November 22-26, 2017: My Birthday and Thanksgiving in San Antonio
	September 9-16, 2017: A Trip to Quebec City, Canada
	Return to the Index for 2017

For our third Florida trip this year, we left Dallas on October 8, intending to stay about 2 weeks. This is a good time of year to come down here, as there is often an Art Fair or something else going on. As these trips to Florida have become so commonplace, we tend to take fewer and fewer pictures, and so there is less and less need to divide up the drip day by day. Rather, I'll continue doing what I've done for the last few years- just divide the photo album page by topic, pretty much regardless of when the picture was taken.

Getting to Fort Lauderdale

If you've been through more than a year or two of this photo album, you are undoubtedly familiar with our route to Florida. Years ago we used to fly, but that has gotten to be such a hassle (and a good deal more expensive) that now we drive. This allows us to take all kinds of things with us- including a cat or two. On this trip, it will be Bob's turn. Zack has, over the years become less and less of a good traveler, so we are going to pretty much retire him as the record holder for trips to Florida- sixteen of them altogether. This will be Bob's third trip down with us. The trip is routine; we stop at the same places to eat and to stay- almost without exception. And it's an easy route, too.

We left about nine-thirty, and by ten were on US 80/I-20 heading east towards Shreveport. There, we take a bypass around town to connect up to I-49 south; 200 miles later we are in Lafayette, turning east on I-10 about three-forty-five.

We're usually in Baton Rouge around 4, just in time for rush hour traffic clogging the Mississippi River Bridge- now woefully underdesigned for four times the traffic it carried when it opened in 1968. Poor design leads to inevitable tie-ups, and so we usually don't get to I-12 until close to 5PM. Then it's 90 minutes to the Mississippi border, another hour to the Alabama state line, and finally Mobile about 730PM. This puts us north of Pensacola right about dinnertime at eight. After dinner, we used to drive another two hundred miles to get to our pet-friendly motel in Tallahassee- at about 1230AM. This time, though, I think we will try staying closer to Pensacola. It will make the second day's driving longer, but will eliminate a lot of nighttime driving.

In the morning, then, it's a bit over four hours to Jacksonville, where we take I-295 around Jacksonville to the south, going through Orange Park. This 14-mile stretch is kind of neat, mostly because of the long bridge that crosses the St. Johns River as it opens out into a large lake southwest of the city. I-295 connects up with I-95 south of Jacksonville and we simply take that south for a boring 300 miles down to Fort Lauderdale. We arrived about six-thirty, unloaded everything and got Bob squared away and the laptops all set up and then retired to the dock for a celebratory frozen drink. Then, as is our custom, it is dinner at the Floridian. I wish we had transporter technology, but the drive is not a hard one- just long and quite boring in sections.

We have been here to Florida so many times that we have pretty much photographed everything worthwhile anywhere nearby. The pictures we take now are just candid shots around the condo, at the dock or perhaps at an Art Fair or other event that occurs while we are here. So I've begun the practice of just grouping the pictures for these Florida trips by topic.

Bob in the Car

Bob is a good traveler; this is his fifth or sixth trip, I think. He stays in someone's lap or actually goes into his carrier on his own to have a long nap. He is very quiet, and eats and drinks only occasionally. Fred usually snaps a good many pictures as we drive, and here are four of the best of the many he took on this trip down:

Bob in the Condo

It is always nice to have a cat with us; they are good company. Although Bob is here by himself, we don't think it affects him, as he is often by himself at home as well.

(Click on Thumbnails to View)

Bob seems to have a different personality when he is down here with us- and without Zack and Lucky around. At home, he often defers to them, although he is still young enough to want to play with them.

Down here with us, is is usually wherever we are, and will flop down just about anywhere. The picture of him on the bathroom counter by the faucet is an anomaly; he, even more than our other cats, is always jumping up on the bathroom counter at home any time either of us is in the bathroom. He likes to drink water directly from the faucet. This seems to be a common behavior among cats; in fact, there are a number of "cat fountains" you can buy that replace the typical cat water bowl with something in which the water is in motion.

The Fort Lauderdale Art Fair

Sometimes, our visits here correspond with the Las Olas Art Fair, an event held three times a year (January, March and October) where Las Olas is blocked off and a whole bunch of art vendors set up booths along both sides of the street. It extends from the intersection by The Cheesecake Factory (located above the Kinney Tunnel that takes US 1 underneath the New River) right at downtown Fort Lauderdale four blocks east to the Colee Hammock canal that goes under Las Olas.

This time, the fair was held on the weekend of the 21st and 22nd- our last weekend here-, and we went to walk along the fair on both days. It is always interesting to see the wide variety of arts and crafts offered, and perhaps every other fair we end up buying something for ourselves or for a gift.

The Art Fair has been going on, three times a year, for at least twenty years, so I assume that the artists sell enough, or make enough contacts at the event to make it worthwhile financially, considering that they have to pay the operator of the Fair their share of all the expense of putting it on. The various businesses that line Las Olas (the Rodeo Drive or Fifth Avenue of Fort Lauderdale) also benefit from the steady stream of potential customers walking along the Fair route.

