April 3-7, 2018: Old Home Week in Seoul, Korea
	February 24-26, 2018: Guy Visits Us in Dallas
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For our second Florida trip this year, we left Dallas on March 9, intending to stay a little over two weeks. We might have stayed longer had it not been for the fact that we would be leaving on our round-the-world odyssey early next month. We want to go to the St. Patrick's Day Parade again this year, as we did last, and it will be held on Saturday the 17th. 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 sixth 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. We used to continue on after dinner, logging another two hundred miles to Tallahassee, but that has gotten to be too much, so now we stay at a La Quinta pet-friendly motel just ten miles further on from dinner.

In the morning, it's a bit over five 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 (late because of rush-hour traffic). We 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- like the St. Patrick's Day parade this time. So I've begun the practice of just grouping the pictures for these Florida trips by topic.

The St. Patrick's Day Parade

Today, Saturday, the 17th, Fort Lauderdale held its annual St. Patrick's Day Parade. This will be our fifth time at this particular parade; more often than not it corresponds with our March trip down here, and we attended it the last four years straight.

The staging area for the parade begins about at the Cheesecake Factory. There is not nearly enough room for all the units right there on Las Olas (unless they closed the street most of the way to the beach). So what they do is use the side streets near the Kinney Tunnel, which runs under Las Olas at this point, and funnel the units into the main parade route as they are ready. Below is an aerial view of downtown showing you how the parade is staged and what its route was:

As you may already know, the condo is situated just a block off Las Olas and two blocks from the Cheesecake Factory, so getting to the staging area for the parade involves walking north one block and then turning west. As soon as we turned west to walk along the south side of Las Olas, we could see many of the parade entries getting ready.

The Staging Area Along Las Olas (Mouseover Image Above for Video Controls)

As soon as we turned the corner, I started a movie, looking around at the staging area. I apologize for the shakiness, but it's tough to walk and film steadily when the area is crowded. You can use the player at left to watch that movie.

Fred and I snapped a few pictures as we walked along Las Olas down to the beginning of the parade route, and here are some of them:

(Click on Thumbnails to View)

The Cheesecake Factory sits on the southeast corner of the Las Olas intersection that actually sits atop the Kinney Tunnel; Las Olas actually goes over the tunnel (as does the New River). Right over the tunnel to the west of the Cheesecake Factory there is a small park, and just west of that is a parcel of land that is shared by the Stranahan House, one of the oldest structures in town, and the Icon Las Olas, one of the newest. This new residential tower, which at this time last year was about 90% as high as it would get, has now topped out, and people are actually moving in. Much of the street-level commercial space is still vacant, though.

An Unlikely St. Patrick's Day Group

I thought that one of our best pictures was the one at right. Parades are often just an excuse for people to march and vehicles to drive in a long line down city streets; often, who or what is in the parade bears little on what the parade is actually for, and I think that St. Patrick's day is probably the worst offender. All you need is to wear something green and you are a member of the club.

Here are a few more staging area pictures:

(Click on Thumbnails to View)

Heading past the Cheesecake Factory and the Icon Las Olas, we came to what would be the beginning of the actual parade. The first unit seemed to be a bagpipe marching unit (although what bagpipes have to do with Ireland I can't quite fathom), and in front of the Icon Las Olas we passed the second. (If the picture looks a little odd, its because I couldn't get back far enough to get it all in, and had to build the image from four separate images.)

The Budweiser Clydesdales

As we had done last year, we will be meeting Ron Drew on the corner by Broward County Community College so we could watch the parade together. Once we passed the first units, we just had to make our way through the crowds that were already three- and four-people deep behind the barriers. We did get down to the community college building, waited a few minutes, and then connected with Ron who had driven down and parked over at his office a couple of blocks away.

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We actually had a pretty good spot for viewing the parade; our corner was pretty spacious. Over on the other side of the street, a new high-rise is going up, and last year's bleachers weren't set up this time, and the area where people could stand was much narrower. Before long, we could hear the parade kicking off back by the Icon Las Olas, and pretty soon the first three units- a color guard, a police bagpipe unit, and the Budweiser clydesdales- came by.

A couple of years ago, I was in "documenting mode" and tried to photograph every parade unit. Been there, done that. Today, we just took candid shots of whatever seemed interesting, without trying to be comprehensive. The best of the pictures we took are in the slideshow at left. Use the little arrows in the lower corners of each slide to move through the pictures, and check your progress using the index numbers in the upper left.

It seemed to me that the parade last year was a bit longer and also had more interesting units than did this year's parade, but the weather was nice, there was enough to look at, and we enjoyed being with Ron Drew.

Across the street, the new building going up will be called "100 Las Olas" and will be the tallest building in town- 42 stories. Here is another view of that new building under construction. It was also in the intersection adjacent to where we were standing that the traditional flag hanging from crossed ladders was located this year.

In addition to our candid shots, we took two movies that turned out decently:

Nothing More Irish Than Bagpipes (Mouseover Image Above for Video Controls)

One of the Local High School Marching Bands (Mouseover Image Above for Video Controls)

Well, that was this year's parade. After the parade, there is an Irish Festival that goes on in Bubier Park at Andrews and Las Olas. It would be smaller this year, as some of the park had been taken over by vehicles and equipment being used for the new 100 Las Olas building, and so we decided that since we'd been to it numerous times before, that we would skip it this time and just return to the condo.

