April 21, 2021: A To Dallas Blooms at the Arboretum
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We left Dallas a few days after Christmas to spend New Year's and the first two-thirds of January down at the condo in Fort Lauderdale. As these trips to Florida have become so commonplace, we tend to take fewer and fewer pictures, and so there is less and less need to divide up the trip day by day. Rather, I'll continue doing what I've done for the last few years- just divide the photo album page by topic, pretty much regardless of when the picture was taken.

Getting to Fort Lauderdale

If you've been through more than a year or two of this photo album, you are undoubtedly familiar with our route to Florida. Years ago we used to fly, but that has gotten to be such a hassle (and a good deal more expensive) that now we drive. This allows us to take all kinds of things with us- including, on this trip, our two youngest cats, Bob and Cole. Both of them are good travelers, and we thought they should keep each other company.

The trip is routine; we stop at the same places to eat and to stay- almost without exception. And it's an easy route, too. Getting out of Dallas is easy if a bit congested, sometimes. We usually leave about nine-thirty, and by ten or so are on I-20 heading east towards Shreveport. We usually turn southeast on I-49 about one in the afternoon, reaching Lafayette and I-10 east along about three-thirty. Baton Rouge can be very slow if we don't get through there by four-fifteen or so, and then it is another 90 minutes to get across Louisiana to the Mississippi border.

Mississippi and Alabama are an hour each, so we are heading east from Mobile about six-thirty or seven. This puts us north of Pensacola right about dinnertime about eight. After dinner, we have now developed the habit of staying near Pensacola so we don't have to do a lot of driving at night. We have two hotels here to choose from; this time we've chosen the Red Roof in right near where we have dinner.

We usually get away from the hotel in Pensacola about nine or so for the 350-mile drive to Jacksonville, which we usually reach about one in the afternoon. Then we take I-295 around Jacksonville to the south, going through Orange Park. This 14-mile stretch is kind of neat, mostly because of the long bridge that crosses the St. Johns River as it opens out into a large lake southwest of the city. (It narrows as it approaches and flows around downtown Jacksonville to eventually empty into the Atlantic.)

I-295 connects up with I-95 south of the city and we simply take that south for another kind of boring 300 miles down to Fort Lauderdale. This is another boring part of the drive, but it gets us to the condo around 5PM, depending on traffic in Fort Lauderdale on I-95 (which can be horrendous).

We unloaded everything at the condo, got Bob and Cole situated (and fed) and the laptops all set up, and then retired to the dock for a celebratory frozen drink. Then, as is our custom, we headed down to the Floridian Restaurant for dinner. I wish we had transporter technology, but the drive is not a hard one- although sections of it can be boring.

Bob and Cole are young enough that they are still good travelers. Bob, for example, will come out of his carrier every hour or so and walk around the car and sit up front for a while. But then he goes right back in and curls up. Cole stays out of his own carrier more; he usually curls up behind my seat where I usually make a flat space on top of my computer and duffel for him. I like it when they come up front, and it is especially nice when they will stay in one lap or the other for a while. As the driver, I'm OK with that; I just try to ignore them and concentrate on the road.

We have been here to Florida so many times that we have pretty much photographed everything worthwhile anywhere nearby. The pictures we take now are just candid shots around the condo, at the dock or perhaps at an Art Fair or other event that occurs while we are here. So I've begun the practice of just grouping the pictures for these Florida trips by topic.

Sometimes, our visits here correspond with the Las Olas Art Fair, an event held three times a year (January, March and October) where Las Olas is blocked off and a whole bunch of art vendors set up booths along both sides of the street. It extends from the intersection by The Cheesecake Factory (located above the Kinney Tunnel that takes US 1 underneath the New River) right at downtown Fort Lauderdale four blocks east to the Colee Hammock canal that goes under Las Olas.

This time, due to the Covid-19 pandemic, the entire fair was canceled. This was not a surprise, as on our last trip here last fall, so many restaurants were closed and other events canceled that, even though mask mandates were in place and some restaurants had reopened, the activity in Fort Lauderdale was much diminished.

