Tallahassee visit

Checked in with friends Pat & Laurie from past travels on caravans… photo from Alaska 2018… subsequently Pat & Laurie bought land in Tallahassee and built a custom designed house for their retirement… had drinks at the RV park along with Pat's bbq chicken wings and our steamed shrimps!

Titusville

Spent an overnight in David and Diana's driveway at The Great Outdoors and sampled some very nice Californian wine along with a Big Green Egg beautifully grilled pork chop!

Last sunset

Making our way down the dock after dinner… what a farewell! See you next year!

Stone crab claws

Made a quick trip to Fishbusterz on Stock island and picked a few claws for the journey… a real treat at $50+ a lb! Picked up some 15/20c fresh shrimp, seaweed salad and smoked fish dip - ah the very best fish dip after trying three different sources!

Fishermen returns…

Sitting by dock of the bay… watching the sunset and fishing boats return… with cocktails and a fish dinner on order! Good memories to keep till next year!

Last dinner at GKM

Getting ready to leave after a month in paradise, we have packed all our camping gear into the truck including grills. So we opt for dinner out, a 50 paces hike to the other end of the marina park to find ourselves a table by the water for a splendid fish dinner! Margaret had her usual grilled Hogfish and I went for the whole fried Yellowtail Snapper diet be damned!

Refueling…

Heading west towards California from Florida we make a necessary pit stop at Costco in Tallahassee… meat, veggies, fruit, wine, liquor, and a few discretionary and irresistible treats! That should keep us going for the next thousand miles!

Visitor

Checking out the view from the hood of our truck! Key West abounds with chickens and roosters - they are everywhere, holding up the traffic, jumping on your picnic table, taking walks with you! Part of the Caribbean life!

Charred broccolini

Wonderful tasty charred broccolini or broccoletti. Forget broccoli! Toss a few stems in a ziplock with high quality olive oil and a pinch of salt and grill for a couple of minutes each side. Stems are a bit al dente but that's fine. Our expert chef Lauretta on Camping Gourmet does a parboil and shock in ice water before grilling!

Checking out a new wine

Danger of curbside shopping is being tempted by new and different supermarket items. Using the Publix shopping app reveals all kinds of tasty treats you would never see when doing your regular shopping. Lots of probiotic options, unusual vegetables, interesting dairy options, gluten-free, regional products! Tried out pork belly on the grill!

Raccoon alert!

This baby raccoon came into the tree overlooking our camp site. First thing I noticed was the rapid fluttering of a dove taking off from the tree as the raccoon tried to creep up the tree trunk and surprise the dove. Thank goodness no blood and feathers all over the place!

Airstreamers dinner

Our little group met on the Cajun Country Caravan back in Spring of 2019 and reassemble in Key West every January seeking warmth. Michael and Judy Shelley from Arkansas, Joe and Ronnie Harris who live half the year in Key Largo, the other half near Cannes France. Joe did the cheffing with a steak Chimichuri dish…

Outside my area of expertise!

I was "forced" to taste this!
Not bad at all…

Flotsam and jetsam

Along our regular walk on Boca Chica Key some creative soul had set up three weather vanes and two anemometers using beach flotsam. The wind had dropped considerably when we took our walk after the storm so the wind was not strong enough to activate these mobiles, veritable works of art! … but you get the idea!

Storm front

Quite a difference from one end of this storm front to the other end in Virginia! We had strong warm winds gusting to 45 knots, lightning, threats of water spouts and tornadoes and a good cleansing rain downpour! At the other end, a 1000 miles away, snow and ice which we can see on our webcams….

Coming back from dinner

Coming back to the Reach Hotel after dinner where our friends are staying we walked past a wedding reception in progress and they were just cutting the cake! Ahh! I thought… just in time for dessert! No!

Floating Tiki Hut

Cruising along the Boca Chica beach close to Key West we came across this outboard powered tiki hut and bar along with crew of passengers. You can rent the boat and captain/Batman for a multi hour cocktail cruise. One nice thing about this part of the coast are the many underwater sand shoals so you can jump off and walk around in warm water up to your waist whilst holding your cocktail in hand. Popular spot! Our crew thought it was just a tad too cool to walk the sandy shoals!

