November 9, 2021: "Turner's Modern World" at the Kimbell Museum
	September 26, 2021: A Visit to the Dallas Arboretum
	Return to the Index for 2021

The Summer passed uneventfully in Dallas, and by September we were thinking about a trip down to Fort Lauderdale, and we eventually set a departure date for October 3, intending to return about the 25th. 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. So I'll continue doing what I've done for the last few years- just organize the photos by topic, and put each in its own section on this album page.

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, having made this trip four or five times already. It's also good to take two of them, so they can 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. The problem in Baton Rouge is the poor design of the approaches to the Mississippi River bridge. As you approach the bridge from the west, and start up onto it, local traffic merges with you from the right. Here are a couple of pictures Fred took on this trip of this section of the bridge:

My lane and the lane to my right came from I-10; the blue truck at the far right came up a local lane onto the bridge.

I have begun moving to my right, as the two left lanes will be exiting to downtown Baton Rouge when we come down off the bridge.

That's the problem. All the I-10 traffic that wants to continue to the east has to move to the right at least one lane, as I-10 is a single-lane exit to the right when you come down off the bridge. Much of the local traffic that comes in from the right on the bridge approach needs to move to the left two lanes to continue into Baton Rouge. So I-10 funnels down to one lane on the bridge, and all that traffic has to move to the right. Local traffic has to do the opposite. All it takes is one person unsure of what to do and who slows down on the bridge, and traffic will begin to back up. It's a terrible design. We were lucky today as we were here a bit early, and so were not delayed.

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 used to stay near Pensacola so we didn't have to do a lot of driving at night, but doing that made a heck of a drive for the next day, putting us into Fort Lauderdale so late that after getting settled and having our celebratory drink at the dock, we didn't get to dinner until nine-thirty or so. So recently we have begun driving from Pensacola to Tallahassee to stay the night. Particularly with my new car, driving at night is much more pleasant.

We usually get away from the hotel in Tallahassee about nine or so for the 150-mile drive to Jacksonville, which we usually reach about eleven-thirty. 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 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. Getting here by 5PM means I have time to do a bit on the recumbent bike before we have our drink at the dock:

Then we are at the Floridian Restaurant for dinner before nine. 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.

Boat Traffic on the New River (Installment 53)

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". On this trip, in fact, we took only three snapshots:

A Regular Boat

A Drinking Boat

An Eating Boat

At Riverview Gardens

During the three weeks we were here, we took some candid shots around the condo and Riverview Gardens. Many of these were at the dock, but there are a few views from our living room window- and also some of the cats. Views upriver are always neat:

A problem from the apartment above caused us to repaint one wall, and we chose an accent color- light blue.

Bob's favorite snoozing location is the seat of the recumbent bike. It's commonscents.

Bob is on the left, and his nephew Cole is on the right.

The Las Olas Art Fair

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, the fair was held on the weekend of the 16th and 17th, and we went to walk along the fair both days. It is always interesting to see the wide variety of arts and crafts offered, and perhaps every other fair we end up buying something for ourselves or for a gift. The Fair was smaller this time, but that's undoubtedly due to the pandemic.

For pictures this time, we took some of the more interesting artworks, and I also made one movie; the movie and a slideshow for the pictures are below. As usual, for the slideshow, click on the image to open the show and use the arrows in the lower corners of each image to move from one to another, tracking your progress with the index numbers in the upper left of each one.

Click on the Image Above to View the Slideshow

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Of course, what the many vendors are hoping for are sales, and while we hardly ever see lots of people carring away lots of merchandise, we assume that most people conclude their transactions like we do- buying things and then coming back at the very end of the day to pick them up. By far the most common offering at the Art Fair are paintings, which I guess is what most people would immediately think of when the term "art" is used. Some of the paintings are pretty traditional, using traditional media such as pastels or oils. Others use additional media to set themselves apart.

A Walk to the Beach

For my part, I like to ride my bike over to the beach occasionally; there are bike lanes and the only tricky part is going over the Las Olas Bridge over the Intracoastal Waterway. Today, though, we are going to walk over, as it is such a nice day- and the mid-October weather is just warm. Here is a map of our route:

I won't bother drawing a line to show you the route; we simply go up to Las Olas from the condo and head east. Las Olas dead-ends into the beach. While it was a nice day, it was getting late, and so the beach wasn't particularly crowded:

The New Kinney Tunnel Deck Park

Fort Lauderdale is always changing and expanding. Certainly you have seen the skyline change in these album pages; it seems as if every time we come down here, there is a new building going up. The latest change isn't a new skyscraper, though. It is a new deck park that is being created where Las Olas goes over the Kinney Tunnel that carries US 1 (Federal Highway) under the New River.

Here is an aerial view of the area between the Riverside Hotel and the Icon Las Olas, and the New River and Federal Highway heading north out of the Kinney Tunnel. The view looks north, and shows the area as it was about a year ago, before work began on the Kinney Tunnel Top Park Project.