So no Art Fair this trip; we will have to see if one is held in March when we will return next.

Bob and Cole in Fort Lauderdale

We brought Bob and Cole to Fort Lauderdale together for the first time more than a year ago, and they have done so well with the traveling that we have been routinely bringing them down since then. It's good to bring two of them so each has another to play with or socialize with.

Bob's personality has changed a good deal in the last couple of years. When he was a kitten, and we brought him down here in 2017, and he and his sister were very active and gregarious, and both of them were always anxious to get in a lap and curl up.

Bob has a number of endearing poses, and some that are just odd- like the two views at left of him sitting on the sofa. And when he is sleeping, he rarely curls up like most cats do, but splays out across whatever surface he is occupying.

All Tuckered Out

But Bob has become more solitary of late. Whether that's due to losing his sister (who went to live with Nancy in San Antonio shortly after we brought them back from Florida that year), or losing his friend Tyger to cancer (which happened in 2019), or just getting a little older, or perhaps because of the addition of Cole to the menangerie, I don't know. He doesn't go hide out, exactly, but he is content being by himself or with Cole, rather than anxious to be close to one of us. Bob does tend to stay in whatever room we are occupying, with his favorite place being on the seat of the exercise bike. As with most of our cats, he also likes to stretch out on clothes I have been wearing but have perhaps just tossed on the bed. With most animals, it is all about the scents.

Being a younger cat, Cole tends to explore more than Bob does, and is always trying to climb on something.

Bob has his own unique poses; he and Lucky are two cats who like to lie on their backs with all four paws up in the air. How they stabilize is a mystery to me.

Both at home and here in Florida, both Bob and Cole will come to the high chairs where we are usually sitting and meow for attention. If we reach down and pet Bob, he tends to wander away, as if he doesn't really want to be touched. Cole, on the other hand, will tend to sit down on the floor and let you give him a massage for as long as you can. He will stay right in place, and if you stop sooner than he wants, he'll come back and meow again.

Boat Traffic on the New River (Installment 51)

Over the many years that I and then Fred and I have been coming down to Fort Lauderdale, the boats (and other craft) that go by the condo on the New River have been a frequent subject of photographs that we have taken. So much so that the boats have become "old hat", although there are always at least a few candid pictures.

For example, one day this beautiful motorsailer was being towed downriver, and I ran out to get a couple of pictures of it:

It seems that on every day, except perhaps a couple of weekdays, hardly a few minutes ever goes by before a boat or two will come by the condo:

It's not just when we're at the condo that we see boats go by, of course. Boats are going up and down the river all the time- anyplace on the river we happen to be.

Here is a scene from one of our many walks upriver along the Riverwalk; this boat his heading downstream passing by the Downtowner Restaurant near the Andrews Avenue bridge.

This picture was taken further upriver near the Science Museum. The view looks southeast past Shirttail Charlie's (where we used to keep our own boat).

Here are two more pictures, taken on the same walk and again from the same spot near the Science Museum:

It is always fun to watch the round, thatched-roof Tiki Bar glide up and down the river, and it is usually full of patrons sitting on stools and drinking.

Taken a few moments later, you can see some of the same craft, with the addition of one of the Water Taxi craft also heading downriver from its westernmost stop at the Performing Arts Center.

Certainly, not all the craft are large, or even motorized. We see a lot of paddleboarders as well, but few of them have their pets with them:

At Riverview Gardens

Of course, being right on the New River, we can often be found sitting at the dock in the afternoons and evenings. We usually come down to the dock on our first evening to have our celebratory frozen drink (celebrating our arrival without incident and celebrating the end of 1300 miles of driving).

In this view, looking downriver along the dock, Fred is relaxing with his libation.

I was experimenting with my camera, looking upriver over a low-rise condo just west of us at the Icon Las Olas (foreground), the Las Olas Grand condos, and the Water Garden condos (background).

Riverview Gardens has nice views up the river towards downtown and, from some units, down the river towards the Intracoastal Waterway. But what makes it really nice is that there is 150 feet of dock front, and sitting down there is one of the most relaxing things we do here.

