Your GypsyNesters go deep into the Florida Everglades, miles from any signs of civilization, in search of the elusive Skunk Ape and found some … CONTINUE READING >>
The Skunk Ape Research Headquarters, deep in the Florida Everglades, was not the kind of place that we could possibly drive on by, we had to go inside and investigate. What we discovered was the ultimate source for all things Skunk Ape, the Florida cousin in the Bigfoot/ Sasquatch/
Yeti family.
After gathering knowledge from the Headquarters, we set out across several hundred yards of mushy grassland to one of the ladder stands that the headquarters has erected. Climbing up to the platform allowed us a much better view of the surrounding area. We scanned the horizon with our binoculars, but once again we saw no sign of a Skunk Ape. We were treated to one of the most spectacular sunsets we’d ever seen, so we felt our first evening’s efforts were not in vain.
The next day we discussed other possible sighting sites and strategies headed out to an area across the highway a mile or two into the glades. Since the trip would cover several miles total we decided to head out on our bicycles, at least as far as we could. After a few miles the trail became too muddy for our bikes and we continued on foot.
Life’s a beach. In Florida that little pun takes on some real meaning. Of The Sunshine State’s twelve hundred miles of coastline, over half is covered by beautiful sandy beaches… CONTINUE READING >>
Life’s a beach. In Florida that little pun takes on some real meaning.
Of The Sunshine State’s twelve hundred miles of coastline, over half is covered by beautiful sandy beaches.
We are big fans of the seashore, so much so that we spent almost a decade on a secluded Caribbean island, so we were beside ourselves with excitement to get back to the beach.
Our usual beach activity consists of walking along for miles right where the surf meets the sand, but we discovered something new and different along Florida’s east coast, biking on the beach. Makes it a lot easier to bring our favorite Snack for Beaches too.
In many places the sand is packed down hard enough so that not just bicycles, but cars, and even RVs can cruise along the beach.
Cars used to race along these sandy strips, that’s how auto racing in Daytona got its start.
We weren’t ready for any five hundred mile speed competitions, but we were pretty jazzed about riding our trusty bikes right along the ocean.
We rode several miles until we came upon one of many common inhabitants of the Florida beaches, a beach bar.
It didn’t take us long to figure out that we were never very far from the nearest Sand Bar, Pirate’s Cove, Sand Dollar, Barnacle Bill’s, Down The Hatch, Hurricane Hole, or this particular day’s pitstop, Beachcomber.
One thing about beach bars, they are not really night spots. A good beach bar gets crackin’ in the afternoon and peaks right at sunset, so our timing was good.
We hit right when the local beach bums were hitting their strides, so we ordered up some fish and a cold one, and got the full scoop on all the ins and outs of life at The Beachcomber. The old salts and fisherfolk always seem ready to spin a yarn, or maybe even sing a shanty.
Ears and bellies filled, we put our tires to the sand again and pedaled back to town. Town at this point of our journey meant St. Augustine. It was there that we were introduced to a game that we had never come across before, but would many times again in our travels down the coast, Pétanque.
Noticing some men playing the game in the sandy parking lot of a little cafe, we thought it might be Bacci Ball, a pastime we had seen quite often in our travels in Italy.
While Pétanque, pronounced pay-tonk, is similar, it has the advantage of being playable almost anywhere. Any reasonably smooth open area will suffice.
Intrigued, we dismounted and stopped to watch a while. When the players noticed that they had spectators, the members of the Boules de León Pétanque Club were very gracious in explaining the game to us.
A small ball called a cochonnet (French for piglet) is thrown out and becomes the target. Larger, and heavy, metal balls are tossed at the piglet and the score depends on who gets the closest. If a player is skilled enough to actually touch the cochonnet, he has “kissed the pig.”
After our lesson, we were invited to have a go. We jumped right in and, though our happily competitive selves had a new way to pit our talents against each other, our skills were erratic at best.
Sometimes the poor little piglet was in danger of being crushed, while others there wasn’t a steel ball anywhere near the baby porker. Pétanque, it seems, is one of those games that is easy to learn but difficult to master.
Pétanque is an offshoot of lawn bowling, or boules in French, that became popular along the Riviera about one hundred years ago.
That popularity seems to have spread to Quebec, and then down to Florida with the snowbirds. Once we were aware of it, we began to notice it everywhere.
This wasn’t the only surprise we were in for. A little way down the coast we had several close encounters, but not of the third kind, of the bird kind. (ba-da-ching).
The first couple, while not technically on the beach, were right by the ocean.
Riding along the trails in Chain of Lakes Park, between the towns of Mims and Titusville, we saw several Anhinga.
These skilled fish finders majestically dry their wings in the sun by almost every body of water. When they dive they go completely under water to chase their prey, so afterward their feathers must be dried before any flying can be done.
