And now we come to “Zook’s Nook.”  This is that portion of the Update where my Bride shows off her latest collection of photographically captured and enhanced flora we encountered on our journey.  Go get ‘em, Zookie…

We headed down the Gulf Coast of Flori-duh and into Everglades National Park where we spent the next 3 days in search of manatees, dolphins and alligators…

  Road Trip                                                                       June 28, 2015

These things make such a racket that you can hear them coming from miles away but are a great thrill ride...ONCE!...

Two days later, we jumped in the Camaro, put the top down and lit out for Key West…

We headed home along the Atlantic coast of Florida as far as Ormond Beach before heading west and back to Alabama.  By this time we had pretty much grown weary of taking pictures so we just settled back and enjoyed the drive home.

We’ll see y’all somewhere down the road.  Hugs, CC and me

Yes, indeed, that is my shy and retiring Bride right in the middle of the action.  By the way, the lady on the right does not really have a marlin stuck in her back.

Since Key West was our chosen destination for this road trip, we did manage to stay there for one night and took the obligatory tour of the Historic District aboard the Conch Tour Train…

Shorty, being the more likeable of the pair, is cute and cuddly and welcome wherever he goes, his traveling companion…not so much.  We spent the next 3 weeks showing them around our little slice of heaven and trying to find enough projects around the house to keep him busy and away from my beer supply...

The wildlife viewing on this “cruise” was a tad less than we had hoped for but we did manage to see a few dolphins and shore birds.  Other than the one manatee we nearly ran over, the others were just too far away or elusive to capture with a camera.

We stayed at the Ivey House B&B in Everglades City during the 3 days we spent touring the park and usually wound up at the Oyster House restaurant each evening for dinner and cocktails with the locals…

After a grueling 2 weeks of floating around the Caribbean aboard the Mandalay we returned home with thoughts of jumping in our new Camaro and heading to Key West for a couple of weeks.  However, that was not to be.  The next day heralded the arrival of my brother-in-law and his 4 legged sidekick, Short George, aka: Shorty…

I finally came up with the idea of renting a Mack cement truck and hiring him out to pour patios and foundations. The following morning he was gone!  I’m sure gonna miss that extra income.

We never got close enough to a manatee to get an interesting picture but we did manage to infringe upon the domestic tranquility of a number of the other local inhabitants…

The bicycle riders were absolutely amazed that American crows had the wherewithal to get into a zipped canvas bag and even enjoyed viewing the pictures we had taken of the carnage.

Another popular mode of transportation in the glades are the air-boats…

There are occasionally those opportunities to capture a group of wildlife doing just the thing that makes them so interesting to observe.  In this case, we happened upon a flock of crows who were helping themselves to the contents of a bicycle basket belonging to a group of European visitors…

 

We rode on one in a bayou between Texas and Louisiana a while back and managed to get tangled up in a few low hanging tree branches.  I came away with a pretty severe gouge in my left arm and vowed to never get on another one unless my life was in jeopardy…and even then I would look for other alternatives.

We decided to skip the high speed thrill ride and chose. instead, a quiet slow moving pontoon boat…