Florida again for our last two weeks in the USA

Kayaking at Wekiva Springs

Leaving Cedar Key we headed for Orlando where we dropped off our rental car and picked up another, which will be the last one of our trip. Many people who visit Orlando head for Disney's Epcot, Magic Kingdom, or Universal Studio's, but that's not our style, instead we spent a great day at Wekiva Springs State Park where we went canoeing on the river and swimming in the springs. It was quite busy with Spring Breakers doing the same thing but not as crowded as the theme parks would have been. We also went to a Ripley's "Believe It or Not" which was a bit quirky, and visited some shopping malls too.

Lovely big house on the river

Orlando was only a short stop before returning to see our friends Trevor and Carol in Homosassa again, who had a full house with Don, an 84 year old US Navy veteran who had come down from Delaware, and Eddie and Lily who were visiting from the UK, as well as us. That weekend was "Shrimpa Palooza", a Mardi Gras style festival in the town, celebrating everything "Shrimp" - what we know as king prawns. After the morning parade there were stalls of local artisan and craft goods, great food and local bands playing music in the sunshine.

Carol, Trevor, Craig, Jim, Lily and Eddie at The Freezer

During our few days at Homosassa we certainly had a great time, including a lovely meal with everyone at "The Rusty Duck" - a truly rustic eating house where you bring your own bottle, and with a menu that by normal American standards could be considered fine dining. As we know from our previous visit, many of the homes round here have water access and boat docks - the picture above is one of the bigger places - and Jim the next door neighbor kindly offered to take all of us out in his boat for a trip along the estuary. We went upstream this time, docking at The Freezer Tiki Bar for a simple but delicious lunch of seasoned fresh boiled shrimp, before heading up to the hot springs for a swim in the waters that are the winter home of manatee - though they have all moved away now that the weather has warmed up.

Sponge covered bike at Tarpon Springs

Ellis and Fay, another British couple who live there 6 months of the year, hosted a really nice drinks and nibbles evening at their house where we met lots of people, and for our last morning in Homosassa we all went out for breakfast to Kims, a small local cafe which serves tasty short order food. Just one week of our trip remained when we said our farewells and headed off towards Tampa, stopping for lunch at Tarpon Springs, which is the sponge capital of the USA and with the highest percentage of Greek Americans of any city in the US it has a distinctly Greek feel.

Making Cigars by hand in Ybor City

In Tampa, we spent a day in the sun on the beach at Indian Rocks and saw dolphins swimming past, and have been to Ybor City, a historic nieghborhood famed for its cigar factories and where cigars are still hand rolled today. Unsurprisingly there is a distinct Cuban feel here, and we happened to be there for the fourth annual Cuban Sandwich festival, where they broke the record for the world's largest Cuban sandwich. In the afternoon we headed off to St Petersburg for a walk on the pier and along the beautiful waterfront.

Siesta Beach

Today we went to Siesta Key to walk on the white quartz sand for which this beach has been voted #1 in the USA, and tomorrow with a forecast of rain we are going to the Dali museum in St Petersburg. As you probably know our trip is coming to an end so by the time you read this we will be counting down the hours before we have to say goodbye to the United States and board our flight home.

There is no photo album this time but we'll post again soon with some facts and figures about our trip, along with an album and also our future plans.

Texas to Florida

Last stop in Dallas was the 6th Floor museum at Dealey Plaza, located on the 6th and 7th floors of the building formerly known as the Texas School Book Depository. If that doesn't ring any bells to you, its the place from where the shots that assassinated President John F. Kennedy were allegedly fired back in 1963. The building is now home to a museum, documenting the assassination but also the life, times and legacy of the person that was JFK.

Photo of "Dealey Plaza 2003" by Brodie319
Weather wasn't so good when we visited !

With a long drive ahead of us we awoke the next morning to several inches of snow and sub zero temperatures, and despite leaving Dallas at 11 am the highways were still covered in a mix of deep wet slush and hard packed ice patches. Driving conditions went from "bad" to "worst ever" whenever the big eighteen wheeler trucks overtook in the outside lane, spraying our car and everyone else with very thick and heavy slush which temporarily reduced visibility to nothing for several seconds at a time until they passed. It was by far the worst conditions we have driven in but gradually improved as the day progressed, though we picked up several stone chips on the windscreen along the way from rock salt.

The restored Fordyce Bathhouse. now a visitor centre

Our destination was the city of Hot Springs, Arkansas, and we arrived safely that night though it was incredibly cold again. The city was the boyhood home of former President Bill Clinton, but it is most famous for the natural hot springs that it is named after. Downtown is designated and preserved as a National Park, centred around Bathhouse Row with its collection of old time bath houses. The Fordyce house has been restored and serves as the visitor centre for the National Parks Service, giving a unique glimpse back in time to what life was like in the early 1900's. As a great way to relax and warm up, we "took the waters" ourselves at the Quapaw Bathhouse, one of only two houses that are still open to the public today for bathing.

The tyre sidewall completely blownout

Leaving Hot Springs the weather had warmed up ready for our two day drive back to Florida. Unfortunately within twenty minutes of our early start that day we hit a huge pothole - recently created by the cold weather - which instantly blew out the front right tyre on the rental car and left us stranded at the side of the road. We quickly changed the wheel but the spare was one of those skinny space saver types, and with no nearby location to swap the car out, the rental company directed us back to Hot Springs to a Walmart to have the tyre replaced. We were back on our way by midday but as if to rub salt into the wounds, when we passed the pothole for the second time there was a local road maintenance crew filling it in. Moral of this story should be don't bother getting up so early, but we'll just put it down to bad luck.

