The Sunny South # 2: Where in Florida is That?

Florida has a well-earned reputation as Canada South during the winter, with tourists from all parts of Eastern Canada flocking to the beaches, the cities, and the theme parks.  All the same, it sometimes surprises me how little grasp many of my family and friends have of Florida's geography, or even of where this or that community is located.  This even applies to people who've been to Florida.

That's why I decided to do this general blog post.  I got tired of explaining exactly where I was going to everyone who asked!  Stick around a geography teacher long enough, even a retired one, and you're gonna get a geography lesson.

The map below is to show the locale in which I'm travelling, so it only includes the southern third of the state, as far north as Orlando.

My first week is in the Doubletree Resort on North Redington Beach.  That's on the west or Gulf Coast, in between Clearwater and St. Petersburg.  I landed at Tampa Airport, and the resort was about 40 minutes away by rental car (it can take longer in heavy traffic).  And yes, the highway really does run right across the shallow waters of Tampa Bay west of Tampa Airport -- the Howard Frankland Bridge is almost 17 kilometres long including approach causeways, but feels a lot longer when you are driving across it.  I call it the Eveready Bridge because it just keeps going and going and going.....

You can skip the long drive across the Eveready if you get a flight into St. Petersburg/Clearwater International Airport, which is located near the west end of the bridge.  That way you start driving from a point that's 20 minutes closer to the beaches!

My resort is located on one of the barrier islands which lie all around the shores of Florida.  These islands were originally a mixture of mangrove marshes and sandbars, plus a few more substantial islands.  They have been built up through the years by incredible amounts of dredging to provide a stable foundation for thousands upon thousands of homes, condos, hotels, shops, and restaurants.  Virtually all beaches in Florida are found on these semi-artificial barrier islands. The many islands are connected to each other and to the mainland by dozens of bridges.

After I leave this beachfront resort next week, I'll be driving south to spend a few days in Fort Myers.  My hotel there is right next to the I-75 freeway, but my real point of interest is Sanibel Island and its immediate neighbour, Captiva Island.

From Fort Myers, I'm driving across the Everglades to Fort Lauderdale -- but not on the toll highway known as "Alligator Alley" (I-75).  I'm taking the older road, past Everglades City, known as the "Tamiami Trail" (short for "Tampa-Miami").  Yes, it's a bit slower, but cheaper and far less heavily travelled, which makes for a more relaxing drive.

Here endeth the lesson of the day.  The test will be held at the end of tomorrow's class!  (hee hee). 

With that, here's a photo gallery of my resort at North Redington Beach and some of my favourite spots in the near neighbourhood.

Early morning view from the balcony.

Beach view on a sunny day -- New Year's Eve, to be precise.  With no wind, even 19°C (66°F) feels warm and toasty, but the ocean water in December certainly does not.  I haven't seen anyone get in over their knees except with a wetsuit.

Shrubs and trees still flowering in December. 

Quintessential Florida -- lunch in sunshine on a dock over the water (the food was coming!).  This is at Sea Critters Café, a favourite eatery in Pass a Grille, south of St. Pete Beach.  A number of local restaurants have "parking lots" like this for boats as well as the more usual paved kind for cars.

The boardwalk and drawbridge at John's Pass, just a few minutes south of my hotel.  John's Pass is an active commercial fishing port, but also a tourist attraction with numerous shops and restaurants, many of them on the waterfront boardwalk.  This channel is the "pass" itself, an open waterway between two of the barrier islands, which allows boats to travel between the inland waterways and the open Gulf of Mexico.

Numerous pelicans and a few egrets are easy to spot, perching, preening, and doing stretches on the boat docks.  These birds know where to find the fish -- and the boat docks at John's Pass are a great place to hang around while hoping for snacks.

Those who have followed my blog since early days will recognize some of these places as spots I have visited before.  But there's always some place new to see, and here it is.  The nature sanctuary up the coast at Indian Rocks Beach preserves a slice of the island as it was before development began.  A wooden boardwalk threads its way through a tangled mangrove swamp to the shores of Boca Ciega Bay, between the island and the mainland.  Fortunately it was a cool morning, so there weren't any mosquitoes around.

And to wrap up this blog post, the most spectacular sunset I've ever seen in all my visits to the Gulf Coast.

The Sunny South # 1: Where To This Time?

Just kicking back in the Sheraton Gateway hotel on top of Terminal 3 at Toronto airport, prior to zooming off to the sun tomorrow morning.  The great advantage of this hotel is that I can pack my heavy winter clothes away now, and walk to the plane tomorrow in shirt sleeves.  No need to go outdoors -- even the shuttle train to the other terminal is all indoors, all the way.

