Florida Keys

Today felt like a road trip, and I love road trips. I love being able to stop whenever we want to see and do new things and try new foods. Our first stop this morning was in Islamorada to eat breakfast at Mangrove Mike's. Another place that was hard to find but worth the stop.

We shared an omelet called the Kitchen Sink. Chock full of ham, sausage, bacon, mushrooms, peppers, onions, potatoes, and cheese.

Hubby was quite generous with the pepper.

And of course, we needed a slice of homemade key lime pie before noon. While it might not look pretty, it was darn tasty.

The shop next door was clear about the origin of their items.

We then made a stop in Marathon, Florida for gas and a beach stop. Two things to note:

• Once I checked my email when we got to Key West I found an email from Shell. My gas card had been frozen because of potential fraudulent purchases. Uh, no. They must have problems in this particular area because I've used that card for years and years all over this country (and plenty of times in Florida) and it has never been flagged before. We quickly cleared it up and all is good now.
• We planned on spending an hour or so at Sombrero Beach in Marathon. A beautiful but busy beach. (I do keep forgetting it's Thanksgiving week. It's like I'm on a different calendar for some reason!) The busyness itself wasn't the problem, but the lack of seating for hubby was. He can't stand for long, and with all the picnic tables being taken it left him without a place to sit we couldn't stay. Looked like everyone was having a grand time in the water, though.

Thankfully our hotel (surprise - a real hotel this time) allowed us to check in early. It's one of the nice benefits of being a Best Western Diamond member. We saw lots of folks sitting out in the sun at the pool with multiple pieces of luggage. I tried not to make eye contact - didn't want to rub it in. Although there are worse places to be waiting for a room than at the pool.

After a little rest, hubby was ready to go out. We walked a couple blocks down to the southernmost point in the continental United States. I remember seeing this spot on TV during last year's hurricane.

It was such a beautiful day. We decided to eat not far from that spot at the Southernmost Beach Cafe. We wound up there during happy hour. A $5 rum punch? Yep, I'll take a couple. Hubby went with sangria which was not on the happy hour menu.

All of our food came from the happy hour menu. And bonus - we have leftovers for dinner tomorrow.

$4 pizza rolls.

 $5 buffalo chicken wings.

The most unbelievable tasty combinations were in this $4 grilled cheese sandwich with fries. Pork, onion jam, and cheese. It could probably easily make it to the top of the best thing I ever ate list.

And just to prove to ourselves we really are in Key West, we had another slice of key lime pie. This one had an Oreo crust and strawberry topping. I don't know how it is possible that each one we've had these past few days has been different but amazingly delicious. 

 

As we were sitting there watching the sun go down, we noticed a cruise ship heading out of port.

 Then another one. We  had both a Royal Caribbean and an Azamara in Key West today.

 It was a good day. Tomorrow should be just as good as we have an adventure planned involving a ferry and a fort. Stay tuned.

Find out how we spent yesterday in the Florida Keys here.

Islamorada, Florida

I had never heard of Islamorada until we started searching for places to stay on our way to Key West. Up until today I didn't even know how to pronounce it. (It's eye la more ah dah.) Islamorada is a town hit hard by Hurricane Irma last year. You can see some drone footage shot by the Miami Herald here. Even now some businesses are still closed, homes are being repaired, and signs are everywhere about assistance.

Even real estate listings remind you a hurricane might be in your future with words like concrete, bunker, and fortitude.

We're also finding so many of these towns in the Keys have something else unique about them - you don't realize there is water like, right there. Trees and bushes hide the water on both sides of the road. These last couple days I've been following our GPS down narrow streets to find beaches and marinas. We always think the same thing when we turn off. This can't be right. But two minutes later and wouldn't you know it, there's the water. It happened at the place we stayed at over the weekend. A very nondescript looking place from the road had a great water view just a few feet away. 

And again, at the place we're staying now. It doesn't look like anything special from the main street. Probably doesn't look too impressive from the inside of our abode, either. 

