Water Explorations, Plus Disney for our 40th Anniversary

We left New Orleans and arrived in Florida (finally crossing back into Eastern time) on Sunday, April 14. Staying overnight at a Cracker Barrel in Lake City, FL, we drove down the Gulf Coast the next day to Tampa for an overnight stay and a very nice dinner with Jeannette's cousin MaryJo Melone. We'd last seen her during our most recent visit to Florida in late-January 2020 before COVID hit.

The next day we drove south along the coast and then east to a campground close to the Everglades on the western side of Miami. If you've ever looked at a map of the Miama area, you see that civilization lives in a strip on the east side of Florida, with only wilderness to the west. The campground was equidistant to the visitor centers for Everglades National Park and Biscayne National Park.

When you first see the Everglades, it mostly looks like a big grassy swamp with not much to recommend it.

However, first looks can be deceiving, and the more we learned about the Everglades the more fascinating it became. The Everglades is not a swamp - it is a slowly moving river often referred to as the "River of Grass". Before it was disrupted by development in the early-to-mid 20th century, waters flowed slowly from Lake Okeechobee to Florida Bay (sometimes moving only a half-mile in a day), taking up to six months to traverse the whole plain. From north to south, the change in elevation is only fourteen feet.

After that, it was carved up, some of it drained, and was generally disrupted. However, since the national park was created in 1947 a lot of effort has gone to restoring some of the original flow. The Everglades serves as a major fresh water source for South Florida's population and a clean water filter for the sport fishing industry.

One day we drove the main road through the park, seeing the different micro-ecosystems that make up the park. A few inches difference in elevation can make a significant difference. Throughout the sawgrass river, there are tree islands (usually called "hammocks") and in one of these, an ancient mahogany adjacent to the walkway.

Another area had tall Royal Palms and red-hued gumbo limbo trees.

This tree bark looked like abstract art.

A third area had pine trees which require fire as part of their growing cycle. In this area, we could also see that the soil is only inches deep, with calcium carbonate stone underneath, remnants of coral reefs from when the sea levels were higher and much of Florida was under water.

At the end of the park road, we reached Florida Bay. We spent some time talking to a naturalist at an outdoor table and learned more about the scourge of the invasive Burmise Python which will hatch over 200 eggs per nest and which are decimating the small mammals in the Everglades. Pythons are very difficult to spot - some with tracking devices have remained ellusive even when trackers are right at the signal site.

We took a 2.5-hour nature cruise in the park, through manmade and natural canals lined with cypress trees and mangrove trees.

Toward the end of our cruise, we were joined by a pod of dolphins from Florida Bay. It was magical! Even the boat guide got excited.

Another day, we traveled up to Big Cypress National Preserve, which is north and west of the Everglades. This area is more of a traditional swamp where the water is not flowing. We drove a dirt road through the preserve, seeing lots of beautiful scenery, bromiliads (air plants), turtles, alligators, birds, and clear tannin-colored water along the way.

Later that day we signed up for an airboat tour, something which had been on Doug's bucket list. Now we can say we've done it. It was mostly loud, with the boat captain carving turns and circles, and we only went a couple miles into Everglades National Park.

After the ride, we watched a short wildlife show.

On our last day in the park, we took our bikes on the tram route which pokes 12 miles in from the northern top of the park. It was too late in the day to make it all the way to the observation tower at the end, but we saw cranes and alligators along the way.

Later that week we visited Biscayne National Park. Ninety-five percent of the park is underwater. The above-water part are a series of keys (islands formed from coral reefs) that are technically the northernmost of of the Florida Keys - Key Largo is the first key that you can drive to. We'd signed up for a 3.5-hour boat tour of the park which included a shore stop at Boca Chita Key. It featured a "lighthouse" (actually built privately just for show), views of Miami condominiums in the far distance, and a short hike around the circumference of the island.

We used to scuba dive and snorkel, but hadn't brought any gear with us, plus the ocean temperature was still "bracing." Before leaving our campground we drove down to Key Largo and visited John Pennekamp Coral Reef State Park, taking a glass bottom boat tour to the reef which sits about 10 miles offshore.

Unfortunately, the super-high sea temperatures from 2023 (over 100 degrees Fahrenheit) had severely damaged the coral beds, causing the once brillant colored coral to turn white.

Of course, we could not leave Key Largo without sampling a piece of official key lime pie!

We moved to another campground north of Miami in the town of Delray Beach. While there, we traveled to a brunch meetup with two friends of Doug's from business school: Andy Kaplan (and his wife Merle) and Bethe Moulton (and her husband Oscar). As is always the case when we meet friends while traveling, it was great to see them, and catch up on life past and present.

