People Smuggler's!

Friday night we were invited out on Ryan's friend from GE's boat.

We left the dock at about 630pm and headed out around the bay, into Lake Erie to watch the sunset and have a few drinks. We didn't get much of a sunset due to the fog that was around.

Off in the distance we spotted a Coast Guard and a short time later they were pulling us up - it turns out that the nav lights were out, although it looked like they were on because the dashboard lights were on. The Coast Guard tied onto our boat and asked a million and one questions - checking boat licenses, insurance, life jackets, did we have any weapons, etc. We all then had to go sit inside the boat cabin (we felt like we were on a boat being smuggled! Especially considering half of us weren't from America) while they came on board and searched the boat. We then had to be guided back to the mooring by the Coast Guard.

The Coast Guard on its way to get us

Tarun, Ryan, Mark and Luis in front of the boat after being guided in by the Coast Guard

We then agreed to meet up with Tarun, Luis and Katherine at a bar for a couple more drinks, although Luis passed out at home and never made it. We didn't get home until just before midnight, and had to be up at 4.30am the next morning for our Chicago trip!

Back to Orlando

Monday was our last day in Florida. We got up early and checked out and drove to Orlando. Ryan didn't know what was on the agenda today until we arrived in Orlando. Kristy surprised him with a wake boarding session with pro rider Shaun O'Brien (Orlando is the wake board capital of the world) . The wind was bad which made the lake fairly choppy, but the water was warm 80F (25C).

Kristy didn't many shots of Ryan wake boarding - sorry this is the best one there is (by the way, that's Ryan upside down on the left hand side)

Next up was an Alligator park, just a few minutes down the road from where Ryan was wake boarding (apparently alligators are in every lake in Florida, you just see more in some. Ryan thought he saw a fish when he was wake boarding, but now he's not so sure it was a fish..!) The Alligator park had about 10,000 acres of water with over 30,000 alligators infesting it! We couldn't stay long, but we managed to see a couple swimming in the lake, and some that were in cages.

2 of the caged alligators


This alligator had just caught his lunch!

The last surprise of the day was Daytona race track. We only had about 15 minutes, so we went out to the track and had a quick look around.

Ryan - Daytona race track

Kristy track side

Before we left for the airport, we stopped at Daytona Beach for a look and a bite to eat.

Daytona Beach. If you look closely, you can see there are cable cars going over the beach

We had an awesome weekend, once again it was full on - we drove over 1200 miles the entire weekend!

The Keys

Sunday we drove nearly 4 hours to the Florida Keys, through to Key West. After a really crap on the road breakfast (from Denny's), we hit the road. The keys are really beautiful, although you the 'crocodile crossing' signs we saw made it very daunting to go swimming in the water! Our first stop was on the Islamorada Key, where we stopped to feed the Tarpon. Tarpon are a toothless fish, and the ones we saw were around about a metre long, some even bigger! We bought a bucket of fish to feed them and headed out the wharf.

Ryan fed some of our Tarpon food to the (brown) pelican.

Kristy was a bit of a sook when it came to feeding them, thinking they would eat her hand, but Ryan done much better. The fish leapt out of the water for the food.

Kristy attempting to feed the Tarpon

Ryan feeding the Tarpon fish

We then drove through to Key West. On the way we drove over a bridge that was 7 miles long (over 11km)!

The water at Key West is so blue! It was really nice.

After stopping at a bar for a quick drink, we walked the width of the key (about 2 miles wide), to a beach club for lunch.

We then walked the Southern most point in Continental USA, Earnest Hemingway's old house (a writer), the light house and browsed some shops.

At the Southernmost point in USA - we were closer to Cuba than Miami!

On the way home, we found a really nice stretch of water, so we pulled over for a quick dip to cool down.




By the time we reached the mainland, a massive storm hit - we have never seen so much lightening before in our lives (Florida apparently is famous for having heaps of lightening). The thunder shook our (piece of crap) car and the rain was so heavy we could barely see. We also only had $3 left in cash, and 4 x $1 tolls to go through to get home. We arrived at the last one and told the lady we had no money. She looked at us and said where are you going. We told her, and said we only had 47cents left. She said ok, and let us go through! It was so funny!

Yo - So We Continued To A1A Beachfront Ave!

For all you Vanilla Ice fans out there - Saturday morning we drove down the A1A down to Miami Beach. The boats that are moored literally next to the main road are huge! The street seems to be lined with small size cruise boats!

This boat/ship was moored right alongside the road

We parked the car and headed straight for the beach - its been so long since we have had hot weather AND a beach! We walked down the beach and went for a swim and a sun bake (Kristy got so so burnt!). Sea planes flew overhead, lapping the beach and promoting beer and parties at nightclubs (including the pink taco party!)

Ryan on Miami Beach

Kristy on Miami Beach

We walked up Beach Ave, along all the restaurants and shops. Miami Beach is very cool!

We then drove into downtown Miami and went to 'Little Havana' - a suburb with a high Cuban population. Firstly we went to Domino Park. This is a courtyard full of tables where the locals come and play domino's against each other, and it is not taken lightly! They have a security guard on site to ensure there are no fights. A fight between 2 men almost broke out while we were there!