Circumnavigativr Key West

Rented a Hurricane pontoon deck boat for a day and went cruising around the island. Dropped in at the Salty Oyster for lunch!

Key West Farmers’ Market

Thursday on the dock at the Truman Annex with about 40 vendors with the usual assortment from veggies to clothing styles, cards, food, jewelry, candies,crafts, baked goods, seafood, ice cream, cbd, etc

Good morning!

Morning view from my bed in the Airstream…

Crab cakes

A reminder of our summer crabbing experience in mid winter! A gluten free baked crab cake sitting on a sheet of crispy prosciutto, over a baked mashed potato cake lying on a bed of mandolin sliced steamed broccoli stems fenced in with grilled sesame asparagus….

Oyster grilling

One of my favorite on the road delights are roasted oysters. We usually buy a couple of dozen in the shell, put them on the propane grill in two separate batches, wait for them to open, and prise off the top half of the shell. Separately we prepare a butter, shallot, parsley, prosciutto and vermouth or white wine dressing which we spoon on to the roasting oysters. A couple of minutes later we have a delicious oyster appetizer!

Flatbread

Credit to Pat Lahey and the NYTimes for his Sullivan Street Bakery no-knead bread recipe. I have been making this bread at home for years and thought I would try an on-the-road version except I would make flatbread instead of a loaf. So I adapted quantities to King Arthur white unbleached flour 150 grams, water 105 grams, salt 3 grams and a new to me sourdough yeast I came across recently 1/2 teaspoon. Mixed in a storage box and left it for 36 hours somewhere between 70 and 80 degrees. It rose well and looked healthy. Added some extra flour after 24 hours to inhibit stickiness. Rolled it out using a wine bottle and put it on the grill and beyond belief it blew up to the size of a small football! Filled it with scrambled eggs a la Gordon Ramsey and enjoyed brunch!

Manatee

This huge seven foot Manatee came gliding by during dinner at the Geiger Key Fish Camp restaurant- moving ever so slowly. It's a threatened species with some 6,000 still alive. Doesn't handle collisions with small boats and outboard engines very well…

Seaside Cafe at the Mansion

Our friends from Tappahannock, Em & Kathy, flew down for a few days of winter relaxation. They are staying in the Reach Hotel and we get together for a few activities every day. Boating, sight seeing, dining, visiting the markets and driving around kW in their golf cart! Lobster pizza!

Paul & Brenda

Long time Airstream travelers - I think we go back as far as the 2016 South West Adventure caravan - Paul and Brenda winter at the Jolly Roger near Marathon. We have our annual catch up lunch at Geiger Key! We did the FallingWater Caravan with them to the Frank Lloyd Wright houses in western PA last May…. time for Key Lime pie!

Friendly Pelican

Our daily two mile walk takes us back and forth along the abandoned beach road at the end of the Boca Chica NAS air base. Yesterday was a quiet evening with only a couple of other walkers so the pelicans were braver than usual and this magnificent representative of the species sat on the wall as we walked five feet away! Maybe he was digesting his fish supper after a feeding frenzy we watched him indulge in a few minutes earlier…

Getting settled in

Arrived at the very end of Route 1, mile post 11 - as far south as you can go in the Continental US and set up our winter camp at Geiger Key Marina. String up the red chili lights in the tiki hut and unpack our two grills, set up the blue laser starfield and comfy chairs so we can watch sunrise, sunset and everything in between. Our first treat after a long long day on the road was fish and chips at the fish camp restaurant, we had grilled Hogfish and Red Snapper waterside while watching real fish cavorting in the boat channel right by our table. The warm Caribbean tropical air with its slightly higher humidity is a contrast which always creates pleasant and long lasting memories.

Back home

Today I checked my webcams at home to watch snow falling… maybe two inches… and more to come towards the end of the week. Talked to friends at home and commiserated the bad weather! Thank goodness I was not on I-95 stuck for 15 hours! Now I know why I head to Geiger Key in January!

Trouble on the road!