It doesn't usually work out that we get to be in Florida when the Christmas Boat Parade and Festival are going on, but on our first night at the dock, a couple of the decorated boats that were in the parade went by, since the decorations aren't usually taken off the boats until after the New Year. The boat at left, which we saw during the daytime, had a relatively unique Santa Claus.

On another night, the Tiki Bar came floating by, and it, too, was decorated for the season.

One of the things we do fairly frequently (most days, actually) is to ride our bikes over to Holiday Park up north of us to spend 30-45 minutes throwing the frisbee around on one of the soccer fields (which are, most often, not utilized during the middle of the afternoon). On one particular day, I happened to have my phone with me, and so I had Fred take a picture at the bottom of the stairs just before we headed off to the park.

We also like to ride our bikes up and down the Riverwalk, and occasionally I will ride mine to the beach and back. Fred doesn't much care for the bike lanes on busy streets (which Las Olas is from our place to the beach), so quite often I make that trip myself.

On the Beach (apologies to Neville Shute)

One would think that anyone coming to Fort Lauderdale would spend a lot of time at the beach, and I am sure that most tourists do. Certainly the younger ones. But for us "old hands" who kind of live here, going to the beach is just a sometime thing.

For my part, I like to ride over there on my bike at least once, and on this trip I chose a weekday that was kind of coolish, just to minimize the number of people I might get close to (because of the pandemic). Here are a couple of the pictures I took on this particular day when there weren't that many people around:

The beach seems almost deserted, and much of that was due to the day of the week and the fact that it was a bit cool for your average beachgoer. But the pandemic was also a big factor, as everything in town is less active and more subdued than normal.

I made a little movie while I was here, and you can watch it below. One thing to note at the beginning of the movie is the Elbo Room right on the corner of Las Olas and A1A. Even on cool days in winter it would usually be crowded, but the pandemic has put a temporary stop to that.

Here you can see a few people walking along A1A, the beach boulevard, all masked up for the pandemic.

Here's a short movie taken at the beach; just click the "play" symbol to watch it.

Since Fred doesn't particularly like riding his bike to the beach, we sometimes just walk the mile or so along Las Olas to the Intracoastal Waterway, up across the Las Olas Bridge over the Waterway, and then then last few blocks to the beach itself.

At left is a little map showing the route from our condo in Riverview Gardens and east along Las Olas to the beach. I've also marked the Las Olas Bridge over the Intracoastal Waterway.

There are businesses of various kinds all along Las Olas until the boulevard crosses the major canal that marks the eastern boundary of the area known as Colee Hammock (a "hammock" being an island-like area in an otherwise swampy wetland). Colee Hammock extends from the small canal at the east end of our section of SE 4th Street for about a quarter mile to the area known as Las Olas Isles, a series of man-made fingers of land that extend north and south from Las Olas Boulevard. On these isles can be found some of the areas nicest homes and a boatload of, well, boats- as they are docked all along both sides of each isle. The isles to the south of Las Olas are more exclusive, and the boats docked there belong to the homeowners on the isles, and some of them run up to 100 feet long. The north isles are still very nice, but there are apartments and smaller homes there, and the docks are often rented to people who don't actually live on the isle. Some of these people actually live on their boats. Most of the craft here are 50-footers or less.

It is almost always true that when you are crossing the Las Olas Bridge you are treated to beautiful views in either direction. Since we were crossing on the north side of the bridge, the panoramic view I took looks north up the Intracoastal:

If the picture looks off-balance, that's because it was early afternoon, and the west side of the barrier island (the land between the Intracoastal and the Atlantic) was brightly lit by the sun, while the east side of the mainland was somewhat in shadow. The differing light angles fooled my little camera into applying the exposure it began with at the left to the area at right, resulting in an overexposure of the barrier island.

To try to make up for the fact that the east side of the Intracoastal Waterway was overexposed in the panoramic view earlier, I also took a couple of pictures of that side of the waterway and I stitched them together into a wideangle look at the ocean side of the waterway.

