A Great Week

The weeks events started on Tuesday with the Venture Out Boat Club's fishing tournament.  I was able to go out with Blane and compete in my very first fishing competition.  What a day it was.  We came home with 27 fish.  The days catch included two Cerro Mackeral which won 1st and 2nd place in that category.  Wow!  It was great.

Wednesday brought a visit from a great friend and his wife.  John Jelinek has been a friend on mine since our days in high school.  Now that's a long time ago, for sure, and yet there are times when it seems like yesterday.  What great times we had remembering the  events and conquests of so long ago.  Yes, we still can remember that far back.  Mary even said that we are like two peas in a pod.

John and his lovely wife Mary came for a short power packed three day visit.  They arrived here on Wednesday just as I arrived home from a day out fishing.  It was a great welcoming.  We caught 20 yellow tail snapper and Jon's eyes got bright at the prospect of him being able to go out and catch some himself.  The rest of the night was spent getting settled, planning the three day visit and attending the boating club's dinner.  He and I bought some 50 /50 raffle tickets with the hopes of hitting it big.  Low and behold we did win the 1st place pot.  With our winnings, we decided that we'd stimulate the local economy the next day during our tour of Key West.  Nothing like a free days outing.

So Thursday was spent seeing the sites of Key West.  There were some places that Mary wanted to definitely see.  First there was lunch and Sloppy Joe's Bar.  As usual, the food was really good and the music and crowd lots of fun.



The second stop was Hemingway's House for a tour.  That entailed a great 10 block walk which helped get rid of a little of the lunch.  The tour of the house was a fantastic literary history lesson.  They even have the famous 6 toed cats.  They are currently numbered at 42 free roaming cats. That man sure lived life to the fullest but had a tragic ending for sure.

From there is was an 8 block walk back to the famous, yes you guessed it, Matheson's for the frozen chocolate covered Key Lime Pie on a stick.  Mary and I had ice cream and Rose shared some of mine.  John ate the pie with gusto.  We also had to stop for our picture at Mile Marker 0.

It was then time for a walk through the shopping area and then on to Jimmy Buffet's Margaritaville Cafe.  Crazy busy with the cruise ship being in port.  Then again this is a tourist party town and everyone is here for the winter time.

Now it was time to start heading to Alonzo's on the wharf for the tarpon feeding at 5 PM.  Today was a little different though.  The tarpon were there but so were a mass of pelicans.  It was a fight for the food and for the most part the pelicans won.  So much for seeing the ferocity of the tarpon.

I said it was time for our feeding at Alonzo's also.  They have a great deal on their menu each day.  All of their appetizers are 1/2 price along with ALL the drinks from the bar from 4 PM till 6:30 PM and we were here at 5:10 PM.  We wound up having more food on the table than we could eat.  Oh well, that just means leftovers.  We ended the day spending just a little over our winnings of the previous night.

Then there was Friday, a day for the women and a day for the guys.  Mary and Rose started with Yoga and then time at the pool catching the warmth or the sun's rays.  It was a great day for just being quite and sharing good time together.

Tim & John joined Virgil on his boat for a day trying to bring home dinner.  Well, they sure did bring dinner home.  After about 6 hours, they came back with 29 Yellow Tail Snapper and 2 Grunts.  That turned out to be about 10#'s of fish fillets.  Virgil & Jo joined us for a great supper of fish, biscuits, steamed vegetables, salad and ice cream for dessert.  What a bountiful feast it was.

As far as the fishing went, John turned out to be the winner of the day by catching the most fish.  It was really a lot of fun seeing the look on his face as he pulled in the first three fish before anyone else caught anything.  What a fantastic time with great friends.

Saturday morning came way too quick for us.  Rose and I had our work cut out for us as we volunteer to serve at the pancake breakfast every other week and this was our day to help out.  John & Mary slept in and then joined us for breakfast before coming back to pack up for their trip back to Ft Meyers to catch their plane to the cold up north.  It was a sad time for us all.  However we are so fortunate to have been able to share this precious time with John & Mary.  We thank them both from the bottom of our hearts.