Last summer, I had this winter's holiday all planned out.  I was going to spend eleven days in Florida, take a week-long Caribbean cruise, and then take a few more days before flying home.  The whole plan looked great.

Then the hurricane season hit.

I watched in dismay as Hurricane Irma trashed St. Maarten and St. Thomas, the two islands highlighted on my cruise, and then roared right up the west coast of Florida, site of my favourite resort there.

It's an ill wind, as the saying is...  I cancelled my cruise and began revising my plans.  When situations change like this, it's a good thing that -- as my former principal used to say -- I will roll with it.  It's kind of ironic, though, that the first time I ever went to Florida in the winter, I had to change my plans after a hurricane pummeled the Fort Lauderdale area, and that was how I got introduced to the Gulf Coast!

As it happens, the islands have recovered their footing fairly quickly and, in spite of the damage, are ready for cruise ships to call again.  Fortunately, the damage along the west coast of Florida was also limited, and so I returned to my original plan, but with a change of cruise.  Instead of going east from Fort Lauderdale, I will now be sailing southwest on a short 5-day voyage with two ports of call -- in two countries I have not previously visited.  Add Honduras and Mexico to my list.  Just scratching the surface, but it's a start.  Here's a map, with the approximate route of the cancelled cruise marked in as a dotted line:

Roatan looks like a pleasant, scenic island with a very laid-back vibe.  As for Cozumel, that's a jumping-off spot for a day-long trip to visit the Mayan ruins of Chichen Itza, something I have been wanting to see for a very long time.  So this won't be a long cruise, but it should be a fun one and give a couple of good blog posts.

The ship I'll be sailing on is Crown Princess.  This is one of 11 ships of broadly similar size and design, 9 of them operated by Princess Cruises and 2 by the P & O cruise line in Britain.  I've been on two other ships of this class before: Caribbean Princess and Ruby Princess.  Differences in details here and there will not alter the similarity of the overall layout and décor of the ship.  The stateroom will basically be identical to those on the other ships, so no surprises there.

Before going to the ship, I'll be spending 7 days at my favourite resort in North Redington Beach on the Gulf coast, followed by 3 days in Fort Myers.  These are areas I've often visited before, and so it'll be easy for me just to kick back, unwinding by and in the pool, walking on the beach, hanging out at all my favourite restaurants -- you get the idea.

The best part at North Redington Beach is falling asleep to the gentle swishing sounds of the waves rolling up the beach after watching a spectacular sunset from the balcony.

After the cruise, I'll be spending five more days in the Fort Lauderdale area.  This will be more layback time, and should all add up to a fun and easy-going few weeks of getting away from winter!

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A FOOTNOTE:  If you've been thinking of trying a Caribbean cruise, this is the winter to do it.  Almost all of the ports are now open for business again, and the prices are cheap because so many people have been cancelling.  Cruise lines are having trouble filling cabins and they are slashing and discounting their prices more than usual.  Especially true if you are able to go on short notice and aren't constrained to sticking with school holiday times.

Holiday on Ice # 6: Appendix: Ketchikan, 2007

As promised, I'm harking back ten years to a little expedition across the Canada-Alaska border which did not involve a cruise ship. 

It takes a bit of patience, and a lot of flexibility, but you can certainly enjoy southeastern Alaska on your own, and travel on your own time frame.  

All you need is a private yacht....  Okay, but keeping it practical, let's take the Alaska Marine Highway, the state ferry network.

The ferries run along an extensive network which stretches from Bellingham, Washington, and Prince Rupert, British Columbia, all the way north to Whittier and Seward, south of Anchorage, and then on south west down into the chain of the Aleutian Islands.  Over such distances, it simply isn't practical to try to run to a daily schedule or even to sail at the same time on each day the ferry does operate.

While the ferries sometimes come and go at some pretty weird hours of the day or night, they can take you to places that cruise ships simply can't get into, due to the navigation hazards in many of those beautiful channels of the Inside Passage.  Those tight spots are the reason why the ferries are not big, and not getting any bigger.  Here's a picture of one near a cruise ship to prove the point.

In my case, I had taken the train from Jasper to Prince Rupert (read about that here: Into the Mists: Canada's Pacific Northwest), and then after an overnight stay boarded the early morning sailing northwards.  We cleared U. S. Customs right in Prince Rupert before boarding the ferry.  For overnight sailings, the Alaska ferries have cabins, but never enough to meet the demand so advance reservations are essential -- and you need to get them well in advance.  The cabins are utilitarian, but comfortable enough.  But if you want to be travel like a real Alaskan, bring your tent and gear on board and camp out on the broad solarium deck at the stern.  It's not only allowed, it's encouraged.  Welcome to the north!