There has been an incredible amount of construction on the barrier island in recent years, including the multi-story parking garage (to the right of the new highrise) just north of the east end of the Las Olas Bridge.

This parking lot, with its interesting facade that is lit up in colors at night, took the place of an open parking lot that, to tell the truth, had always been pretty much of an eyesore. The two marinas this side of the garage have always been there, but there facilities have been modernized and expanded.

To give you an idea of just how much has gone on, take a look at another picture, also taken from the top of the Las Olas Bridge, back in 1995. This picture doesn't show any of the bridge itself at right, but at right you can see the building just beyond the new parking structure; it is about 12 stories tall.

As you move your eye up the Intracoastal, you might be able to pick out a building or two that was there 25 years ago, but there aren't many. And the shoreline has seen new marinas and boat docks open along its length.

This is the story of Fort Lauderdale- constant, dynamic change and growth- even for a city in one of the fastest-growing states in the Union. Anyway, maybe you'll find the justaposition interesting.

It seems as if in the small plaza just on the beach side of the intersection of Las Olas and A1A there is a new kind of display every time we come down here. This time, it seems to be a figure on a jet ski, and so Fred and I both used it as a backdrop for pictures of each other.

And, in banners spaced down the promenade walk along the beach were admonitions about "social distancing", a term that has become all too prevalent in today's world. About the only time we don't wear our masks when away from the condo is when we are out in the open air, as we are this afternoon.

We walked along the beach beside A1A up to Sebastian Beach, and then we went to the other side of the barrier island near the Intracoastal. It was a lovely afternoon, and we were just enjoying the walk.

As we left A1A to cross the island, we passed one of the many new hotel/apartment buildings that have been built right on the beach in recent years.

When we got down to Birch Road, we had a nice view of the building that Ty and Scott lived in many, many years ago. They only stayed there a while, and kept moving around like gypsies. They finally ended up in Palm Springs- literally, as both died there.

As we came back across the Las Olas Bridge in the late afternoon, I took two nice pictures of Fred- with the Intracoastal Waterway stretching out to the north as his backdrop:

"Florida Was Home"

If it had not been for two friends, Ty Ferel and Scott Dole, Grant and I would never have come to South Florida, and I would never have purchased the condo at all. How different things would have been.

It was Ty and Scott who told us in Dallas they were moving to Fort Lauderdale to live on a boat. It was Ty and Scott who invited Grant and me down to stay with them a few times. It was Ty and Scott who got Grant interested in "the Boating Capital of the World" to the extent that he began to work towards having our own place here. It was Ty and Scott who helped Grant get the Riverview Gardens condo into liveability and then turn it into a real home. It was Ty and Scott who were our constant friends here. And it was Ty and Scott who helped us so much on our last trip down here in 1991.

For all those reasons, when the Riverwalk Association began offering commemorative bricks for placement in the Riverwalk itself, I thought it would be a fitting memorial for such good friends to have one of these bricks permanently placed here.

So I filled out an application online, bought a commemorative brick, and then specified that it be placed in the area just north of Laura Ward Park, on top of the Kinney Tunnel, near the Cheesecake Factory and the condo.

At left you can see what part of the area around the brick we did for Ty and Scott looks like. Perhaps someday, all the Riverwalk's bricks will be sponsored by someone; depending on where you ask that they be placed, it costs from $150 to $300 for a normal-sized brick. They are engraved with all kinds of things- memorials to loved ones, celebrations of anniversaries and other events, commercial or corporate messages, messages from one person to another, and so on.

At the moment, my guess is that, from a random survey as we have walked the Riverwalk from end to end, perhaps a third of all the bricks are spoken for. The area near Laura Ward Park is a newly-available area; down by the Performing Arts Center, most of the bricks are engraved. It seems to have been a successful way to raise money to maintain, improve, and extend the Riverwalk.

