Where to Now?

Probably Phoenix in March, though I'm not finding a good airfare yet. Presumably back to Europe in the summer--where, exactly, I have no idea, except probably including Switzerland. We can't go before late June, since a friend is getting married here on the 16th. Airfares look better in August.

Next year (2013) appears substantially different, since we are expecting a) that I'll retire and b) we may receive two separate visits from Europe. Mary Joy is worried that once I retire we may not be able to afford to take a trip anywhere other than to the supermarket, and maybe not there, either. I am not worried at all.

Hutchinson Island and Home

On Thursday, January 19th, we slept in a little, not going to breakfast until 9 a.m. While waiting for Mary Joy, I checked the weather on the internet. Jensen Beach: 63 degrees. St. Paul, Minnesota: minus eleven. I'd known that it was likely to go below zero that night, but the idea of going back home the next day to weather that was 70 degrees colder than where we were now didn't delight us.

After a delicious, elegantly-presented breakfast, prepared by the owner, Katie, whose family had lived in the house more than a hundred years ago, we went to the nearby Indian Riverside Park to walk. Lunch was at Fiorentino's in Stuart, a pleasant Italian change of pace.

We spent almost all of the rest of the day on Hutchinson Island, the barrier island separating the Indian River from the ocean and stretching from Fort Pierce down to St. Lucie Inlet, where the St. Lucie and Indian Rivers meet and enter the Atlantic. The eastern edge of Hutchinson Island is one, long, gorgeous sand beach, with many points of entry. The principal one toward the south end is at Stuart Beach, with concession stands, lifeguards, beach rentals, changing rooms. Farther down, just before the exclusive private resort of Sailfish Point at the southern tip of the island, is Bathtub Beach, protected just offshore by Bathtub Reef, built up from the exoskeltons of millions of marine worms.

In the late afternoon, we took a long walk on the beach, north of Stuart Beach. A number of people were surf fishing, using long rods which they stuck in white pipes in the sand, until they got a bite. And many of them were getting bites: we saw croakers and snappers in people's buckets. One couple had a big jack, which the man said was no good for eating, so he cut the line, holding the fish by the remainder, and after measuring it against his thigh (it looked to be more than a foot long), waded out and threw it back into the water. Another man was raking the shore for sea fleas--a small crablike crustacean to be used for bait. We also saw a gull bring ashore a small, silvery fish that it had caught. At first it tried to swallow the fish whole, but it was too big. After it got the fish away from our vicinity--probably afraid that we would steal it--the bird went to work picking the fish apart.

But mostly we just enjoyed the waves and the brilliant array of greens--almost as many as Ireland's famous forty shades of green--displayed as those waves rolled ashore beneath a cap of white.

We went to dinner at Finz, in Port Salerno--fish tacos. Not bad, not great. Finz is a large place on the St. Lucie, with live music.

The next day, Friday, January 20th, after another nice breakfast, we went for one last walk on Hutchinson Island. After lunch at TooJay's (a wonderful New York-style delicatessen and restaurant chain) in Stuart, we eventually got on the road, none too soon, for there were no less than four different accidents (including one with a burnt-out SUV) slowing traffic on I-95. But we caught our 6:02 p.m. flight and arrived back at MSP around 9 p.m. CST, caught the van to the parking lot, brushed the snow off our car and drove home.

The Glass-Bottomed Boat

We were up at 7 a.m. on Wednesday, January 18th, another beautiful day. I ran over to Chad's to pick up some bagels and cream cheese, then we said goodbye to Island Bay Resort and drove northeast 10 miles to John Pennekamp Coral Reef State Park (Mile Marker 102.5, oceanside) in Key Largo. The day before, we had made a reservation for the 9:15 a.m. glass-bottomed boat trip, but had been told that the reservation would expire if we weren't there when the park opened at 8 a.m. to buy our tickets. As it turned out, we wouldn't have needed the reservations, because there were less than 20 people on a boat that could hold 130, but we didn't want to take the chance. We had asked the owners at Island Bay if there was any real difference between the tour from the park and one that started at the Holiday Inn. They said no, other than that you would have to pay to get into the park, but the park had other interesting things to see and do and the trip from there was a little cheaper.

We got our tickets, went out to have coffee and a scone at Starbuck's, then returned and got in line to board the Spirit of Pennekamp, a 65-foot motor catamaran. The older couple ahead of us in line were, it turned out, from near Madison, Wisconsin and they knew Mary Joy's hometown of Monroe very well.

We sat up on the top rear deck, and the boat set off down a long and winding creek through the mangroves. A mangrove is a sort of shrub with a visible, aboveground network of roots that

anchors it in swampy soil or even the water itself. There are three kinds of mangrove: red, black and white. The red mangrove is very tolerant of salt water and pulls all the salt out of the water, concentrating it in a few of its leaves, which then turn yellow and fall off. The root systems, besides accumulating sand and mud and gradually building land, are an important place for small fish to hide from predators.

