where in the world are the wmgwalds: Birds

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Saturday, May 8, 2021

Anniversary Cruise from Key West to West Palm April-May 2021

I don't know how to reorder these photos on this computer so what you see is what you get.

This was our first trip by plane since Sundance in Jan. 2020 due to Covid.

Taking the pics from the top, after the photo of us, there is the Bay of Pigs invasion monument in Little Havana Miami from May 4; Drew's version of a cheeseburger from May 1 in Key West; our peacock bass from May 5; sooty tern rookery at Fort Jefferson in the Dry Tortugas from April 30; an alien that visited the SB in Key West on April 30; welcome to Little Havana in Miami on May 4; and our celebration of the anniversary itself on May 3. If one looks closely at my shirt you will see tarpon, bonefish, and permit, aka the flats Grand Slam, and wearing the shirt is about as close as I will ever get to it.

L&G and family were with us. G&T got in some golf at Ocean Reef and some fishing there too.

See my fishing journal for more on the fishing.

Sunday, February 23, 2020

Kiawah Island 2020

Kiawah Island Feb. 2020

C and I took a midwinter break and drove to Kiawah in February seeking warmer weather and some sun.

On the way down we stopped in Smithfield NC at the Ava Gardner Museum. It is small but very good. I enjoyed the introductory video on her life and then wandering around looking at the movie posters. I knew about her marriage to diminutive Mickey Rooney but I did not know she was a friend of Ernest Hemingway. It appears she and Frank Sinatra were deeply in love but they could not live together.

In looking on the internet I picked up two interesting anecdotes. First she came home to NC often after she was a star and she enjoyed flipping burgers at a local eatery and swinging in a chair at the post office. They said when she was at the PO swinging the locals came in and bought stamps one at a time so they could look at her. The second one is that she supposedly went swimming nude in Ernest Hemingway’s pool at his casa in Havana. EH told the staff never to change the water in the pool.

After Ava we went over to the Outlet Mall, also in Smithfield.

Then the longer part of the drive started, straight to Kiawah.

It’s was cloudy and cool. We got in a couple of long walks on the beach, watched some movies and a terrible basketball game for Duke, saw a couple of gators, a flock of black skimmers on the beach and had a great dinner at the Fat Hen. It had lots of down home SC dishes and a wonderful peanut butter cup dessert.

On the trip back we ran into rain and then snow in the middle of North Carolina, got hung up for an hour and twenty minutes behind a horrible truck and car wreck, and ended up driving the last few hours at about 45 mph. I think I deserve a lifetime achievement award for getting us home safely but late under those conditions.