Our biggest problem was figuring out what the brick should say. Of course we wanted Ty and Scott's names, but we also wanted something that would express our feelings now that they are both deceased. From 1988 to 2008, Ty and Scott had lived happily in Fort Lauderdale. They lived on a boat for a time while Ty expanded his property management business and Scott established himself at a drapery design firm. They also worked in interior design (for yachts, mostly) and also bought, renovated, and resold a succession of homes and apartments. They seemed happy whenever we were with them.

When the housing bubble burst in 2008, we think they could have hunkered down and relied on their day jobs to see them through; they could have stayed in Fort Lauderdale. But they bought a truck and trailer and left, hoping to find better opportunities elsewhere. Over the next six years, we stayed in touch but only saw them once, when they brought their trailer back to Florida for a time, before eventually settling in Palm Springs. There, good fortune seemed to abandon them. Their inability to replicate the success they'd enjoyed in Florida led to a succession of problem that culminated in 2013 with Scott's eventually succumbing to concern, worry, and depression.

Ty went on for a while, and even tried to begin a new relationship there in Palm Springs. Things seemed to improve for him, but one day my emails to him ceased being answered. Once or twice I got a cryptic response, but these never made much sense, until eventually they stopped, too. It was actually not until years later when we started a diligent search that we found out what had happened. Ty Ferel was murdered in 2016 by someone who he had gone on vacation with. This person was later found driving Ty's car and using his credit cards.

Given all this, Fred and I concluded that what we wanted to express was that when Ty and Scott were living in Fort Lauderdale together, they did well. We thought that had they never left, they could have weathered the 2008 downturn and come back from it even stronger. They were happy when we knew them here; they were less so when we'd reconnected in St. Petersburg after they'd been traveling for a while. And settling in Palm Springs turned into a disaster.

Hence the inscription on the memorial brick, seen at right.

We have sorely missed Ty and Scott from the day they left Fort Lauderdale, and were no longer here to share their lives with us. We saw Ty a couple of times after Scott's passing, and could share our sympathy with him. But we have no one we can share our sadness about Ty with; to our knowledge, he had no living relatives once his father and mother were gone. These two tragedies, we think, might well never have occurred had the pair remained in Fort Lauderdale- hence our choice of words for their memorial.

A Stroll Along the Riverwalk

Something else that we often do is to simply walk from the condo a block west along SE 4th Street to the Riverside Hotel; this is where the Riverwalk begins, and we walk all the way to the western terminus near the Symphony Condominiums (which are adjacent to the Broward Performing Arts Center).

The Riverwalk is basically a wide, brick-paved walkway that goes right along the north side of the New River. It goes under the Third Avenue and Andrews Avenue bridges, and over the Florida East Coast Railway. It actually goes past the Performing Arts Center and around Sailboat Bend to the twin-tower Symphony Condominiums. Currently, the total length is about a mile and a half.

The Riverwalk now begins at Laura Ward Plaza, right near the Cheesecake Factory and basically right on top of the Kinney Tunnel. There is a Watertaxi stop there, and the area is usually crowded. From there, the path goes between the New River and the Icon Las Olas before coming to New River Drive, a street that runs along the river for a ways, going under the Third Avenue bridge and then down as far as River House.

Just past the Third Avenue Bridge there used to be some low buildings- some professional offices and such- but these have been torn down and the new Alluvion Condominium put up in its place. The Alluvion is just the latest skyscraper to rise along the New River, defining a downtown "canyon" even more.

All of the new condos and apartments that have gone up along the New River in recent years should all be considered to be in the "luxury" category, but there always seem to be enough takers for the developers to make money. Of course, this prices out of downtown living all but the wealthy, and many of the businesses complain that it is hard to get workers because they have to come from way outside downtown. And when they do, there are few places for them to park. How this will get resolved, I have no idea.

But one can't deny that the building itself is quite striking, rising over 40 stories into the air. Units near the base and near the top have balconies; the rest don't. There is a very nice water feature on the river side of the building that we had a look at for the first time today, and we could also see the swimming pool on the community level just above the parking garage.

Looking up at the swimming pool, you can see that some of its sides are glass.

Here's a movie of the water feature. Click the "Play" button to watch.