After maybe 20 minutes, we got out of the creek, then, for another 10 or 15 minutes

we had to work our way along a narrow, dredged channel. Black, long-necked cormorants were standing in groups on posts and channel markers, drying their spread wings in the sunshine. Finally, we got into the open ocean and headed at full speed (21 m.p.h.) for the tower marking Molasses Reef, arriving among the other boats there around 10 a.m.

We were then called downstairs to lower ourselves, feet hanging over the edge, into sitting position above the two window wells, one in each hull of the catamaran. One man lost his American flag baseball cap into the window well, where it sat until one of the crew members went down to get it on the way back. Below us passed the reef (legend says it was named after the wreck of a ship from Jamaica that carried a cargo of molasses). We saw elkhorn coral and fan coral, barracuda, parrotfish, sergeant majors, and even a stingray on the bottom, half-covered with sand, its sting sticking up. It was fun, though we had the feeling that the people around the other window well were seeing more and better stuff. But they may have had the same feeling about us. After about an hour, we started for shore, arriving around 11:40.

We then walked the three short trails in the park. The strangest trees we saw were the poisonwood, a relative of poison ivy, and the gumbo limbo. You don't want to touch a poisonwood, or even shelter under it while rain drops off of its leaves onto you. The gumbo limbo has a translucent reddish-brown bark that makes it look like it's covered with shaggy root-beer candy. One of the trails was a boardwalk through a mangrove swamp.

After visiting the nice but small aquarium, we went to have lunch at the Fish House. Again, fish Matecumbe and key-lime pie. Again, very good.

So, now it was time to bid farewell to the Keys and head for the Treasure Coast, in particular Jensen Beach, about fifty miles north of Palm Beach. It took us about 3 1/2 hours, driving the Florida Turnpike to highway 714, near Stuart, which we took to A1A. We crossed the bridge over the wide, estuarial St. Lucie River to Sewall's Point, then turned left, before the bridge to Hutchinson Island. Around 5:30 we arrived at the Inn at Tilton Place, a nice bed and breakfast, where we had stayed two or three years ago.

The Inn is a block north of the main intersection in Jensen Beach, a small resort town on the Indian River.

We went to dinner at the Prawnbroker, in Sewall's Point. Not bad, but nothing memorable.

Beaches

On Tuesday, January 17th, a bright, sunny day (the temperature eventually reached the upper 70s), we got up late and walked over to Chad's Bakery and Deli for breakfast--bagels and fruit, very good. Then we headed southwest down Highway 1 again toward Bahia (pronounced "BAY-a") Honda State Park.

Many people go to Florida for the many wonderful beaches. Few of those beaches are in the Keys. Most of the sand piled up by the Atlantic is apparently caught by the Bahamas to the east. The one major exception is on Bahia Honda Key, at Mile Marker 37, where one large, sandy oceanside beach and two smaller beaches (ocanside and bayside) have led to the entire key being made into a state park.

But on the way we stopped for lunch in Marathon, at the Keys Fisheries Market and Marina. This is a fish market and food stand right on Florida Bay, with outdoor seating on the dock. You make your order at a window, giving them the name of a wild animal. When they call your animal's name over the loudspeaker, you go pick up your food. We were Giraffe. Their house specialty, which they apparently invented (we saw one on another restaurant's menu), is the Lobster Reuben sandwich (lobster, sauerkraut, cheese and sauce). On a whiteboard they announced how many had been sold so far this month: over 160,000. There is a contest to guess how many would be sold in the whole month. The winner will get a free Lobster Reuben and a Lobster Reuben tee-shirt.

Though we weren't exactly excited by the idea of lobster with sauerkraut, we felt that we had to sample this local cuisine, so we got one to share. Not bad, but not a life-changing culinary experience.

We went on to Bahia Honda. There we parked in one of the lots by Sandspur Beach, the longest and best-known. First, we walked the Silver Palm Trail, a quarter-mile nature trail. Mary Joy had been looking for an opportunity for a long walk, and was feeling frustrated about not finding one. We didn't find it here.

Sandspur Beach was crowded, narrow (the tide must have been in) and largely covered with washed-in seagrass. A signboard elsewhere pointed out the wonders of washed-ashore seagrass--how great it is for the ecology of the island. But if you are looking for the stereotypical sandy tropical beach, it's a little offputting. In the end, we drove down to Loggerhead Beach, at the far end of the island, which is much smaller, but less crowded, and a nice place to sit in the sun and read, which we did (Mary Joy reading Olivier Bellamy's biography of the pianist Martha Argerich, in French--a gift from our German friend, Marika--while I was reading George R.R. Martin's A Dance With Dragons).