But I knew exactly what I was booking here. Like I've mentioned before, we sometimes like getting out of our usual hotel lodging routine. I have fond childhood memories of camping each summer with my grandparents, hubby has fond childhood memories of heading every year in the camper to his family reunion, and we both have fond memories of our summer-long cross-country tent-camping road trip with our daughter. 

So this place - this trailer - in Islamorada was calling my name. It has electricity and water and even has a regular hotel-like toilet.

Who can say they are blessed enough to be able to camp on the sand in the Florida Keys? That would be us. But again today we again couldn't lollygag on the sand as we had some things to be done. First up, lunch. We wandered just a couple minutes down the road and found ourselves at the rough-looking Hog Heaven.

Go inside, walk through the bar, and plop yourself down outside to find a view like this. Order a drink like the Flying Pig. Vodka, peach schnapps, Red Bull, and cranberry. My first sip of alcohol in months and my first ever sip of Red Bull. Between the view and the warm day and the drink I was feeling warm and fuzzy on the inside.

Or order today's special of the day, a Cuban sandwich. We're only 126 miles from Cuba so we knew it had to be tasty and it was. (Their fresh catch of the day wasn't dolphin like yesterday but was swordfish. We didn't order it.)

Look at those thick slices of meat.

Of course, homemade Key Lime pie for dessert. Very dense.

Then back to CVS to pick up hubby's prescription and onto a nice, clean laundromat to run a load.

Not as relaxing a day as I had hoped, but I'm not going to complain when I can sit in a trailer and type my blog and see this out the window.

The sunsets here aren't too shabby, either.

Even when the moon starts to make an appearance in the opposite side of the sky it is pretty darn nice.

We never ever forget what a wonderful life we live. Off to Key West tomorrow.

Tutorial Tuesday - How to Make a Reverse Applique Heart Christmas Tree Ornament

It's Tutorial Tuesday and today we are making a heart homemade Christmas tree ornament - or handmade Valentine's Day decoration - using fabric and reverse applique. Don't worry, it's easier than it sounds!

For this project you will need:

• Two pieces of main fabric measuring 6” x 6”.
• A piece of fabric measure 6” x 6” for the inset heart
• One piece of fusible interfacing, 6” x 6”
• 12” long ribbon for hanging 
• Polyester fiberfill stuffing
• Small pointed scissors like these embroidery scissors
• Marking pencil
• Pinking shears
• Pins or Clover Wonder Clips
• Iron
• Sewing machine
• Matching thread
• Rotary cutter
• Cutting ruler
• Cutting mat
• Heart templates downloaded free from here

Looking for more Valentine's Day ideas? Check out these projects!

Looking for something else? 

Check out some of my other Valentine's Day sewing and crafting projects!

Disclosure: Deb's Days is a participant in affiliate advertising programs designed to provide a means for me to earn fees by linking to affiliated sites. This means that, at no additional cost to you, I will earn a small commission if you click through and make a purchase. Your purchase helps support my work in bringing you new sewing and crafting content.

The step-by-step how to video instructions for the fabric heart ornament sewing project can be found here:

A Day of Discovery

Today was a day of discovery. We started out the morning as planned by hanging out at our own little private beach at our motel in Key Largo.

We sat there watching pelicans and gulls. Even saw this little guy right in the water near the blue walkway that headed to the dock.

Then we went to breakfast at Mrs. Mac's Kitchen a few miles down the road. We were too late for breakfast (it ended at 11 am) so we had lunch instead. (I should tell you - their fresh catch of the day was dolphin. Don't worry, we did NOT order it.)

Pretty cool looking place inside. License plates on the walls and lamps made out of license plates, too. See Idaho up there?

What's that stuck in the lattice on the ceiling? Well, it's money of course!

They had the best homemade key lime pie we've ever tasted.

We then headed to CVS in Islamorada to get hubby's prescription. They had to order it so we'll be back tomorrow to pick it up. I certainly hope this guy isn't in the parking lot again!

To kill time before check in at our new lodging location, we went to Library Beach Park. Although with this warning we decided not to stay too long.

So we headed a little bit early to our new place. What a view, right? This is out our front window.

