patrick.net

B.A.C.A.H. says

- a "swimming with dolphins" experience at Key Largo;

Is that actually fun? Not knocking it. I just feel like it would be weird. I would try it. Was freaked out the first time I did zip lining. It's big creature that's powerful. That's why I'm not riding a bull or horse. I need as much control as I can get.

Everglades are on the list. I don't know why I haven't been.

AD says

We arrived in Key Largo and are now at The Fish House. Pretty good so far.

Patrick says

We arrived in Key Largo and are now at The Fish House. Pretty good so far.

Hope you make it to Key West, which should be within a 2 hour drive to watch the sunset.

You all can say you visited the world famous Florida Keys as far as your travels. Jimmy Buffett and TV show Miami Vice helped put it on the map more than the movie Key Largo.

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Sounds like you're having a blast. I'm a little up North for your current adventures. Also last week I wasn't doing much of anything, getting in early 2 or 3 every day. Then as luck would have it, I have been working until an hour or so after dark since Tuesday.

Keys are too flat to the water, too scary. Might be beautiful, but after living in New Orleans, I wouldn't want to live there.

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If you go for a day to the Florida Keys then you go to sight see and eat at a seafood restaurant.

If you go for a few days then yes take a boat trip and also go fishing, even if it is shoreline fishing.

It's the best fishing in the world even if you stay on shore and fish off the rocks or beach. The Florida panhandle is very good fishing but nothing close to the Florida Keys.

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Vizcaya Gardens in Miami was worth the $25 each to get in. Impressive place. Then we walked to this restaurant:

Braga Portuguese at 1401 SW 22nd St Miami, FL 33145

Amazing! Highlight of the trip. Great lunch specials for $20, generous house wine for $5, nice waitress, and not the slightest attempt to scam us, which was a bit surprising after Miami Beach. Food was very high quality.

Another very pleasant experience was driving northeast on CR 905 to leave Key Largo at the north end of the island instead of via Highway 1 in the middle.

That northern stretch is a like a green canyon with walls made of trees and kudzu vines.

We also checked out Little Havana, which is OK. Smoked a small cigar and had a pastry. Pastry guy tried to shortchange me, but after Miami Beach, I was paying attention.

And this was a fine little Italian lunch place: Prima Classe, 842 1st St, Miami Beach, FL

https://www.prima-classe.com/

Had paninis and salad.

Speaking of Florida tourist trap restaurant rip offs.

I bet the Cuban food in on point.

Patrick says

kudzu vines

Apparently the roots are a great source of starch. Might be an economic way to finally eradicate it. Apparently it's made it all of the way to Central Texas so far but I haven't personally seen any around here.

almost all restaurants here just buy bulk packaged stuff and resell reheat. go to chefs store buy 250 worth of ingredients, sell for profit after cooking/warming. best food will always be home made.

Maga_Chaos_Monkey says

Apparently the roots are a great source of starch.

It's not the roots, it's the aid spuds, that grow, that are about 3 to 4 inches circumference.

They don't seem as invasive here in South Florida as they were on the western tip of South Carolina. When we first moved to SC there were no Kudzu, then one year somehow they got introduced, I think to relieve erosion on the side of mountains. But they took off and choked out entire forests on the side of every mountain, holler, hill and valley that they grew on. With in two years, they were a state of emergency. I don't know if they ever got a handle on them, at least I don't hear about them anymore.
We had some growing on our back fence a few years ago, and I was concerned that they were going to take over the back yard. We removed the row of ficus trees they were trellising on, and they have since disappeared. I see them from time to time walking through alley's on my walks around. But they seem to stick to one or two trees, and not blanket the whole grounds and creeping to other trees, like I remember how they took over in South Carolina.

We would get loads of air spuds, when they were growing there. I think they are made to grow up trees on the side of a mountain, and can cover ground to reach trees higher up the slope because they can grow up the incline to reach the other trees. but can't grow out laterally on flat land to cover the same way.

Great Florida vine, not for hilly places.

Tenpoundbass says

It's not the roots, it's the aid spuds,

Thanks for the correction. Yeah, when I saw a guy digging them up to process he kept those which looked a lot like long narrow potatoes. Then after that I guess are the stringy roots.

They somehow rise to the top of the ground, I don't know if they grow on the vine, or from the roots somehow. But you find them on top of the ground, about the size of a potato. They are covered in little circle marks, sort of like a coral rock, but the spuds are dark brown. The curios thing about finding them on the ground, without any digging or foraging for them. They don't have any roots attached. Very strange fruit.

Oh well apparently they are two different species of vine. The similarities are striking though. They both have almost similar leaves, and produce pink blooms in clusters.
Although my description of both are correct between SC kutzu, and Florida Air potato.

The air potato does grow on the vine, then drops. I don't know how kutzu is harvested.

This is what I saw but these are huge vs. those the guy in the US was using: https://www.youtube.com/shorts/u_tnKXiu_OY

If you scroll through those shorts people keep calling them roots but I think you're right, they are tubers which is different:

"A tuber is not a root; it is an underground stem that serves as a storage organ for nutrients. While both roots and tubers grow underground, roots are modified to store nutrients and grow downwards to absorb moisture and nutrients from the soil, whereas tubers develop from elongated stem tissue and can sprout new shoots and roots from their surface.

Examples of tubers include potatoes and sweet potatoes, which are not roots but modified stems"

Patrick's drive sounds like a trip to Wakanda or something.

When I was in TX last time Sotol tequila was all the rage. Overpriced but nice that you can make decent spirits from streetside shrubs

Thanks, never heard of Sotol before.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sotol

Back in California now. The weather in Miami was better, but soon that weather situation will be reversed and it will be better here.

Patrick says

Back in California now. The weather in Miami was better, but soon that weather situation will be reversed and it will be better here.

I like CA weather but I love humidity for some weird reason. I feel like the sweat cleans your system out. Never liked dry/temperate heat. To get the sweat out you have to work out. In FL, AL, GA, MS, etc. you just stand outside.