First, a few pictures of the scenery, beginning in Prince Rupert harbour in the early morning with the veteran B.C. Ferries vessel, Queen of Prince Rupert (since retired).

The solarium deck of the ferry (no campers here because this was taken at about 10:00 am!).  Taku, as with all ships in the Alaska Marine Highway fleet, is named after a glacier in Alaska.

The inevitable cruise ship.

Arriving in Ketchikan about noon, with another inevitable moored dockside.

Ketchikan is the ultimate example of a town squeezed between the sea and the mountains with no place to go but up.  Look at a street map, and you'll see some streets marked in only as faint lines.  Those are wooden walkways and staircases -- but they have street names, and the houses along them have addresses on those streets.

Ketchikan's most famous walkway-street is Creek Street.  Today it's a popular shopping district with visitors.  But this wooden walkway, perched in the air over the waters of a salmon stream, was once the notorious red-light district.  Hence the sign at the entrance off Stedman Street, the main drag:

One house of ill repute survives as a museum -- and a fascinating one at that.  Welcome to Dolly's House.

At the back end of Creek Street, a small funicular railway takes you up the ridge to the deluxe Cape Fox Lodge, where you can get this view of the town.

A government-directed resettlement program consolidated dozens of regional native villages into a few larger settlements.  During the 1930s, the C.C.C. assembled the world's largest collection of totem poles in Ketchikan, retrieving them from the deserted village sites.  These can be seen at Totem Bight State Park north of town, and at Saxman village south of the city.  In both places, traditional clan houses are also preserved, and interpretive signs help visitors to understand the rich cultural and mythological symbolism underlying these artworks.

The biggest shopping area is on Front Street, where two cruise ships at a time can berth directly across the street from this complex of jewellery stores and restaurants.

At the north end of Front Street stands this modern native artist's interpretation of a traditional totemic symbol, called Thundering Wings.

And not too far away, as night was falling, I spotted this live version perched on a lamp post.

Holiday on Ice # 5: Into the Mists

Yesterday we stopped in Ketchikan.  And I didn’t get to see much of it at all.

The good news: I’ve actually been to Ketchikan twice before.  After I get home, I’ll do a supplementary blog post covering my trip here in 2007.

Because of Princess Cruises’ determination to squeeze in a stop in Victoria, our port call in Ketchikan is only 5½ hours long.  My excursion took up almost all of that time.  But it was a trip I’d never managed to do yet, and it was totally worth every minute of it.

The boat cruise to Misty Fjords National Monument covers 110 miles and lasts 4½ hours – and that’s on a high-speed catamaran cruising for most of the trip at 40 knots!  The Monument occupies a sizable chunk of the Alaskan mainland, around the back side of the island on which Ketchikan sits, Revillagigedo Island (always called “Revilla” for short, locally). 

Once we circled the southern end of Revilla Island and started back north up the Behm Canal, our first scenic attraction was the New Eddystone Rock, named by Captain George Vancouver after the famous rock stack off the southern coast of England.  This one is not a rock stack, strictly speaking, but a volcanic plug.  It fascinates me because it is a different shape from every direction, like almost all geological formations such as mountains.  But here you can two very different views in the space of a few moments.  It's also fascinating to see how the trees gain a foothold in such precarious spots.

On the low-lying rock spit beside the Rock there were a number of harbour seals hauled out and basking in the sun.  It was hard to photograph them because our noisy hydro-jet powered vessel couldn’t come close without scaring them into the water.

Soon after, we turned east into the laconically named Rudyard Bay, and entered a wonderland of scenic beauty.  Everything came together – towering cliffs, dark forests, pearly mist, blazing sun, glossy black waters, and no breeze at all – to create, once again, sheer magic.

On the journey back into Ketchikan, we spotted a pod of orcas travelling north at a good speed.  We had them in sight for several minutes.  Once again, I was plying the video camera so results will have to wait.

Back on board Ruby Princess, I climbed to the brilliantly sunny top deck for the sailaway, and got a few photos of Ketchikan from my 16-storey vantage point.

Dear old Ketchikan, with its named and numbered boardwalk stairs “streets,” its profusion of tourist stores, its fresh seafood restaurants, its unique Creek Street historic area, all lorded over by the deluxe Cape Fox Lodge.  In this picture, the Lodge is the complex of grey buildings on the ridge, and Creek Street is the line of brightly coloured houses along the base of the hill below.

We really needed and deserved a full day.  If you’ve never been here, make sure when you book a cruise that it offers a full-day stop in Ketchikan.  It’s the very least time you need if you want to get to know this fun little town a bit better.