It's a unique place we're staying in. Sometimes you just have to break away from those standard hotels and branch out. And that's what we did. I'll give you a tour tomorrow.

What a great day of new things!

Another NASCAR Race & National Park

How can your day not turn out great when you take a few steps out of your hotel room and see this?

I walked out onto the dock and took a photo of the property.

Shh. Don't tell hubby he's in the picture.

I'm not sure it's technically a hotel. It's just one building with what looks to be four units.

Our unit is on the ground floor in the back. This side faces the water.

We would have loved to stay on the little beach all day, but there was no lollygagging for us. We were on to another National Park today. Everglades National Park. Not nearly as pretty as yesterday's, but there was wildlife. No alligators, though.

Then following yesterday's schedule, back to another NASCAR race.

So how did we become people who watched NASCAR?

On a Sunday in 2011 I was living at my daughter's. Two months out from shoulder surgery, I was still in my sling and could only use one arm. My daughter was at work and I was doing what I usually did when I was at her place. I was sitting where I slept - in the recliner - and flipping through the local channels since she had no cable.

I came across the Daytona 500. I rarely ever watched car races, but knowing I was heading home the following week and would need something to talk to my husband about when I returned, I chose the car race. I sat there and watched that race. And enjoyed it. (Granted, I was on pain pills at the time.) Right before I started this blog in March I was able to move back home. Told my hubby about enjoying the race. He suggested we start watching those NASCAR races. So we did. Our weekends from March - November began to revolve around race time on TV. For the first few weeks I always picked who I thought would win the day's race based on who had the prettiest car. (I still do it that way.) Wouldn't you know it, for several weeks in a row I was always right.

Fast forward to 2018 (and I was in a sling this week because of my shoulder again - dang!) and we made it to two races in two days. Championship Weekend is a biggie. It's the end of the racing season and the day they crown a new champion.

We can mark that one off our list. I think we both agree we'd much rather be in our recliners with our feet up in the comfort of our own home rather than be in a crowd of thousands.

Did you know this is how they get one of their camera views before the race? I didn't.

One thing to note for future reference: If you go from a 14 day transatlantic cruise to a NASCAR race on the same day, prepare yourself for a culture shock. Not the same clientele for sure!

Tomorrow we're relaxing at our private beach before check out, heading off to try and fill a prescription, find a laundromat, and relax and enjoy another new and somewhat different kind of lodging in the Florida Keys.

Crown Princess Disembarkation Day

I don't know how it is humanly possible to experience such joy and sadness in the same moment. Knowing the Universe takes care of us helps, though.

Sometimes when we disembark a ship we arrange for wheelchair assistance for hubby. With my shoulder and his latest couple falls, with the ship returning after being out of the US for so long (which means immigration will be backed up with long lines), we decided to meet in the wheelchair disembarkation area this morning. Of course, not unexpectedly, things were running behind. As we were sitting there we saw a familiar face. At the same moment we both shouted, "Sydney!". Hugs and greetings and photos taken. And the same disbelief. Sydney, a crew member we knew from the Grand, was on this ship. For the entire cruise. 14 whole days and we never saw him, never knew he was there. He's the Vines guy now! (And a wheelchair disembarkation guy.) We were oh-so-excited to see him. And oh-so-sad we went the entire cruise without seeing him even once. Breaks my heart a bit.

But then as we waited longer for a wheelchair, hubby and I both shouted, "Shannon!". Another round of hugs and greetings and photos taken. And again the same disbelief. Shannon, a crew member we knew very well from the Royal, was on this ship. For the entire cruise. 14 whole days and we never saw him, never knew he was there. He worked in Crooners the entire cruise. (And was a wheelchair disembarkation guy.) We again were oh-so-excited to see him and oh-so-sad we went the entire cruise without seeing him even once. We had just been talking about him last month when we were in Nassau on the Caribbean Princess. Last time we were in Nassau was with the Royal Princess and we went to the beach with Shannon and a couple other crew members. (Today I even showed him that I still had the picture on my phone - and promised I wouldn't show that particular photo to other passengers!) Missing Shannon this cruise really broke my heart. We finished off with more hugs and a hard-to-say goodbye as he headed out to take a passenger onshore in a wheelchair.