Driving south on Federal Highway from Broward Boulevard, the street descends quickly over two blocks to enter the Henry Kinney Tunnel under the New River. Just as you enter the tunnel, Las Olas is over your head. Up on Las Olas, there has always been an ugly concrete wall on the north side of the street to keep people from accidently (or on purpose) dropping anything onto the roadway below (or falling onto it). South of Las Olas, SE 4th Street curved south and east from Las Olas to go through the Riverside Hotel (actually going under part of the parking garage) and then on eastward to our condo.

Between that street and the Cheesecake Factory, there were some planters and an outside eating area for the restaurant. This is also where the commemorative brick we place for Ty Ferel and Scott Dole is located. Between 4th Street and the New River is the Laura Ward Plaza- basically an open area with a kind of ugly ventilation shaft from the tunnel below right in the middle of it.

Ever since the Icon Las Olas went up, there has been a movement to try to do something more with this whole area. First, everyone wanted to beautify it; where Las Olas crosses over the tunnel entrance is a particular eyesore. Also, new buildings are going up just west of Federal Highway, and these, as well as the existing buildings, have a particularly unattractive view of Federal Highway's descent into the tunnel.

But to do anything really significant, there had to be more space, and the only way to get it would be to essentially cover over 100 feet or so of the sloping highway. But if just a flat "roof" were put over the roadway, there would not be enough clearance for many trucks that use the tunnel.

At right is the concept plan for the finished Kinney Tunnel Top Park. It also looks north, like the aerial view above, from a vantage point just over the New River. Laura Ward Plaza is in the foreground, and you can see that the ventilation structure has been hidden with sculpture and foliage. You can see a red car, which I assume is on SE 4th St., just going through the Riverside Hotel, which is the building at right.

The greenery along the Riverside Hotel about halfway back is where the existing outside eating area for the Cheesecake Factory Restaurant is; I assume that area will return when construction is done. A bit further back, Las Olas crosses through this new park, and then there is the 100-foot section of new deck. This deck, incidentally, slopes up as it extends north, thus increasing the vertical clearance for high vehicles using the Kinney Tunnel. There appears to be more sculpture in the distance, on this new deck, perhaps also concealing another ventilation structure.

This is certainly an ambitious plan, and I will admit I am not at all sure that what we end up with will look like this, but I have to say that almost anything would be an improvement.

So one day, Fred and I walked down to where Las Olas crosses over the tunnel entrance to see how the construction is proceeding. It has been going on for about six months so far, and what's been done so far is prep work- mostly the construction of supports for the eventual new deck. These first two pictures have me standing on the east side of Federal, above the roadway. They are doing support work for the new deck, which is not yet in place. The view looks south, and there is a beautiful tropical-themed mural on the side of that building at left that I hope will be preserved.

The next three pictures are all of the general area under reconstruction. All these views look basically west, and this entire intersection in front of the camera will become part of the Top Park.

This first view is an interesting one that my phone camera put together automatically. The center of the image looks straight west down Las Olas, but the view actually spans 180°. At the extreme left, you are looking south, and the Kinney Tunnel goes under the river in that direction. At the extreme right, you are looking due north, up Federal Highway towards Broward Boulevard. It is over this tunnel access that the new deck will be built.

In the picture at right, we are looking west down Las Olas. This busy, congested area will be even worse until the project is completed.

In the picture below is a view that used to be blocked by an ugly wall; I am looking directly north up Federal Highway. You can see about where the deck will extend to.

The Trip Home

We left Fort Lauderdale on the morning of the 25th, 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.

But it isn't a difficult drive, and, particularly when Fred is dozing, I usually have some help watching the road:

The cats usually just sleep in their carriers; I think the gentle rumble of the road acts as a soporific for them. But every so often, each one of them will come up front just to see what is going on or to get some lap time. Bob comes up rather more frequently.

At one point, Bob asked to borrow my phone so he could take a selfie.

Bob is alert and ready to help any way he can.

We usually get to the bridge-tunnel at Mobile Bay around six-thirty. In the fall, it is at dusk, in January it is already dark, and in May it is still light.

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This time, Fred happened to have part of the car's display on the compass, which also shows altitude, and as we crossed the bay bridge leading to the tunnel at mobile, we got the idea to see what would happen to the altitude when we went through the tunnel. So I had Fred film the car's display as we went through the tunnel, and you can use the player at left to watch the movie of what happened.

Downtown Dallas

Following out normal schedule, we typically eat dinner in Gulfport, Mississippi. 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.

Sometimes, when we come into downtown via I-30, there are nice views of the downtown skyscrapers. It was cloudy today, so this picture could have been better, but the one at right was the view Fred got.

We arrived back home at 3:00 this time, and were happy to be back. Lucky and Zack were glad to see us, too, even thought Lynne takes very good care of them.

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

	November 9, 2021: "Turner's Modern World" at the Kimbell Museum
	September 26, 2021: A Visit to the Dallas Arboretum
	Return to the Index for 2021