Domino Park

We then walked down the road a few blocks to a cigar factory. The man there was really nice and showed us the machines they used to make cigars and let us take some photos too.

Ryan at the cigar factory

After a short stop at Miami wharf for a beer and pina colada, we went back to Miami Beach for more beer and pina colada's and some dinner.

We saw this guy as we were driving back to Miami Beach. We thought he was weird just by the Spiderman toy he had hanging from the rear view mirror. Then he pulled out a karate hand puppet and was making the puppet punch him in the face as he was driving! Strange man.

Florida!

Friday morning we woke up around 2 am, got ready and left for Pittsburgh airport.
Our flight departed at 6am via Atlanta and we arrived in Orlando around 10.30 in the morning. We picked up our hire car and drove 1 hour east to the Kennedy Space Centre, better known as NASA. Here we got to look through the shuttles astronauts, such as Neil Armstrong and the Apollo 11 crew rode in to the moon. There were also rockets on display that had been in to space, some of them we could look in. We watched an Imax film about landing on the moon too.

We were on a tight time line (as usual) so we had to leave (not before we tried to get in to the grounds where they actually launched the rockets from, but got denied) and headed to our check in at Fort Lauderdale, about 3.5hrs away from the space centre.

Ryan (far left) in front of a rocket

Kristy in front of a rocket

We checked in, then it was time to leave to see (baseball) Miami Marlins defeat the San Diego Padres 5-4. It was a great game, and we had the cliche hot dog and beer/wine for dinner! Its a shame the Marlins didn't get one more point, otherwise there was free donuts and coffee for everyone in the crowd!

At the baseball

Ryan with beer and hotdog (with the works)

Pittsburgh

We had a clear and sunny sky on Sunday, so we drove to Pittsburgh for the day. Pittsburgh is located where the Ohio, Monongahela and Allegheny rivers all meet. Downtown Pittsburgh has 15 major bridges crossing the rivers (with something like 720 bridges within the city limits). The rivers are the second busiest inland ports in the USA.

First stop was at The Strip - a street downtown with some cool shops and markets. We grabbed a coffee and biscotti (Pittsburgh is known for its biscotti, really just a biscuit)and had a walk around The Strip.

We then drove across the rivers to ride the Duquense Incline - a rail cart that takes you to the top of Mount Washington. There were some beautiful views from the top.

A cart going up the incline

The view

Looking down as we are going up

After riding the cart back down, we drove to the top of the second incline in Pittsburgh - the Monongahela Incline and walked around the top of Mount Washington. The views were really nice, and have been voted the second best views in the USA. Apparently these carts were used for the filming of Flashdance too!

You can see 4 of the 15 downtown bridges in this shot. Normally a water fountain would be running in the circle.

We rode the cart to the bottom of the hill to Station Square, and had lunch on the river front at a pub. We browsed some shops, rode back up to our car and went for a drive through downtown Pittsburgh.


We then went back to The Strip to get some fresh seafood for dinner (where Kristy and another unfortunate toilet experience - a Chinese lady thought she would like to share her bathroom shenanigans with me, but we wont go in to details!)


We then drove through the historic Mexican War Streets, which housed some really old town houses, before heading home and calling it a day.

Penn's Caves

Friday night we went out for dinner to the Outback restaurant - a supposedly Australian restaurant, although the boomerang and koala pic's on the wall was about all there was Australian about it! It was a nice dinner though.

Saturday morning we drove 31/2 hours East to Central Pennsylvania's Penn Caves. Penn Caves is an underground cavern with a river running through it. The cavern is believed to be 30 million years old, and is full of stalagmites and stalactites. For some strange reason, the Americans feel compelled to name every rock formation they find, even though they look nothing like it. For example, the Statue of Liberty stalagmite is below.

Yep - this is supposedly the Statue of Liberty formation

The opening of the underground cavern

After the cavern tour, we went on a safari like tour through the property - they have hundreds of animals including black bear, white and black wolves, bobcat, elk, deer (including white deer), Texas long horn cattle and bison. We also saw a ground hog (which we see all the time now, especially running up the side of the road), chipmunks along with birds and ducks.

A white wolf - this one was the dominant male

White deer - isn't it gorgeous?

We learnt some really interesting stuff from the guide, who is also the animals vet.

* Deer shed their antlers every year. They have only just started growing back now, and grow between an inch and an inch and a half daily

* Elk antlers grow faster - around 2 inches daily

* Sometimes male bears don't go in to hibernation - instead they try and find a female to mate with. If the female is nursing a cub, the male will try and kill it.

* Bear have babies premature -and only carry them for 6 weeks before giving birth

* All wolves have yellow eyes with a black ring around them, even if they are cross-bred.

Bison

We had a great day, and the animals were so cute, especially the bears who looked so playful and cuddly, although wouldn't like to be in the cage with them!

The black bear was showing off!

Oh! And we saw a moose too! Ha! Ryan bought this hat for the boys to wear wakeboarding!