And we continued to wait for our luggage tag color to be called. When it was, and a wheelchair guy showed up at the exact same time, guess who was hubby's wheelchair pusher? It was Shannon! Super excited, we were. Thank you, Universe, for giving us a bit more time with someone we hold so dear.

So happy. So sad. But at least we got to see them both. Then we saw Vickie and Bernie as we were headed out the door. Thank you again, Universe. It wasn't even 10 in the morning yet!

After all that excitement, we got our taxi to the car rental and headed to our first stop of the day, Biscayne National Park. We are working our way through the National Parks and when we arrived at this one we were surprised how far out away from things it was, but also surprised it was free. It was so beautiful. We wandered the paths, watched fish jumping and fisherman fishing, rocked on the porch, got our National Park stamps, and sat a spell on the bench overlooking the water.

Seems like we should be sipping sweet tea with a view like this.

 That could have been enough for the day. But we had another stop.

When we knew we wouldn't be able to fly home today (Pre-Thanksgiving airfare was ridiculously high) we knew we would not only do some National Park visiting but go to something that just happened to be scheduled the same weekend the ship arrived.

NASCAR Championship Weekend. Tomorrow I'll share more of the story about how we wound up watching NASCAR on TV years back, but today we saw our first-ever race in person today.

It was an afternoon race and we were so tired by the time it started.

It was covered by NBC Sports.

We finally decided to call it quits as the sun was going down. The Universe must have had us in mind again. As we were leaving the racetrack, we got a call from the front desk checking to see when we'd be there. You see, they close the front desk at 7 pm. I did not know that until the call.

If we had stayed the entire race we:
A. Wouldn't have heard the phone ring.
B. Wouldn't have made it to Key Largo before 7.
C. Would have lost our room.
D. All of the above.

The correct answer is D. Again, thank you Universe!

While we arrived after dark to a hotel that was extremely difficult to find, our room is a pretty one. We entered through a sliding glass door to see this:

We have a little patio (it's pitch dark out here so I'm not sure exactly what it looks like) and if I look closely I see maybe some sand around the corner. Looking at the pictures in the book that was in our room, we may have quite a nice view out back once the sun comes up tomorrow. Can't wait to check it out.

Oh, yeah, and another NASCAR race. Tomorrow should be exciting. 

Crown Princess Transatlantic Cruise Wrap-Up

The end is here. It’s the last sea day of our Rome to Fort Lauderdale Transatlantic Cruise on the Crown Princess. We missed one port because of weather (Toulon, France) but did make it to Livorno, Italy, Barcelona, Spain, Ponta Delgada in the Azores, and had 10 sea days.

Here are some of our highlights and lowlights. We:

• Realized a 12 hour overnight flight from the US to Italy is not for us.
• Found Rome extremely difficult for someone with disabilities.
• Saw the Colosseum from the handy hop-on, hop-off bus.
• Visited the Leaning Tower of Pisa. 
• Want to return to Barcelona, Spain.
• Were thankful we were able to finally make it to the Azores.
• Experienced the longest patch of the roughest seas we’ve ever had.
• Slept and rested more than we had planned.
• Watched staler TV than planned. 
• Had good conversations with like-minded people.
• Spent lots of one-on-one time with a special crew member.
• Found the Crown Princess in good condition.

And realized 10 sea days on a ship with sucky internet, without an on-demand TV system, and with the same old Princess buffet is probably not a ship for us. While the Crown Princess is a fine ship, I do need high quality internet for work. I’ve fallen behind on my emails (apologies to all those who are still awaiting a reply from me) and I couldn’t post as many pictures as I’d like because of the slow internet and limited minutes. Since most of our meals are eaten at the buffet, choice is important and this ship doesn’t have what we’ve seen on Caribbean Princess and the Royal and Regal Princess. And since I don’t watch TV or movies at home, I also missed having the free on-demand options on this ship.