Farther up the trail we came upon a massive flock of giant black birds.
At first it was hard to tell what sort of birds they were, but as we got a closer look it became clear that they were vultures. Hundreds of buzzards!
They were in the trees, in the air, and all over the ground, just waiting for something, or someone, to kick the bucket so they could chow down.
Maybe we’ve seen too many cartoons and old Westerns, but it was seriously disturbing to be constantly eyed by these hunched over, winged scavengers.
Another encounter came when we heard rustling in the brush while we were walking from the parking lot to the beach at Cocoa Beach.
Next thing we knew a bunch of furry little masked bandits burst out of the bushes like The Great Train Robbery.
This struck us as odd since we weren’t carrying any valuables and were right in the middle of town.
These guys were not the least bit disturbed with the presence of people. Uncomfortably so.
Raccoons are one of the few animals that have not only adapted to living among humans, but actually thrive on it. People seem to inadvertently provide a great deal of food for these resourceful little critters.
We were completely taken in by their ridiculous cuteness and hung around for quite a while watching and taking pictures. But the quest for an encounter with another Florida creature was on our minds.
We had heard tell of a legend that a great beast has been making his home in the everglades, no, not a giant gator (although there are plenty of them down there), the skunk ape. How can we possibly resist searching for this elusive cousin of bigfoot?
The answer is – we can’t. Stay tuned…we’ll be posting soon, if we make it out alive.
The sand in Florida is packed down hard enough that we rode our bikes on the beach! Wow, Florida has a lot of wildlife… CONTINUE READING >>
In many places the sand in Florida is packed down hard enough so that not just bicycles, but cars, and even RVs can cruise along the beach. Cars used to race along these sandy strips, that’s how auto racing in Daytona got its start.
We weren’t ready for any five hundred mile speed competitions, but we were pretty jazzed about riding our trusty bikes right along the ocean. We rode several miles and came upon the many common inhabitants of the Florida beaches.
Check out amazing birds (including anhinga and vultures), raccoons, manatees, jellyfish and more!
A couple of weeks ago, we asked for your help – and, boy, did we get it! We are truly overwhelmed by the response we received! Thank you so much!
We had a bit of a joyous dilemma: Where would we go on our “real empty nest” trip? You see, The Boy graduates college this Spring and we want to celebrate by going somewhere really special – no more tuition payments! We found a program, RoadScholar.org, that fit our ideals perfectly – but after narrowing our dream trips down to three, we couldn’t land on just one. Yes, there was “heated discussion” involved.
A couple of weeks ago, we asked for your help – and, boy, did we get it! We are truly overwhelmed by the response we received! Thank you so much!
We had a bit of a joyous dilemma: Where would we go on our “real empty nest” trip? You see, The Boy graduates college this Spring and we want to celebrate by going somewhere really special – no more tuition payments! We found a program, RoadScholar.org, that fit our ideals perfectly – but after narrowing our dream trips down to three, we couldn’t land on just one. Yes, there was “heated discussion” involved.
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These birds aren’t designed to be on land, they looked absolutely ridiculous, but it did give us the chance to see them closer than… CONTINUE READING >>
We noticed a flock of pelicans going flat out nuts. We had to check it out so we climbed over an embankment to where we could see the source of the commotion. Fishermen were cleaning their catch and tossing the guts, so several dozen pelicans were fighting for the scraps. These birds aren’t designed to be on land, they looked absolutely ridiculous, but it did give us the chance to see them closer than we ever had before.
The nature of our travel style – what we call “traveling low to the ground” – does not conjure up images of luxury hotels, first class airline tickets and limousines. And for good reason. It’s not that we’re opposed to these things, in fact we quite like them, we just can’t see forking out the money for perks that don’t feel so perky when it comes time to pay the bill.
We are suckers for every tip and trick that will save us money while traveling. After all, we have embarked on a roadtrip that can only last as long our bodies and our mutually agreed upon funds hold out. Therefore, we have vowed to stay in shape and be as frugal as possible.
The nature of our travel style – what we call “traveling low to the ground” – does not conjure up images of luxury hotels, first class airline tickets and limousines. And for good reason.
It’s not that we’re opposed to these things, in fact we quite like them, we just can’t see forking out the money for perks that don’t feel so perky when it comes time to pay the bill.
We are suckers for every tip and trick that will save us money while traveling. After all, we have embarked on a roadtrip that can only last as long our bodies and our mutually agreed upon funds hold out. Therefore, we have vowed to stay in shape and be as frugal as possible.
Plane tickets are funny things. It slays us how wildly the price for seats on the same flight can vary. Not just the difference between first class and coach, but the fact that the guy we’re sitting next to could have paid a thousand dollars more for his seat than we did for ours. We’re not about to spend a penny more than we have to.