A Day in West Palm Beach

Today, we are meeting Leroy and Rick, as we often do when we are down here, but this time, we'll be doing so up in West Palm Beach- about 45 miles north of here. Usually, the two guys drive down to Fort Lauderdale from Okeechobee, but this time we're going to have a look at the "new" downtown West Palm.

We went to Ron's house and he drove us up I-95 to the Okeechobee Blvd. exit, and we took that street east to City Place and the large parking garage there.

When we came out of the parking structure, we called Rick and Leroy and found that they were still 30 minutes away, so we arranged to meet them outside the same structure and we just hung out for a while.

Outside the parking structure, and down two escalators and a flight of steps, you come to an open plaza that has a couple of pools, a fountain, and a couple of little bridges, all surrounded by restaurants and shops. This is the middle of City Place, the relatively new downtown development here in West Palm Beach.

The area was actually very neat; some of the former city streets have been blocked off and turned into pedestrian walkways. We wandered around for a bit, eventually returning to our meeting place where Rick and Leroy showed up. Before we started walking around as a group, I did get one picture of Leroy and Fred.

Together, we walked around City Place for a bit, chatting and then eventually talking about where Rick and Leroy might like to have lunch. They are the ones who drove 90 minutes to get here, so we tend to let them pick the place to eat when they come all the way from Okeechobee to visit with us.

Someone suggested the Cheesecake Factory, and Rick and Leroy assented quickly, so we walked to the northwest corner of the City Place complex to find it. It being about two in the afternoon, there was no wait and we got in to eat quickly. Lunch was enjoyable, and we always like to catch up with what Rick and Leroy are up to.

We finished lunch about three, and came back outside the restaurant. This was an interesting corner, with some interesting architecture, so I took some pictures looking in all directions of some of that architecture. Here are some of those pictures:

(Click on Thumbnails to View)

When we left the Cheesecake Factory, we were carrying a couple of carryout containers (as none of us finished even the lunch-size entrees that we got), so we didn't walk around a great deal more. We returned to the open plaza where the pools and fountain were, and that where I got this picture of Fred in the open plaza.

It is always good to see Rick and Leroy. They live in Okeechobee, which, while not exactly in the middle of nowhere, at least pretty far from anywhere. They like getting out of their small-town environment, and we are always happy to see them. Here are the last pictures of our group, one taken by Fred and the other by myself:

(L-R): Fred, Ron, Jay, Rick, and Leroy

(L-R): Fred, Ron, Jay, Leroy, and myself

We spent a few more minutes together before we both returned to our cars and headed home.

Boats! More Boats!

One of the main attractions of being at Riverview Gardens, right on the New River, is that there are almost always boats of every size and description going by on the river. We can see them from the living room window and, of course, when we are at the dock. Over the years I must have taken hundreds and hundreds of pictures and movies of them going by, and on this trip we added a few more to that total.

Boat Traffic on the New River (Mouseover Image Above for Video Controls)

There are all kinds of boats that go by, from huge mega-yachts to tiny individual craft. The river near the condo is a "no wake" zone, so whatever boats go by do so slowly, which is good for watching.

In Fred's movie at left you can see not only the Water Taxi, a very common sight since one of its stops is right next door, but also one of the two or three floating tiki bars that go up and down the river carrying drinkers who want to combine their "sitting at the bar time" with their "seeing the sights time".

From our window, we look right up the New River towards the beginning of "condo canyon," the local reference to what has become a river lined with skyscraper residences on either side. Here are some more pictures of river traffic that we took on this trip:

(Click on Thumbnails to View)

The big yachts are always interesting when they go by; most of them are actually not privately-owned but are available for charter, and we are always looking them up on the Internet.

A Few Random Pictures and Movies

So our activities on these trips are pretty much the same. We vegetate in the condo. We throw the frisbee. We hit the gym. We go out to eat with Ron and Jay. And we walk around the neighborhood. On one of those walks, we stopped just down the street so I could catch Fred and some beautiful bougainvillea. On one dinner out with Ron and Jay, we were at Olive Garden and Fred, for a change, got something other than iced tea.

As for movies, I have two to include here. One is of the colorful fountain down in Bubier Park where we walked one evening, and the other was of an art gallery on Las Olas where I made a movie to show Prudence what having a video running in her own gallery window might look like:

The Fountain in Bubier Park (Mouseover Image Above for Video Controls)

The Window of a Las Olas Art Gallery (Mouseover Image Above for Video Controls)

We had Bob with us on this trip; it is always nice to have a cat around the condo when we are here, and it is less for our cat sitter to have to deal with. We did take some pictures of him, but I've put them on the Pets Page for this year.

Well, that was pretty much it for this visit to Fort Lauderdale; they are always enjoyable if not a bit routine. The ride home was uneventful, with our normal supper in Slidell and overnight stay in Lafayette.

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

	April 3-7, 2018: Old Home Week in Seoul, Korea
	February 24-26, 2018: Guy Visits Us in Dallas
	Return to the Index for 2018