Saturday Jan 1 …. Got a tire low pressure warning from my trailer tire monitoring system on Florida turnpike near Miami. I stopped and reinflated to 65 lbs and 5 miles down the road it was back to 35 lbs so pulled into a deserted mall to change tire. The unfortunate part of the story was I could not find my wheel lug socket so I unhitched and found an auto-zone 5 miles away in Homestead. When I go there there was a line 8 deep of locals waiting to get in the store - they were only allowing one person at a time in! Not only Covid but computer system were mostly down! Nearly an hour later I got my socket, back to the rig, tire off, spare remounted and off we went! Traffic was unbelievably bad 3 hour bumper to bumper all the way to Marathon mid way down the Keys (crime scene, beach rubber necking and an accident) so we only just made the Geiger Key site in time! Most of the highway is two lanes only!

Yesterday in GKM I found my socket in my spares bin! Ouch! Next my RAM truck batteries almost went flat overnight! Back to Key West Autozone for a charger! No queue thank goodness! Trying to figure out what is sucking my system dry!

Now to replace one of the fridge fans with bad bearings - I have a dual fan config so one is running and managing fine! Wifi antenna I lost the antenna stick so ordered a new one and install. Propane tank leak - again we have two tanks so one is shut down and I have a replacement connector pipe to fit. I've had this problem for two weeks just needed to get somewhere where Amazon can deliver reliably! My short wave transmitter antenna came disconnected and dragged down the road for who knows how many miles so new cable to replace it! Today get tire leak diagnosis and repaired!

Tuna tonight!

Used some sesame seed bagel mix to coat my ahi-tuna and seared it on the griddle. The beauty of the half grill / half griddle is grilling asparagus at the same time….

Eaton Street in Key West

Enjoying someone else's cooking is part of traveling well and making the most of local resources. One of our favorite weekly lunch spots is Eaton Street Seafood located in a converted gas station in Key West. Anything in the seafood market is available as a lunch time meal! We love their lobster rolls on toasted rolls. Picked up some tuna and red snapper to go!

Happy anew Year!

Jupiter, Florida….

Softshells

Christmas Eve dinner… tastes of the Chesapeake! Soft shell crabs and crab cakes from our pots!

Christmas Lights

We have three chains of red hot chili pepper lights that we hang whenever we are located at a site for awhile. In the center is the wood grill and a flash light that I use to cook at night! Safe to say we cook outside on average every other night since it keeps smells and sizzles out of the Airstream. Anyway good always tastes better when grilled outside! One thing I will miss is my recent acquisition wood pellet grill at home and the just completed brick grilling pit on our patio. Something to look forward to on our return to Virginia!

Jekyll Island Lights

Many trees in the historic district have been covered or wrapped in white Christmas lights to great effect. I want to go home and do this to our locust tree that overhangs the Drive!

Spanish Moss

A word of caution - don't camp under Spanish Moss in the spring when it pollenates! It's a beautiful and attractive canopy to woodland camping but it can be quite disruptive to your throat and lungs! Also beware of chiggers aka red bugs who live in the moss. Hard to believe that Spanish moss was used to stuff mattresses in the old days! Photo taken on a walk around the clubhouse on Jekyll Island - clubhouse was built in 1888 to accommodate America's wealthiest families including the Rockefellers, Morgans and Vanderbilts as a winter resort club on a private island.

Jekyll Island Driftwood Beach

Driftwood Beach on the north east end of Jekyll Island has an amazing collection of otherworldly dead sun-bleached trees, remains of a forest that was once above sea level… This part of the island has eroded away and redeposited the sand at the south end of the island.

Jekyll Island

Clear northerly air free of humidity makes for great photo opportunities! Catching the last rays of sunset looking across the East River and a local fishing boat….

Oyster time

Barrier Island oysters on the half shell for appetizer two successive evenings… just a beautiful taste of the ocean. Made a finely chopped shallot and white balsamic vinegar mignonette which we alternated with a squeeze of lemon! Degustation assisted by a dry Prosecco!

Charleston SC

Our first stop was visiting newly weds Harrison and Christine along with Aussie Doodle Ophelia and camping our Airstream on their front lawn! Harrison is on varying Navy watches as he trains to be nuclear power engineer on aircraft carriers.

Start a new trip!

Starting our next trek from home in Virginia and planning to be on the road for nearly six months…. our last meal at home is Wagyu beef over mesquite so we are starting the journey with very high culinary expectations!