We spent the month at the Yacht Haven RV park. RV parks in southern Florida are hard to come by - and expensive! We paid almost $900 for the month there. That's a lot when you consider that we brought our own house along with us. The park is quite large but the sites are tiny. We had a heck of a time getting our 5th wheel backed into the site. And then we had to park our truck partially in the road because it wouldn't fit entirely in the site. OK, enough complaining...
While in Fort Lauderdale we spent a lot of time riding our bikes both around the area of the campground and at a nearby state park, the Hugh Taylor Birch State Park. It's a great place to ride because the auto traffic moves slowly and you don't have to worry quite so much about becoming road kill. Fort Lauderdale joke: "What do you call a bike rider in Fort Lauderdale?" Answer: "An organ donor!" We also spent time sitting on the beautiful beach and we read a lot. That's been one of our greatest pleasures since we left Seattle and resumed our transient way of life. Since we don't have a lot of money to spend on books at places like Borders anymore, we find and shop at used book stores a lot. Another great source of books are library book sales. While in Maine this summer we bought several grocery bags of books for only a few dollars.
One of our favorite things to do while in southern Florida is to take our bikes to the Shark Valley area of the Everglades National Park. They have a tram road that goes out into the Everglades several miles. You get a great view of the Everglades from the observation tower at the end. Along the way you'll see lots of wildlife including turtles, birds and, of course, alligators. No matter how many times we did it we never got used to riding our bikes only a few feet past the alligators!
 | Alligator on the Shark Valley tram road. They usually sit facing the water because they feel safer that way. This one was probably about 7' or 8' long - we didn't get close enough to measure!! |
 | View from the Shark Valley observation tower. You can see how flat the Everglades are. This part of the tram road is straight as an arrow. |
 | Another fun thing to do in Fort Lauderdale is riding the water bus. $10 and you can ride all day. Here's Karen on the water bus. Behind her you can see another water bus. |
 | There's LOTS of money in Fort Lauderdale. Here's one of the typical yachts you see there. Meduse, about 200' long, is owned by Paul Allen, co-founder of Microsoft. I've read that Allen either sold her or has her for sale. But don't feel too bad for him, he also owns the 416' Octopus! |
Ah yes, aligators, you run into them at the golf courses in Myrtle Beach too, we got to leave some golf balls close to the green once and just go on to the next hole, as their was a big one sunning itself on the fringe of the green. You don't want to dig in the water holes to retrieve your golf balls!
ReplyDeleteMy parents used to live in Lauderdale-by-the-Sea and we'd see all those yachts and gasp. It's where I learned their are a LOT of rich people in this country!