Travels and Adventures of "Curt's Dream" a True Grit design-The Great Loop

[curtgard]

I have no idea what kind of fish were caught in the Gulf but some were strange looking.

The fish were filleted and the remains were put in a basket to use as bait. The pelicans thought this might be an easy meal.

pelican looking for a free meal

The next morning,we headed to Ft Myers and stayed at the Edison and Ford marina for one night. We were now going to leave the West coast of Florida and head across to the East Coast by way of the Caloosahatchee River. There are five locks on this waterway between Ft. Myers and Stuart on the East coast. The waterway has some low bridges that must open even for us.

open railroad bridge

con't

[curtgard]

Our first stop on this waterway is LaBelle, where there is a free city dock with electric. We will stay there for three days as that is the limit.

The docks are nice but some of the slips have no finger piers so boats must back in so you can get off your boat. Since we have an outboard, we took one of the slips with finger piers but that required running a 100 foot of power cord to an power pedestal.

docked in Labelle

We will stay here until Saturday so we can attend the city Swamp Cabbage festival.

Curt

[kens]

Oh, I assumed you going on around Fl. Past Miami, Ft. Lauderdale, etc.
I know the area of Indiantown Marina, Stuart somewhat well. Shrimpers in Stuart (Manatee pocket) is nice restaurant.
Close to Indiantown is a BBQ beer joint with good smoked & bbq ribs etc. There is good taco wagons near there too.
Lot of native hispanic foods in Indiantown.
If you do some fishing, Peck's Lake Stuart, Fl is good for Spanish Macks this time of year, as is the 'sand pile'

[curtgard]

When I get back home, maybe I should start to work on my next boat building project. Hopefully, it won't be needed for a while. Thanks to Ray Macke for the lettering, maybe other people in the nursing home won't take my walker.

Curt's Dream

Curt

[Hercdrvr]

Curt,
What did you have in mind for your next build?
Matt B

[curtgard]

Matt
I was just joking about the boat walker picture above but on a more serious note, I have looked at the Rebel Tug for a long time. The speed of this boat would be nice for fishing trips or even long weekend overnight trips. I do have enough wood left over from my True Grit build for that boat. The problem is, I am having so much fun now and still have several more years of cruising ahead of me with my True Grit that I may never have time to build another boat.

Curt

[chugalug]

amazing.One want to go smaller than "True Grit".I want to go bigger than Bo-Jest

[curtgard]

We stayed in LaBelle Florida until after lunch on Saturday so we could watch the parade that was part of their Swamp Cabbage festival. The parade was colorful and lots of candy was tossed to the little kids and big kids(Curt). By the time the parade was over, I had enough candy to last me for several months.

Swamp Cabbage Queen

I thought the person riding in this car was Noreen until I read the door sign saying the lady was Miss Florida.

Miss Florida

The parade had several nice floats.

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[curtgard]

The theme for the parade was the roaring 20's so the floats reflected this theme.

moonshine still on float

Back home in Iowa, small town parades have old and new tractors, combines , and other farm equipment but this parade had different types of swamp buggies.

smokey the bear riding a swamp buggy

I assume this is another type swamp buggy but not sure.

con't

[curtgard]

There were several different groups of dancers in their traditional dress of the Seminole Indians and Aztec Indians.

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[curtgard]

More colorful dancers.

Another event at the Swamp Cabbage festival were armadillo races.

armadillo race getting started

inspecting a racing armadillo

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[curtgard]

After watching several races, we hit the food vendors and had buffalo burgers. There were lots of food booths with many selling swamp cabbage fritters. Swamp cabbage is actually the heart from the palmetto or sabal palm tree.

armadillo slowly heading for the finish line

After eating our way through the food vendors, it was time to get back to the boat and head further East on the Okeechobee waterway to Moore Haven. There are lift bridges and swing bridges for roads and railroads that cross the waterway.

railroad lift bridge

After traveling around the South and East side of Lake Okeechobee, we enter the St Lucie canal that will take us to Stuart, where we then will start heading North up the East coast of Florida in the ICW.

tug on land for repairs

con't

[curtgard]

We stop at the docks at St Lucie lock for two nights. Since this is a Army Corp of Engineers location, the dockage is only $15 with my national parks pass.

vulture guarding the lock

The locks on this waterway do not have piping and valves to let the water in and out of the lock chamber. Instead, the lockmaster opens the lock gates slightly to let the water in or out.

letting water into the lock chamber to raise boats up

The locks are only open from 7:00-5:00 so things are real peaceful during the early morning.

early morning at St Lucie lock

con't

[curtgard]

I did see an alligator swimming by the lock but it was too far to get a picture. The docks only have room for eight boats but they were not full. We will move on to our next stop at Vero Beach tomorrow.

docked at St Lucie lock

Curt

[Hercdrvr]

Great update, thanks Curt.
Matt B