One thing they've done very well regarding the Riverwalk is to put plenty of decorative elements all along it. From interesting brickwork, to sculpture, to murals- there is usually something to see every few feet.

The Mural at the Andrews Avenue Bridge

Most of the sculptures and other artworks have corporate and individual sponsors, and these are usually listed on bricks nearby or incorporated into the artwork. There are a number of different sailboat-shaped artworks with different themes along the Riverwalk. A popular eating spot on the south side of the river near the Andrews Avenue Bridge is The Downtowner Restaurant (seen across the river behind Fred). They have a launch that ferries diners to and from the restaurant (as the south side of the river requires pedestrians to go up and over one of the bridges, going up and down the switchback ramps you see in the picture).

From a point still a bit east of the Andrews Avenue Bridge, I tried my hand at a panoramic view, looking downriver at the left and upriver at the right with the Downtowner Restaurant about in the middle. This was the result:

We continued west under the Andrews Avenue Bridge and we came past where the Briny Irish Pub used to be. It was a restaurant that we came to frequently, by ourselves and with others, but they went out of business at the beginning of the pandemic, and a new establishment- River Tail Seafood Restaurant took over the space. The menu of that new restaurant wasn't really our style, so we stopped going.

Now we came to the place where Riverfront Center used to be. Back before the turn of the millennium, a big new complex had been built on the site between the building the Briny Pub had been in and the tracks of the Florida East Coast Railway. This complex had restaurants, offices, some apartments, a movie theatre complex, and commercial space.

Initially, it did quite well; the movie theatre had lots of patrons and the restaurants and bars were usually busy. But over the years, it seemed the complex, despite its prime location and the fact that more and more downtown living was being created bringing more and more people to the area, did less and less well. In the last few years, we were usually the only people in any of the theatres we chose to visit.

Eventually, the entire complex closed, and sat empty for a number of years. (The story goes that the complex was owned by a very wealthy Indian family who could afford to wait for the site to be viable for redevelopment. A few years ago, this redevelopment began. The old complex was demolished and the first what are to be two towers has been erected, and improvements made to the nearby buildings as well. You can see this new tower, called Society Las Olas, at left.

A Large Sculpture at Society Las Olas

The second tower is not scheduled to be constructed until the leasing of the first is well underway, although all the foundation work has been completed. At the moment, the site for the second tower is occupied by the Wharf Fort Lauderdale- an area lined with food trucks and pop-up restaurants and bars. It is a youth-oriented space, and it seems to draw a pretty consistent crowd.

Society Las Olas is at least a partially new concept. While the building contains traditional 1-, 2-, and 3-bedroom units, most of the units are "rent by bedroom". These units are designed for young people who are used to having roommates, and you basically rent a bedroom and private bath in a unit with other singles doing the same thing. You can make your own group or you can join an existing one. Some units have full kitchens; others have small galley kitchens designed for snacks or the occasional meal, intended for people who don't plan on taking many meals at home.

This concept is an effort to make downtown living affordable for young singles, since the rents in existing apartment buildings are out of range for beginning budgets. And few young singles have the half-million-dollars-and-up that it takes to buy even a small condo in one of the new downtown towers. The building is run, as its name implies, as a "society" and there are numerous communal events every day along with all the amenities that an upscale condo development would have. Given this, the fact that the Wharf Fort Lauderdale is right next door= just the kind of place the singles would patronize.

Not being in Society Las Olas' "target market", I have no idea how this will all work out. From all reports, leasing began slowly but has picked up, although with the pandemic still ongoing, I don't know that the owners can tell much from these early indications. I'll have to see how things are going a year from now; surely the pandemic will be much less of a factor by then.

Here are a couple of other pictures from this new complex:

The complex is so new, that some of the ground floor commercial space isn't finished out yet.

I guess even young folks are going to have dogs.

Once we pass the new Society Las Olas, the Riverwalk makes a small curve so the paved brick path can go across the tracks of the Florida East Coast Railway.

