Kirby's Travels: Escaping the Winter Blahs

Kirby's Travels: Escaping the Winter Blahs: "As with most people lliving north of the 49th parallel, it is not uncommon that many want to escape the mid-winter blahs during January or F..."

Escaping the Winter Blahs

As with most people lliving north of the 49th parallel, it is not uncommon that many want to escape the mid-winter blahs during January or February.    Our escape was mid-February to Florida.     This trip coincided with  our 35 anniversary.  

We had a credit with Delta Airlines so we flew out of Seattle.    Karen worked night shift the night before, and took the first ferry off the island with a tentative arrival later in Seattle mid-afternoon.    Plenty of time to catch our flight out of Seatac at 10:00PM.    Once we arrived in Seattle we stopped to visit some friends before heading to the airport.    Later that evening we finally arrived to park our van in the midst of a snowstorm.   Great way to start a holiday!   With the snow coming down in huge flakes we managed to get all our gear out of the van and into the waiting shuttle bus.

We managed to get all out gear onto the plane without too much fuss.    They were all just on the borderline of their weight and size capacity.    Just as the plane was about to take off, the Captain announced that we would be heading back to the terminal due to faulty instrument readings.    We then sat in the plane for another 40 minutes before the technician was able to correct the problem.   Later on in our flight we realized the fact that with us leaving late, we would arrive late in Atlanta and loose our connection to Tampa.   Sure enough, once we arrived in Atlanta late, our seats were given away and we had to make other arrangements for a connecting flight.    We were lucky than most,our delay only worked out to be 60 minutes, others had to wait much longer for their flight.

Delta airlines did manage to bookus on another flight in thirty minutes at the other side of the airport on standby.   So we ran back to the other side again just in time catch our flight.

Once we arrived in Tampa to a boiling 80 degrees, we ended up waiting at what seemed to be the wrong place for our shuttle bus to pick us up and take us to our car rental agency.

When we got into Tampa, the car rental company told us they didn't have any cars at the moment and we would have to wait.   After sometime waiting, they did manage to find us a car. and we were on our way.

Luckily the AC worked, as the temp in Tampa was over 80 degrees and HOT!, HOT!, HOT!    hehehhehehehhehehe

Hours later we did manage to make it to to Crystal River the first stop of on our holiday.   We are in our hotel now, the temp outside is still about 70 degrees, went for mexican food.  Great food and several beer each and all for under 25 bucks.

    

The next day we went down to Crystal River Kayaks and launched our SOT kayaks from there.    The weather was great, a 80 degrees and holding, exactly what we wanted.   Paddling in the warm sunshine and an opportunity to paddle and swim with manatees.   Given the opportunity everyone should do it.    We arrived at one of the manatee sanctuaries somewhat later than we wanted.   It seems that manatees are morning mammals and we arrived later in the morning.   Still, we made the most of it.    We were able to watch a dozen or so manatees this time, unlike our last opportunity when there was so many we couldn't count them.

We stayed in Crystal River for two days and got to paddle and swim with the manatees both days.   We definitely got our thrill satisfied.   The next day we drove to Orlando for some city exploring for our anniversary.   Our hotel was just across the interstate from Universal Studios where we spent the evening celebrating our anniversary having dinner at Bob Marley's and hopping from night club to night club.

The next day we headed south to Tampa to attend the Sweetwater Kayak Symposium.   During our drive south, we really weren't watching where we were going and ended up in Fort Myers, not Tampa missing the event entirely.   We did take it all in stride and explored some of the barrier islands instead for a day or so before heading back to the airport for our flight home.

We were really nervous about heading back, we had a stopover in Minneapolis and the weather channel mentioned they were in a HUGE snowstorm and planes were being cancelled and stranded there.    So, we contact the airlines about this making sure we wouldn't get stranded in the mid-west as well.   They assured us the storm would be over by the time we arrived.     When we did fly into Minneapolis there was snow everywhere.  Luckily the airport was kept clear.  But, when we did arrive back in Seattle snow was starting to fall again.   Halfway home, the snow was coming down so hard we had difficult seeing the road, we then decided to call it quits for the night and crash in a rest area off I-5.    

The next day, the snow was gone, driving was a lot easier.   We thought the snow was finally over.  To our surprise, we were wrong.   When we drove off the ferry at  Swartz Bay, the snow was dumping down and had been doing so since midnight.   It appears that the southern end of Vancouver Island received the worst of the snow storm.   Once we arrived home, there was at least 13 inches of snow on top of our car that we had to brush off before we could move it for the van to park.    As we started to unpack in the snow storm, we both felt that we should have stayed in Tampa.   But all in all, we had a great trip and we will be posting our pictures on our website within the next week or so.

Kirby