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Published: February 18th 2014
We spent the past week at Cary's house in Boynton Beach. A great big thank you to Cary (and, of course, Doodles, AKA "The Dude") for giving us the opportunity to stay put for awhile and just "chill." It was great to sit outside in the morning with a cup of coffee and listen to the birds sing and know that we had absolutely nothing that we HAD to do. We did go back to Green Cay and the Loxahatchee Wildlife Refuge to walk and enjoy the beautiful weather and the wonderful Florida flora and fauna and we stopped at Bedners Farmstand by Loxahatchee to buy some fruit and vegetables. We cooked in a couple nights and we also went out with Cary and Jeffrey before Jeffrey had to fly back to New York. On one memorable occasion, as we walked out of Benny's restaurant in Boynton Beach, we all commented on the beautiful full moon and I, of course, just had to howl at it which made a woman walking into the restaurant wonder out loud what they put in the food there. :D
Sunday, Feb. 16, we left Cary's after doing one last load of laundry and headed
Green Cay - Boynton Beach
Swimming in the duckweed. Look at those big feet under waternorth toward Jupiter. We stopped for brunch at Lantana Dune Deck café on Lantana Public Beach. It's a very popular place right on the beach and there was a long wait, but it was a beautiful day and the sun was shining and we had no place we had to be, so the wait wasn't bad. When we finally got our table, we still had to wait quite a while for our food which annoyed Jim a bit, but only because we had to put quarters in the parking meter and he didn't want to have to go back out to put more in. As it turned out, we had a wonderful brunch, I had stuffed french toast and a Bellini, and we enjoyed the beautiful view of the beach and watched the birds flying through restaurant. When we got back to the car, we still had 15 minutes on the meter. We had a nice leisurely trip past the fancy homes on A1A and also drove through a not-so-nice neighborhood in Palm Beach where we saw a house surrounded by crime tape...heard on the news that night that there had been a murder in Palm Beach. I wondered if
Green Cay - Boynton Beach
This little guy was mugging for the camera. It's a tri-color heron it was that house we had seen. We got to our hotel, the Best Western Intracoastal in Jupiter, and settled down for an early night.
We've found places to see and visit on our trip in many ways...AAA guide books, Visitor Center recommendations...but lately I've just been googling attractions on the internet. The Boynton Beach and now Jupiter attractions have all come from Trip Advisor online. I've also been writing a lot of reviews of places we've visited on this trip on Trip Advisor. It started with the Museum of Native American History (by-the-way, Trip Advisor sent me an email to tell me that over 500 people have already read my review of that museum). The #1 and #2 best attractions in Jupiter are Busch Wildlife Sanctuary and Riverbend Park so we started out early today and visited them both. We headed first to Riverbend Park where we rented a canoe and enjoyed a wonderful two hours on the Loxahatchee River. You can see from the pictures that it was an absolutely beautiful experience. They gave us a map and the route was well marked, plus the morning was sunny and not too hot. A couple kayakers we met
on the route said they had seen deer on the riverbank, but they must have heard us coming and left. We did see lots of birds, a snake swimming in the river, turtles sunning themselves and I'm pretty sure I saw an alligator. We saw a few other people canoeing and kayaking along the way, but we had the river and lakes pretty much to ourselves, tho we did see a lot more people setting out as we got back to the launch site. I felt pretty good afterwards, we'll see how sore I am tomorrow. :D They have lots of walking and biking trails at Riverbend Park. Maybe we'll rent bikes or hike there tomorrow. We next went to Busch Wildlife Sanctuary. This was a little more crowded, mostly with parents and kids who were off from school today for the Presidents' Day holiday. It's billed as a Wildlife Sanctuary where they take in wounded animals and try to rehabilitate them for life again in the wild, but it seemed more like a zoo to us, and not one of the better zoos we've seen. I didn't really see why it was billed as the #1 attraction in Jupiter.
Riverbend Park - Loxahatchee River
I love how the trees are reflected in the river I liked the park much better. At that point, we were both pretty hungry for lunch so we went to Duke's Lazy Loggerhead Café on Jupiter Beach. It was quite busy so we had to wait a while there, too. The food was fine, I had black bean soup and Jim had a grilled cheese sandwich, but it seemed very pricey for what it was, a rustic looking shack on the beach. We drove around the rest of the day exploring the different parks in Jupiter and checking out some of the real estate around Carlin Park with the idea of renting a place here next winter. We happened to meet a real estate agent named Jean who took our information and what we are looking for and said she'll do some looking for us as well. We tried to go for dinner at the Food Shack, an interesting-looking restaurant near the hotel, but there was an hour wait at 6:00. I guess everyone else in Jupiter thinks it is an interesting restaurant, too. Maybe we'll try going earlier tomorrow night. Rather that finding another restaurant, we went into a nearby Publix and picked up some bread and tuna salad
Riverbend Park - Loxahatchee River
I liked how the trunk of the palm tree is bent over the river and made sandwiches back at the hotel room.
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Daryl
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I've become soooo jealous of your adventure! It's always what I thought I would be doing at this stage. How wonderful for you guys! I just live it through you...we're having such a good time! :)