So what’s next for us? Well, I am ditching the sling and not going to the ER tomorrow. We have too many plans I don’t want to mess with! While we have insurance that would cover if we were to cancel the rest of our trip, we aren’t going to do that. We will instead be heading down to Key Largo for a couple nights. It’s the closest, reasonably-priced lodging we could find for the special sporting event that we’re attending that is being held November 17-18 in the Miami area. Then off for several more days even farther south before making our way back to Fort Lauderdale for another cruise. And yep, I’m blogging all the way.

And waiting until I get home to deal with the shoulder.

See you tomorrow. More new adventures await.

Crown Princess Sea Day

Today I did something I haven’t done in a long time. Play skeeball. Fellow blogger Vickie (from Vickie and Bernie Travel), my hubby, and I went upstairs to the Teen Center to the Young at Heart Hours that I mentioned yesterday. It was quite fun. Thanks for the idea, Vickie!

They also had other activities. It was quite busy with all of us young at heart folks.

But when I was playing I was noticing my shoulder was bothering me even more. Hubby even mentioned that he saw I was rolling the ball differently than I would have before. After our games, I returned to the cabin to grab my backpack so I could go work somewhere other than our inside cabin. Once I got my computer and charger and two bottles of water in it, the backpack was too heavy (it really wasn’t, but it was for me) to get onto my shoulders.

Remember the other night when I was slammed by the bathroom door (among other mishaps that night) during rough seas? While I wrote about it on my blog, I hadn’t given all the details. (Didn’t want to worry folks back at home.) So now I have to mention an important part of the story – the part where my arm got twisted as I tried to keep the door off me and the other part where I heard a pop in my arm. While I’ve been trying to ignore the ramifications of that incident, every day since there has been something problematic with that shoulder. Today it was the backpack I couldn’t get on that shoulder. That shoulder has also made it very difficult to hook a certain undergarment, wash my hair, and push off when getting up out of a chair. It has made it difficult to lift beverages out of the refrigerator and hang up clothes.  And hugging our crew member buddy every night has been taking some very careful, and a bit painful, shoulder maneuvering.

So I wandered off to the Medical Center this afternoon. I dislike doctors almost as much as dentists and only go when I absolutely have no other choice.  One of the first questions the doctor asked me was why it had took me so long to come see her. Because I thought it would get better? was all I could come up with.

Uh, well, no. Clearly she was more concerned about my shoulder than I was. She wanted to know if we were heading home in a couple days. When I said we won’t be home until December 23, she recommended I go to the ER once we get to Ft. Lauderdale and be seen by an orthopedic surgeon. That I need to have a cat scan of the shoulder. That I couldn’t wait that long to have it attended to. She gave me a shot (in the rump, no less!) for inflammation and pain and sent me off with acetaminophen to take until Ft. Lauderdale. And…wait for it…

Put in a sling.

Seriously?  I was almost ready to break down crying. I wanted to explain that we are picking up a rental car in Ft. Lauderdale in two days. That hubby doesn’t drive. That we have a week-long road trip planned. And mention again that hubby doesn’t drive. That this isn’t going to fit in our plans. That I have to carry a backpack on my shoulders because hubby is disabled and he can’t carry luggage or carry-ons. That I’ve lived with pain all my life and I can live with it a bit longer.

But I held it all in. I got fitted for my sling. Got my shot in the rump and box of acetaminophen.  Added $251 to my onboard account for medical services.

And had my chat with security.

When you have an accident anywhere on the ship, whether in the cabin or on the deck or in the dining room, security is called to take a report. When you hear security is called, people think you’ve done something wrong. So it was a bit embarrassing to have a chat with security in the waiting room when others were around. Security also takes photos of where the incident occurred (in my case, the bathroom door). So it was even more embarrassing to have security knocking pounding on my door while shouting security. Folks in nearby cabins even peeked out to see what was going on.

Hubby will be bringing me dinner back to the cabin tonight. I’m in no mood to walk out the door in the sling and attempt to eat with one hand in public. I’m feeling a bit sorry for myself, and a bit confused about what all this means for our next few weeks. All because of a dang bathroom door in rough seas.

I wasn’t feeling sorry for myself with today’s view. My pity party came later.

One more sea day tomorrow. After that I have no idea.