We like Cedar Key !

As it turns out we were not too late getting in that night to Mobile, Alabama, which was just a one night stopover before another not-quite-so-long day to reach Cedar Key in Florida. We stopped here back in January and its a place that really captured our heart, so we thoroughly enjoyed returning to somewhere that we've been previously - though the no-see-um's (midges) were more prolific than last time.

A few hours drive brought us in to Orlando where we finally exchanged that rental car for another one, which should be our last one. The previous car served us well considering what we put it through but we're pleased to have exchanged it especially as the rental company upgraded us for free to a better car for our last two weeks. Time is running out fast, and even though the big mileages are done we have a few things still to look forward to which we'll post about before we leave the USA on 24th March. Meanwhile here is a new photo album on Facebook including some previous photos from earlier in Texas.

Texas - part 2

Mexicans on their side of the border
in Big Bend National Park

The drive from San Antonio to Terlingua was a long one, mainly on Highway 90 towards Del Rio then following the Rio Grande west and hugging the Mexico border. From here we visited Big Bend National Park, which is a protected area of the Chihuahuan desert. Great scenery and views, as well as a Bobcat that ran across the road in front of us, and several Roadrunners too. Being so close the border with Mexico we were stopped on two occasions by the US Border Patrol, and despite it being obvious that we were not Mexicans they diligently checked that even as tourists we had the right to be on US soil. In some places like Boquillas Canyon, the river separating Mexico from the US is just a few feet wide, and a few enterprising Mexicans do cross over in the early hours to lay out handcrafted goods for sale with honesty boxes, and return to the Mexican side for the day to lay in the sun and have tourists take pictures of them.

Heavy frost on barbed wire
near Fort Davis

Next stop was a small town named Fort Davis, based around one of the best surviving examples of an Indian Wars frontier military post. Occupied from 1854 to 1891, it was strategically located to protect emigrants, mail coaches, and freight wagons on the Trans-Pecos portion of the San Antonio-El Paso Road and on the Chihuahua Trail. The weather turned very cold on us here, a cold front coming in dropping the overnight temperature to -11c, which created stunning frost but also an extremely cold night in an motel with a badly fitting door and a noisy heater.

A very big telescope at
McDonald Observatory

However cold it was, spending a full day at the Mcdonald Observatory made up for it all. Its actually part of the campus of University of Texas at Austin, and we did a tour of some of the telescopes, even getting to play with the buttons to move them around. During the day we did some observations of the sun which was very interesting and we stayed on to do an evening observation with them of the stars and planets too, though the weather was not kind to us with banks of fog rolling in due to the cold weather. However, it was a very interesting day, and we left with our brains overloaded with information and pondering the enormity of space.

Ever onward we headed to the border town of El Paso. Bordering Mexico we expected lots of character here, however it wasn't particularly historic or well looked after and we were a little disappointed. To top that off, we had planned an extra day here to go on the Wyler Ariel Tramway, but that was closed due to unexpected maintenance. We did however get this photo of El Paso from an elevated car park of an assisted living home nearby !

The view over El Paso, with Mexico in the distance on the far right 

We were happy to move on from El Paso, crossing the state line into New Mexico and passing through Roswell, which you might have heard of as the crash site of an alien spacecraft. We didn't see anything there of course, except snow that had started to settle at the roadside. As we drove northeast towards Amarillo the driving conditions got progressively worse, and having to overtake a gritting truck on a dual carraigeway at nearly 70 mph may be one of the most buttock clenching moments of the trip.

Cadillac Ranch, in the snow.

Crossing back into Texas, on the outskirts of Amarillo is Cadillac Ranch - a piece of public art where ten Cadillac's have been buried upright in a field. Its one of those roadside america things that you have to see, and being in the snow it was quite different too. Amarillo itself was a much nicer town - mainly because historic Route 66 passes through Amarillo on 6th Avenue. Being a snowy Sunday there was not too much going on but we did a detour to visit Palo Duro Canyon state park, known locally as the grand canyon of Texas. It looked stunning in the snow, and we saw Roadrunners, a Porcupine, a pair of Wild Turkeys and the park's resident mascot Texas Longhorn cattle named Brisket, Omelet and T-Bone.

Sel outside the house at SouthFork Ranch

Another long drive found us in Dallas, where we are now. We've been to South Fork Ranch, made famous in the TV series Dallas, and had a tour of the house and surrounding ranch grounds. With our own distant memories of JR it was good to see the place although we cant help but feel that its appeal as a tourist attraction is going to become progressively more limited as time goes by.

Sel at the bull riding ring at
Billy Bob's Honky Tonk.

We also visited Billy Bob's, which is the worlds largest Honky Tonk at nearby Fort Worth with a capacity for 6000 people. It's a mecca for cowboys, with several big bars, a restaurant, stage and dance floor, a pool table hall and a pro bull riding ring. Though very quiet when we visited on a weekday, we can just imagine the atmosphere and buzz on a Friday or Saturday night.

We've got a few more things to see in Dallas, not least the famous "Grassy Knoll", but then we'll be heading out of Texas. No Facebook album this time but we'll have an album for the next post which will include some more photos from this update.