Andy highly recommended we visit the nearby Loxahatchee National Wildlife Refuge (run by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service). Loxahatchee allows scientists to test and evaluate various rescue techniques for the Everglades before they are put into widespread use. The visitor center had a beautiful boardwalk nature trail through a cypress swamp. In addition to the dense stands of trees, we saw tiny lizards, beautiful flowers, and colorful tree trunks. You could stand on a dike at the west side of the refuge and stare out into the River of Grass.

Next up: a six day stay at Walt Disney World in Orlando. We stayed at Fort Wilderness, Disney World's campground resort. It's beautiful but expensive (although less costly than staying in one of the on-property hotel resorts). We'd last visited in February 2020, shortly before COVID shut down the world. As in 2020 we were going to be joined by Doug's sister Tommie Lou, who would be flying in that night from New Jersey.

Before she arrived, however, we got together with Doug's friend Danelle Radney and her three thoroughly adorable kids, Titan, Tirza, and Cristian. We first met at a taqueria and then went back to their house in Orlando. Danelle's husband Gordon was visiting a friend in Baltimore and not able to join us.

Tommie Lou flew in late in the evening and joined us at the campground. It was nice to have her with us, plus she is the expert on all things Disney - holder of an annual pass (even though she lives in New Jersey, it is still cost-effective for her), and a member of the Disney Vacation Club. Her expertise was able to guide us through the maze of reservations, shows, attractions, meal choices, and such during our stay.

Many Fort Wilderness campers are diehards. In fact, some people just come for the camping and don't even go to the theme parks. We hadn't realized when we booked our reservations six months in advance that our time in the campground would coincide with "HalloSpring," celebrated when the real Halloween is six months away. Many campers had brought Halloween decorations and pimped out their rigs and golf carts (golf carts are also a huge thing in Fort Wilderness, bigger than at most campgrounds we've visited). As we walked around our camping loop to take in the decorations we received many offers of adult beverages.

We're not including a lot of photos of our time at Disney World here because we know many of our readers have been there themselves. Tommie Lou has a Photo Pass membership, which allowed us to stop at various places in the theme parks where Disney photographers are set up to take either regular or trick photographs.

On our first full day at Disney World, we took the five-hour-long Keys to the Kingdom backstage tour at the Magic Kingdom, which provided tons of interesting information on little-known aspects of the architecture, hidden tributes, parades, and such.

We were able to see where the parade floats were stored and maintained. We also spent time in the underground maze that runs underneath the Magic Kingdom, allowing cast members to get to their work locations, food to restaurants, and goods to gifts shops. We walked throughb a cast member uniform shop, which included stocking multiple outfits for each Disney Princess in varing sizes - we did not know that there were that many. Unfortunately, we weren't allowed to take pictures on the tour.

That evening we got together with Doug's cousin Steve Moorhouse and his wife Evie. Steve retired last year from a career at Disney World working in the manufacturing division, where they would have to take the ideas from the Imagineers and turn them into physical rides, buildings, animatronic figures, and so forth. Unfortunately, we were having such a good visit that we forgot to take a picture!

We spent the rest of our Disney World with one day at each of the four theme parks: EPCOT on Friday, Hollywood Studios on Saturday, the Magic Kingdom on Sunday, and Animal Kingdom on Monday.

Of note, we celebrated our 40th wedding anniversary on Sunday, April 28. We got special buttons as we entered the Magic Kingdom, and many well wishes from cast members.

We closed out the day with a special dinner at the California Grill restaurant on top of the Contemporary Hotel. They gave us a table near the window with a great view of the Magic Kingdom at sunset.

We ate a leisurely meal and were able to go outside on the roof during the fireworks show where they piped in the music and narration. If you watch the video below carefully, you can see Tinkerbell fly away from Cinderella's Castle as the show reaches its (she does it on a zip line, carrying 70 pounds of gear, her hair is actually a crash helmet, and four different women and men and women are trained to play the part). From this perspective, you can see that many of the fireworks are fired safely from behind theme park, although when you watch from Main Street they appear right behind the castle.

Doug recalled his first visit to Disney World in 1971, when the whole resort comprised the Magic Kingdom, two hotels, and Fort Wilderness. He'd stood on top of the Contemporary with his parents after dark, surrounded by empty space and a hint of Orlando's lights in the distance. How time has changed that view! NOTE: he still has his mouse ears from 1971!

