Ashes, Grasses, Smoothies, Pirates, and Gumbo

On Wednesday, we went to Ash Wednesday Mass at Sacred Heart Church. 

Sacred Heart Church

Today is the day that we start heading back to Louisiana. So normally you would think that after Mass, we would start driving north, right? But that is not how we roll. We headed south!

What is south of Miami besides Key West, which we've already been to? Why, the Everglades, of course! And that's where we headed. We had visited the Everglades many years ago on a previous trip to Florida, but now we wanted to go to the Visitors Center. So we headed to the Everglades Visitor Center just south of Homestead, Fl.

Map of Everglades National Park

Everglades National Park

We viewed the many exhibits at the Visitors' Center and learned a lot about the Everglades and south Florida. The Everglades are unlike any other place in the country. Known as the River of Grass, the Everglades are home to much wildlife including many different kinds of birds; snakes, including some of the world's largest pythons; and alligators and crocodiles. This is the only place in the world where alligators and crocodiles live side by side. The crocodiles in the Everglades are of the freshwater, less aggressive variety. We learned that alligators can run up to 30 mph in short spurts. Yikes! I wonder what "short" means, as we frequently see alligators when walking around our campground. I know I can't run 30 mph, but fortunately, I don't have to outrun the alligator - I just have to outrun Joe!

Everglades Visitor Center

Everglades Visitor Center

Everglades Visitor  Center

Large Python Skeleton - Everglades Visitor Center

Everglades Visitor Center

We learned that the Pythons are not native to Florida. They were originally brought here as pets. Eventually they grew so big that people didn't want to keep them, so they released them into the Everglades. Since they have no known predators (after all, who or what would want to eat a Python?!!), the population grew out of control and they have found a happy home in the Everglades. Happy for them maybe, not for other wildlife.

The Everglades experience extreme fires and hurricanes. There are a lot of the aforementioned mangroves here and in fact a whole mangrove forest. The lower third of Everglades National Park is occupied by Florida Bay. The extreme lower parts of Florida - the Everglades, Florida Bay, and the Dry Tortugas are all linked together by water. It reminds me of the old joke: I bought some property in Florida. If I'm lucky, I'll discover land on it.

After we left the Everglades Visitor Center, we finally started heading north, but still had a couple of stops along the way. The first stop was not very far from the Everglades Visitor Center. It is a local fruit stand called Robert Is Here, I know, an unusual name for a fruit stand. It actually is more than a fruit stand as it sells all kinds of produce, local products, and unusual foods. They are particularly known for their smoothies and milkshakes. You can choose up to three ingredients. I had a banana/strawberry/vanilla smoothie, and Joe tried their coffee/pineapple/guava milkshake. 

Robert Is Here Fruit Stand

After we left the fruit stand, we drove north and west to Bradenton, which is in the Tampa/St. Petersburg area. Along the way, the scenery consisted of mainly more fruit stands, nurseries, and tree farms. The tree farms had an abundance of palm trees - mostly baby palms - for sale. There are palm trees everywhere you go in Florida, and it is one of the things I most love about this place. I think palm trees are absolutely beautiful, especially when they're lined up in rows.

At this point, you might be wondering why we planned a stop in Bradenton, not exactly known as a resort or typical vacation destination in the state of Florida. We're big baseball fans (especially Joe, football is more my thing) and of course that means we're Pittsburgh Pirate fans. The Pittsburgh Pirates have their spring training in Bradenton. 

We first drove by Lecom Park where the Pirates play their pre-season games. 

Lecom Park

There wasn't a game going on at the time. Joe just wanted to see the park and take a few pictures. This was late in the evening. So early the next morning, on Thursday, we drove to Pirate City - the complex of practice facilities, dormitories, and fields where the Pirates practice. There were a number of players out on the fields warming up, stretching, taking batting practice, etc. We watched for a while. While we were watching, Joe started chatting with the man sitting next to him, and it turns out the man used to cook for the Pirates. As a couple of baseball lovers, Joe and this guy enjoyed some good conversation.

We were told that Paul Skenes (their great pitcher) was going to be throwing at 11:30. We had arrived at 9:30 and were trying to decide if it was worth waiting 2 hours to see Paul Skenes pitch in practice. At first we were leaning toward staying, but then decided that we probably should hit the road as we had a long drive ahead of us back to Louisiana, and we had previously seen Paul Skenes pitch in a real game back in Pittsburgh. Also there were a number of people lined up for autographs, hoping to catch the players on a break at some point. We considered staying for that also, but eventually decided to leave after watching practice for awhile.

On our way out of town, we drove across the beautiful Skyway Bridge that connects the Bradenton Area with St. Petersburg. More bridges and causeways across waterways in Florida. 

Skyway Bridge

From St. Petersburg, we drove through the Tampa area, and from there we drove all the way to Pensacola, which made for a really long day. But we stuck it out because we wanted a shorter drive for our final day.

On Friday, we drove from Pensacola straight to St. Joseph Church in Thibodaux. Why, you might ask, since it was not Sunday. Well, on Fridays during Lent, the Catholic Churches in south Louisiana serve gumbo - kind of like a fish fry up north. The gumbo at St. Joseph Church in Thibodaux is some of the best and the people are some of the friendliest, so we met up with Cathy (my sister) and Kerry (my brother) for a nice lunch of good food and great visit with family after being away for almost a month.

After we left Thibodaux, we finished our trek by driving the last 35 miles of our trip (of over 2500 miles total) to our campground. We had lots of work to do when we arrived, as we had closed up the camper, disconnected the water, and shut off the electricity while we were gone. There were some below freezing nights in late January/early February while we were away, so we had to make sure everything was secured. We managed to get everything set up and decided to do nothing else over the weekend, as we needed some time to rest up after a long but very enjoyable vacation.

Thank you for following along on our travels. I apologize again for the delays in posting. The Internet service on the trip, not to mention our busy schedule, was a challenge, but I finally managed to get the blog completed even though this, my last post, is being written a week after returning home. Please feel free to leave your thoughts in the comments on any of the posts. I do read and enjoy them all. I hope you enjoyed traveling along with us, and I hope you learned something new.