There is a downside to this lifestyle choice – for us anyway – we’ve never been able to book tickets without cursing our computer, the airlines, and several websites. It is so frustrating booking online (there’s often a discount for that), dealing with hidden fees (recently we got popped for a “seat fee,” $10 to get a seat – standing wasn’t an option), finding seats together and because we have flexible schedules, checking every possible flight within every possible time frame.
Then, when we’ve finally finished the research, have chosen the perfect flight and clicked CONFIRM, is seems like 9 out of 10 times the scream-inducing “this fare is no longer available” notice pops up. GRRRRRRR.
We are spending a good chunk of our summer in South America this year and because we wanted to see The Galapagos and Machu Picchu, we felt a guided adventure would be perfect for that portion of our journey. To protect The Galapagos, people aren’t allowed to go trudging around all willy-nilly, so an experienced guide must hired.
After a bit of searching – and some stalking of them on Twitter and Facebook – we discovered an amazing program, RoadScholar.org. Road Scholar was the perfect solution for us – they provide educational travel programs with like-minded folks wanting to learn as much as they can about the area they are visiting.
One of the most appealing features – and for us, the swaying factor – was that there are no hidden fees with Road Scholar. EVERYTHING is included in the published price, no surprises!
The icing on the cake was that trip we will be taking in June will have only fourteen other fellow travelers, so we are very excited that we can take participate in a program like this AND still feel like our low-to-the-ground selves.
When the time came to book our flights to South America, we decided to run a sneaky little experiment. We had learned that Road Scholar had a team in place to book our flights, but we figured that because we were so good at finding great deals, we would do better on our own.
Besides, since we would be going on to Argentina and Uruguay independently after the Road Scholar portion of our trip, we weren’t sure they could help us out.
So we did the legwork, cussed A LOT, and got the “fare is no longer available” notice FOUR times in the process. We checked for flights leaving different days, leaving from various cities and searched with four different online booking sites.
By the end of the process, the best price we found was $1600 each for flights back and forth to South America from Chicago and a flight in the middle from Lima to Buenos Aires. Good price, but didn’t include all the hair we pulled out to find it.
Armed with the certainty that Road Scholar was not going to be able to top that deal, we gave them a ring. The phone was answered by the friendly Etel, and after five easy minutes of explaining our extended travel plans, we could hear Etel’s fingers flying over her keyboard.
We loved her happy banter as she researched the best flights for us – and how she didn’t flinch when we told her that price was the only factor in our decision making. We didn’t care about changing planes or long layovers, we just wanted to get there as cheaply as possible.
Then something occurred to us, Etel actually ENJOYED doing this. When we teasingly mentioned that we didn’t hear her cussing in frustration, she said that she had way better access to information than we would and that she did this everyday. It was easy for her. That’s all well and good, but could she get us a better deal?
Yes she could, $80 off each flight, without a single syllable of swearing. We told Etel that we didn’t want to sit over the wing because we like to take video from the plane – boom – perfect seats chosen. Every single need we had was met quickly and with a smile we could feel through the phone lines.
But wait – there’s more. Etel made the reservation, then told us that she had twenty-four hours to change the ticket, and if the price dropped further during that time, she would reissue the ticket and get the better price. Right.
In the meantime we were transferred to Laura, who answered all the questions we had regarding the trip, she knew the area well. We wore Laura out with questions – How do we deal with altitude at Machu Picchu? We want to live-blog the trip – where are we going to have internet service? At one point she even left a message with a friend in Peru to double check on a question we had. Wow.
When Etel called back the next day (!) with an even deeper discount, we were floored. When Laura e-mailed us with the exact places we’d have internet in The Galapagos, we swooned. AND if that’s not enough…
-We received a great list of books we might want to read before our trip.
-A phone number to call should we need assistance during the duration of our trip.
-Road Scholar has its own social network, we can meet some of the folks on our program before we go!
-An amazingly in-depth itinerary.
-AND…
We get one of those sign-holding-up guys at the airport when we get to Quito! We’ve never had that before – and to us – nothing says luxury like a sign that says “Mr. & Mrs. James” when we’re THAT Mr. and Mrs. James.
All told, we saved over two hundred dollars, got some heavy perks and, best of all, had fun booking our tickets, something we didn’t even know was possible. Not a bad lick.
Next time we need flights booked, Etel is getting a call.
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At The Blue & White, what really caught our eye was their signature dessert… The Donut Tower. Two hot caramelized donuts filled with ice cream and topped with whipped cream and chocolate sauce. Don’t see how anyone could have the blues while… CONTINUE READING>>
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At The Blue & White, what really caught our eye was their signature dessert… The Donut Tower. Two hot caramelized donuts filled with ice cream and topped with whipped cream and chocolate sauce. Don’t see how anyone could have the blues while… CONTINUE READING>>