Tommie Lou left to fly home Tuesday morning, and we moved from Fort Wilderness to a campground operated by the city of Orlando. While there, we visited with another business school friend of Doug's: Monty Allen and his wife Mary.

We met Monty and Mary in the town of Winter Park, Florida outside of Orlando. It's a lovely old (and well-to-do) town. Before lunch, we took a boat tour through Winter Park's "chain of lakes" where we saw many lovely lakeside estates. We connected from one lake to another through narrow canals built to float logs when the area was used for lumbering over 150 years ago. Rollins College sits on the shores of one of the lakes - its most notable alumni was Fred Rogers. We wondered if Winter Haven inspired his famous lineL "It's a beautiful day in the neighborhood..."

Monty recommended we visit the Morse Museum before leaving Winter Park. It has one of the most extensive collections of works by glass master Louis Tiffany, including rooms and artifacts from his estate on Long Island. It was a beautiful museum and we highly recommend it to others.

The museum included a chapel that Tiffany designed for the 1893 Chicago World's Fair and some jewelry he designed for his family's business: Tiffany Jewelers.

From Orlando we drove to the Atlantic coast and spent three days with Jeannette's friend Clare Tomaselli (one of the participants in our wedding) and her husband David Packey. Both Clare and Dave are doctors - she works for Merck doing regulatory writing for drug permitting, and he has a neurology practice in Melbourne, Florida.

Now that their kids are grown, they have an apartment on the fourth floor of a beach condo building in Satellite Beach. Not only do they have a magnificent view of the ocean (we took long beach walks two days in a row) but if you look north you can see the rocket gantries at Cape Canaveral. They have great views of rocket launches (unfortunately, none occurred while we were there).

We continued north to the town of Palm Coast, Florida, south of Saint Augustine, and had a lovely dinner on Flagler Beach with George and Suzer Sachs, who used to live in the house behind us in Virginia before they retired to Florida.

It was finally time to depart from Florida. We drove north, and settled in at the lovely beach town of Tybee Island, Georgia, just a few miles from Savannah. Tybee Island feels like a throwback to the 1960s, but in a good way. No condo buildings, no massive modern beach houses crowded up against the dunes, no chic expensive shops, no chain resturants. Just nice, gently sloping beaches, modest older homes, moderately-priced (but delicious) seafood restaurants, and a relaxed vibe. It also hosts the tallest lighthouse in Georgia (not a huge stretch as Georgia has a relatively short coastline).

They also had some of the the most fun road signs we'd seen.

We did have one hiccup. We stayed at the campground maintained by the town. After getting the rig in place, Doug was backing up the Fittata to reposition it and failed to see the tree behind him which had a knothole at just the right height to hit the back window, which immediately cracked all the way around as safety-glass is wont to do.

Fortunately, ever-resourceful Jeannette came up with a solution involving removing the entire window and replacing it with self-adhesive carpet protection sheeting and duct tape that held rock solid until our return to Virginia. We were even still able to drive the car around locally.

We had some rainstorms while at Tybee Island, but also some dry time where were able to ride our bikes on the clearly-marked bike paths that ran through the island's quiet streets ...

...and walk a few blocks from the campground past some late 1800s military fortifications...

...to North Beach, which sits at the junction of the Savannah River and the Atlantic Ocean. Every so often, a large container ship or freighter would cruise past at close range. Hilton Head Island sits north on the other side of the river mouth.

We had a chance to try out our new Shibumi Shade, which only weighs two pounds and which you can set up in a flash. It handled a windy day with flying colors and provided more-than-adequate sun cover.

After an afternoon at the beach, we drove to downtown Savannah and walked through its beautiful squares full of live oak trees and past its scenic fountain in Forsyth Park. We'd passed through Savannah at the beginning of our 2020 RV travels, pre-COVID.

Ghost tours are a popular evening activity in Savannah.

We left Tybee Island and drove north to Charlotte, NC for another short visit with our son Mace. That evening, Mace took us to the Blackbox music club to see a very interesting collaboration between the Charlotte Symphony Orchestra and an electronic music artist. The conductor "directed" both the DJ and the orchestra and the interplay between the digital and analog sound added a lot to the experience.

We spent Mothers Day together, including a visit to Charlotte's Mint Museum which specializes in pottery and practical arts.

Finally, on Monday, May 13 we drove the final stretch home to Annandale, VA.

A wrap for another great RV trip. When we started traveling in 2019 we were sure it would be for a year, two years tops. Who'd have thought that in this, our sixth year of Ciaowagen travel, that we'd still be going strong?

And we're not done yet!