As you cross the tracks (which is perfectly save unless a train is passing) you can look to your left and see the track bridge over the New River. Trains are actually fairly infrequent, so the bridge is almost always up, allowing boaters free passage. If you look in that direction and the bridge is down, you should exercise care as boaters, who are a powerful force in South Florida, do not like the bridge to be down any more than absolutely necessary. At a minimum, look in the other direction.

When you do, you will be looking north up the tracks towards Broward Boulevard, three blocks away. There, you will see the train station for the Brightline commuter train, which uses these same tracks. We've ridden Brightline once or twice; it is a typical new light rail affair- very convenient for going to Miami if your destination is anywhere downtown.

After crossing the tracks, the Riverwalk winds through an area known as Old Fort Lauderdale, where some of the settlement's original buildings have been preserved. It is now a venue for different kinds of functions. The walk is still going beside the river, across which is Pirate Republic, which used to be Shirttail Charlie's, a place we frequented often as it had good burgers and fish and some of the best french fries this side of the Floridian (a restaurant east of us that we go to a couple of times each trip). From here, there are also good views downriver:

The Justice Center used to be the only tall building on the south side of the New River, but now there are multiple apartment and condo structures.

In this view, you can see that the railroad bridge is still up, and you are looking east through the downtown "canyon"- the "walls" of which are higher on the north than the south.

Old Fort Lauderdale is a tree-shaded area, more like a park than anything else, and there are always lots of people about, sitting on the benches, having picnics, and such.

It was eagle-eye Fred who spotted the large orange iguana up in one of the trees, so we had to stop and try to take some pictures of it without scaring it away. At left are the two best pictures Fred and I took, and below is an extreme closeup that Fred was able to get.

West of Old Fort Lauderdale is an area called The Esplanade, which is a park area at the curve in the river by the Broward Performing Arts Center ("Sailboat Bend").

Here there is another good view of Society Las Olas which we passed on the other side of the tracks. I think that the outside spaces you see are communal hangout spaces, rather than luxury units with their own outdoor areas.

Here at the Esplanade I used my camera to capture a panoramic view of the area:

The Esplanade is right at an intersection of SE 2nd Street and Commodore Blvd. The Esplanade is on the SE corner, the Performing Arts Center on the SW corner, a parking structure on the NW corner, and the Science Museum on the NE corner. Standing in the Esplanade, here is a panoramic view of the three other corners:

You can't see it all that well in the panoramic view, but the parking structure, like many new buildings in Fort Lauderdale, is brightly-colored, so I took a picture of it closer up. We then walked back to the condo via SE 2nd Street and Las Olas Boulevard.

Opposite the Starbucks on the north side of Las Olas there are a group of restaurants with a fountain in the center of a small circular drive. Here is where the city Christmas tree seems to be each year.

Just down the street as we head back to the condo, there is a small shop called Flowers and Found Objects, and they have a little garden out front with a small water feature and some boulders in the vegetation.

What caught my eye today is what someone (maybe the shop itself) had left on one of the rocks. Calling Cinderella!

Walking along the Riverwalk is always enjoyable, and we do it at least a couple of times each trip. It is also a good route for a short bike ride, although we don't do that much in high season as there are usually so many pedestrians.

The Trip Home

We left Fort Lauderdale on the morning of the January 20th, and followed the reverse of our route down. It takes us literally all day and almost 700 miles of driving (Fort Lauderdale to Jacksonville: 320 miles; Jacksonville to Pensacola: 360 miles) to get out of Florida. As a matter of fact, when we finally enter Alabama, we are over halfway home.

Following out normal schedule, we typically eat dinner in Gulfport, Mississippi or Slidell, Louisiana. This leaves us a manageable 160 miles before we stop for the night in Lafayette, Louisiana. In the morning, we have a comfortable drive home- 200 miles up to Shreveport and then another 200 miles over to Dallas. We arrived back home at 3:30 this time, and were happy to be back.

And Bob and Cole were happy to see their brothers.

You can use the links below to continue to another photo album page.

	April 21, 2021: A To Dallas Blooms at the Arboretum
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