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We walked the entire length of the Art Fair on Sunday afternoon. Today wasn't particularly crowded; moving along can be slow when it is. The three interesections involved in the fair route offer a chance to bypass the particularly slow walkers, if you want, and they are also the locations usually given over to the larger sculptures and all of the commercial booths (insurance companies, car dealers, the local newspapers and a couple of radio stations). There are usually also at least two or three musicians performing and selling their CDs.

At left is a slideshow of some of today's Art Fair pictures. Have a look at them if you wish, using the little arrows in the lower corners of each picture to move from one to another.

Of course, what the many vendors are hoping for are sales, and while we hardly ever see lots of people carring away lots of merchandise, we assume that most people conclude their transactions like we do- buying things and then coming back at the very end of the day to pick them up. That's what we did this year for the few purchases that we made. By far the most common offering at the Art Fair are paintings, which I guess is what most people would immediately think of when the term "art" is used. Some of the paintings are pretty traditional, using traditional media such as pastels or oils. Others use additional media to set themselves apart. We always enjoy walking around the Art Fair when our visit includes one, and today was no exception.

Boat Traffic on the New River (Installment 39)

One of our best features of Riverview Gardens is its location right on the New River; this means that even our smallish apartment has dynamite views all the time; there is always something going by on the River.

The Charter Boat Musette Goes By (Mouseover Image Above for Video Controls)

So there is lots of traffic on the river to watch- normal-sized boats, really huge charter yachts, the Jungle Queen, the Water Taxi, and the occasional sailboat. These water craft are such a staple of our visits here, that we don't take nearly as many pictures as we used to. Here are some views of the river from this trip:

(Click on Thumbnails to View)

Bye, Bye, Las Olas Riverfront

In 1998, Fred and I had been coming down here once a year for four or five years, and we had seen the Riverwalk evolve along the north side of the New River. All of today's highrises and the Broward Performing Arts Center were still years in the future when the Las Olas Riverfront opened that year.

The Riverfront Center Area, circa 2010

When the complex opened, it did so with the idea it could be a smaller version of Miami’s Bayside Marketplace. Riverfront had 18 restaurants, more than a dozen retail shops and a 23-screen cinema. In 2003, it hosted one of the Florida Marlins World Series championship celebrations.

Sadly, the 19-year-old shopping and entertainment complex along the New River west of Andrews Avenue in downtown Fort Lauderdale was described as a flop just eight years after its opening. It’s been mostly vacant in recent years. The reasons for this were simple.

First, there was a dearth of nearby parking. This meant that most of the patrons for Riverfront would be walk-ins from the many residential towers that line the Riverwalk- like River House (seen in the picture beyond the eastern portion of the complex, the picture having been taken from where the Riverwalk crosses the railroad track west of the complex), the Water Garden, Symphony I and II, Las Olas Grand, the Icon Las Olas, etc.- and from the Performing Arts Center. Problem was, each and every one of those was many years in the future when Riverfront opened. So the complex, with theatres, restaurants, and shopping that could serve tens of thousands of customers a day, had only a fraction of that traffic. By the time the first of those towers were constructed and fully-occupied, most of the stores and restaurants in the complex had already closed.

So, this month the demolition of Riverfront began. In its place (by 2020) will be two high-rise residential towers— 42 and 38 stories tall— with 40,000 square feet of shops and restaurants on their lower levels. While Fred and I had never been frequent patrons of the restaurants, bars, or shops, we did go to the theatres a couple of times each visit (even though the auditoriums were, by and large, empty during the day when we tended to see movies). There are pictures of Riverfront on album pages from the early 2000s, but here is what the area looks like now:

I know that in another two or three years this entire area will be transformed, so I thought I would put together a panoramic view of the area so I could compare it before and after. Here, then, is the "before" panorama:

Hello, Icon Las Olas

Well, Riverfront has gone, but the Icon Las Olas, in the works since the late 1990s, has finally arrived (well, it's topped out, even though it isn't occupied just yet). So you'll know where it is, here is the portion of the Riverwalk east of the Florida East Coast Railway tracks:

This aerial view is from 2014 or so, because you can see that the Icon Las Olas hasn't even broken ground yet. I've just had to label its site, since it isn't there yet. But it is now, and we took some good pictures of it this trip. Here are those pictures, and I have marked on the aerial view the point from which each was taken:

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In addition to topping out the tower, the builders of Icon Las Olas also extended the Riverwalk from where it used to end in front of the Las Olas Grand at the southwest corner of the Icon's site, around the river side of the new highrise, and to the small park that sits on top of the Kinney Tunnel, just south of the Cheesecake Factory. Although the new section of the Riverwalk is only 150 feet long, it finally connects the Riverwalk to Las Olas Boulevard. (In that picture, Riverview Gardens, where our condo is, is on the other side of the five-story green building downriver.)

Two Final Pictures

That's it for this trip- save for two more pictures we took on the day we walked through the Art Fair. Each is interesting in its own way.

I've heard of putting coffee shops in bookstores, but am always amused by this combination.

We took Steve's parents to Trata last time we were here, but it is closed now, to transform into something new.

We left Fort Lauderdale on the 23rd to head home, arriving back in Dallas on the 24th, concluding another relaxing trip to Florida. Incidentally, this concluded our 51st trip to Fort Lauderdale together.

You can use the links below to continue to another photo album page.

	November 22-26, 2017: My Birthday and Thanksgiving in San Antonio
	September 9-16, 2017: A Trip to Quebec City, Canada
	Return to the Index for 2017