it.... The trail starts out in Montana and ends in Idaho 16 miles one direction. We took the shuttle bus back. We started at look out pass to rent our equipment drove 5 miles to the trail head and our adventure began. We went thru 10 tunnels with the first tunnel being the longest at 1.66 miles long and very dark- scary dark and over 7 high steel trestles.

Glacier National Park

July 2010

We had a wonderful time in Glacier spent two days and found so many waterfalls in the park absolutely beautiful. Did a ranger lead hike to St Marys Falls and they were spectacular. There was still quite a bit of snow at Logan Pass. In the afternoon there were some pretty heavy storms with hail and lightning which made the park all the more spectacular.

click on the picture for a larger view

Pintler Scenic Route & Skalaho Pass

We drove about 200 miles today and saw some beautiful areas. We drove Montana 1 aka Pintler Scenic Rt, first stop was Phillipsburg such a charming historic town had lunch at the local soda shop and then of course no trip would have been complete without a stop a the Sweet Shop, its a two story candy store with lots of the retro type of candy we grew up with lots of fun. Next stop was Georgtown Lake, then on to the Bitter Root National Forest and the Skalkaho Pass Rd just after the summit of about 7300 ft we came upon this beautiful waterfall. The scenery today was really spectacular.

Next week its onto Glacier National Park

All in a days work.....

I check in campers, John's mowing the lawn and giving Yogi a ride around the campground.

National Bison Range
Moiese, MT

Today with the sun shining we headed out to Flathead Lake and found the National Bison Range on the way. The park is a 19 mile one way loop drive on gravel road that takes about 2 hours to complete. This was a fantastic park while the wild life was minimal for the time we were there the scenery was spectacular. We were not disappointed. My prize picture is the Big Horn Sheep we found. Finally made it to Flathead Lake and got side tracked again with a local brewery. Great beer and good local food. John had buffalo chili and I had an elk brats. Great day with plenty of sunshine. Oh yes, our original intent was the lake it is a big lake, more on that another day....

Click on the pic for a larger image.......

Out n About in Deer Lodge, Mt

Old Montan Prison 1871-1979

Listed on the National Register of Historic Places, the Old Montana Prison was built by inmate labor, and was home to one member of Butch Cassisdy's wild bunch. The auto museum has over 150 cars on display.

Missoula Montana our Summer home........

We had a really nice drive from CA great weather. Below are some pictures I took thru the windshield of the motorhome. We plan to do a lot of exploring while we are here this summer. Picked up the tour books so we are now armed and dangerous....

Road Trip California to Florida

a mother and daughter adventure......

This summer we will be working in Missoula Montana. Happy summer to all.......