Then we walked out onto the old Bahia Honda Bridge, now an observation platform, since the new bridge was built in the 70s. Nice views.

At this point, we were only 37 miles from Key West (originally Cayo Hueso--"Bone Island"), but Mary Joy wasn't interested in going there, especially on a daytrip, and I'd already been there with my brothers, driving down from Naples and returning the next day, in October 1987.

A woman we'd met on the beach had told us that another good beach was Sombrero Beach, a city park in Marathon. So, on the way back, we stopped there. The sand, I think, was trucked in, but it was indeed a pleasant place, with outcrops of old coral rock and surrounded by coconut palms. A woman was stalking an egret to take its picture, and I also photographed it, but when we tried to get closer it flew off.

We went on, and after sunset we stopped for dinner at Marker 88 Restaurant in Islamorada, sitting outside in a gazebo near the water. I don't remember what we ate, but I do remember that it was very good, the best meal of the trip.

When we got back to Island Bay, we walked to the dock. Someone pointed out to us an egret that had just caught a large fish. It took a while to swallow it, whole, then resumed its patient wait for other prey.

The Florida Keys

On Monday, January 16th, we flew out of Minneapolis-St. Paul on the 7:35 a.m. Delta flight to Miami. The day before, our wimp winter had continued with a high of 40 degrees. However, the forecast was that the Twin Cities would have its first below-zero night of the winter later in the week. We were very glad to use our frequent-flier miles to get out of that!

The 3 1/2-hour-plus flight was uneventful. The young couple in the seats in front of us were flying from Fargo, North Dakota to Miami, via MSP, for an afternoon at the beach. They'd fly back in the evening. She works for Delta, so it costs them very little. Mary Joy says that I should get that sort of job when I retire!

We picked up a car very quickly and with no hassles at Enterprise. They upgraded us to a dark blue Volkswagen Passat CC, since they were out of compacts.






After having a little trouble getting out of the airport (confusing signage and repair detours), we hit the road south around 12:40 p.m. EST and arrived in Key Largo about an hour-and-a-half later. We had lunch at the Fish House, (Grouper Matecumbe, a house specialty involving a sauce with dried tomatoes, onions and capers, and genuine key lime pie--all very good). Seafood in the Keys is generally very fresh, delivered straight from the fishing boat to the restaurant's dock. The local fish on all the menus this time of year are grouper, yellowtail snapper and mahi-mahi, or dolphin fish. The dolphin fish is not the same as the dolphin mammal, or porpoise, so restaurants call it by its Hawaiian name, mahi-mahi, to avoid having customers ask them why they are cooking Flipper.



We went on to Tavernier and found the Island Bay Resort, where we checked into the Bridges Cottage. This is a very pleasant place, with nice grounds and a small beach and dock on Florida Bay. The only bad thing that anyone had to say about it on Tripadvisor was that it costs too much for what you get. There is something to that, but given that all the other alternatives had more problematic negatives (regarding condition, cleanliness, noise, service, etc.), Island Bay is probably worth a small premium. The Keys are pricey, touristy, and in some ways have a sort of 1950s-roadside- attraction-and-fishing-camp feel.



We went to the nearby Florida Keys Wild Bird Center, which is a sanctuary for injured birds. It was interesting, but not exciting. Among the birds we saw there were a couple of cute little Eastern Screech Owls and flocks of pelicans and cormorants. Mary Joy also befriended some chickens on the grounds.







We drove on, crossing the bridge from Key Largo to Islamorada. The Florida Keys are chain of islands (from the Spanish cayo--a small, flat, sandy islet), connected by U.S. Highway 1, the Overseas Highway. You tell where something is by its distance from Mile Marker 0, at Key West, along the way to Mile Marker 108, at the bridge from Key Largo to the mainland. A point along this continuum is either oceanside (between U.S. 1 and the Atlantic) or bayside (between U.S. 1 and Florida Bay). Island Bay Resort is at MM 92.5, bayside. Much of the time, especially on the larger islands and toward the Key Largo end, you see very little water from the highway, but eventually you start crossing more and more bridges to more and more tiny islets, and the views on both sides are spectacular.



Islamorada (pronounced "eye-la-mor-AH-da") is a town stretching across a number of islands. As it was approaching sunset, we arrived at Robbie's, a marina, restaurant and conglomeration of tourist goods sales booths, best known for the tarpons you can personally feed at its dock. Since it was cool (around 70 and cloudy) and there weren't many tarpon, we were allowed to go out on the dock without paying anything. But , in the end, we saw only pelicans, not tarpon.






As the sun set, we turned around and headed back. We had dinner at Snappers, which is highly recommended. We weren't impressed. Our hogfish was mushy--maybe that is the nature of the fish, which we'd never had before, but maybe it was just overcooked.