Tag: Hotels

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Kentucky Packing List

Gear

We took waders and wading boots. It was March and still cold, so we also took sweaters and rain jackets and gloves and knit caps. We took long underwear. We needed the sweaters, and long underwear helps when you wade in cold water, but the gloves (and the mukluks) were a bit of overkill.

I‘ve written already about my new/old bamboo rod. I used a 6-weight, weight-forward floating line with a 9-foot 4X leader, which is meaningful if you fly fish but gibberish if you don’t.

I used a Hardy Duchess reel, which is a newer reel that harkens back to designs from before the last World War, or maybe the one before that. It’s handmade in England, is very pretty, and most of all it looks right with a bamboo rod.

You don’t really use a reel when you fly fish for freshwater fish. To bring the fish in you just pull in the line by hand and let it pile up at your feet, so honestly the reel has a lot in common with ear rings or the color of a car’s paint job. It’s meaningful but not essential. That means that for no rational reason your reel needs to be as pretty as possible. The Hardy is very pretty.

I caught my wee trout on a dry-dropper rig, a dry fly floating on the surface so that I could see it and a trailing nymph underwater. The dry fly was a #14 Royal Wulff, which seems to be my go-to dry these days, and the nymph was a random #14 pheasant tail mayfly nymph that caught my eye when I poked through my fly box. I watched the dry fly so that when it went under, I knew the fish had taken the nymph.

Whiskey

By law, when you go to Kentucky, you are statutorily required to visit at least one whiskey distillery for each day you’re in the state. Kentucky makes it convenient by locating a distillery every 37 feet. We were in Kentucky three days and met the statutory minimum for distillery visits.

What is or is not bourbon is defined by statute. It must be corn-based, and it has to meet certain standards during distilling and aging. Whiskey taxes were a significant source of revenue for the federal government in the 19th century, and 1897 laws regulating bourbon pre-dated the 1906 Pure Food and Drug Act. By 1900 if you were buying bonded bourbon, you were buying something that didn’t contain lead, or wood alcohol, or any number of other things that shouldn’t be in the bottle. Not that it was good for you, it just wasn’t as bad as it might be.

Other than being American, bourbon doesn’t come from a particular place. It doesn’t have to be made in Kentucky. There are bourbon distilleries located in places like Indiana and Ohio and Texas, but Indiana bourbon just doesn’t trip off the tongue. When one thinks of bourbon, one thinks of Kentucky.

KyBourbonTrail.com

There is a side-note here, about water. A waitress in Southern Kentucky apologized to us for Kentucky’s lousy drinking water. I’m guessing that she was saying that her local water was poor quality, but the area where bourbon historically comes from, the area of North-Central Kentucky west of the Appalachians, actually has great water. That’s one of the reasons that bourbon is made in Kentucky. Well, great water and corn. Well great water and corn and money.

When we fished the Driftless in the Midwest I learned that what makes the Driftless special is its karst topology. Karst is characterized by relatively porous sandstone, dolomite, and limestone lying close to the surface and from time to time poking through. In Kentucky, the rock is mostly limestone. Water that seeps underground fractures the rock–Kentucky’s caves, including Mammoth Cave, are the products of fractured and hollowed limestone. Water literally runs through the fractures and seeps through the pores, and the pressure from rain forces clean and mineralized water out at springs. There are springs everywhere. For fly fishers, it’s one of the best things going. The resulting spring creeks, clean and enriched, support plenty of bug life, which in climes further north support trout and should support smallmouth in Kentucky. It’s also one of the best things going for whiskey.

Kentucky Geological Survey, Karst Topology of Kentucky. The dark blue is the heaviest karst areas, the light blue less so.

Over the course of a couple of days with an additional day fishing, we toured the Buffalo Trace, Makers Mark, and Woodford Reserve distilleries. At Woodford Reserve, the tour guide distilled (get it? get it?) whiskey making for us: whiskey making is making beer and then distilling the beer to clean out the mess and concentrate the alcohol. It’s not, he told us, very good beer, but I guess bad beer makes pretty good whiskey. To be bourbon, it has to be at least 50% corn-based and and the distilled beer must be barrel-aged in new oak barrels. There’s no minimum time for aging, but the longer it ages, the better it should be, but the longer it ages the more loss there is from evaporation, the longer it has to be stored, and the more expensive it all becomes.

There are few things that smell better than a warehouse full of aging bourbon in oak barrels.

Where We Stayed

We stayed in the 21C Hotel in Louisville. It’s the third time we’ve stayed in a 21C. The other times were in Bentonville, Arkansas, and in Kansas City. They’re a bit pricey, but they are unbelievably friendly to pets, have interesting art everywhere, and lurking red plastic 4-foot penguins that you can move around in the hallways to disturb your neighbors. The first of the 21C Hotels were in Lexington and Louisville.

Louisville is not a rich city. Kentucky is a poor state generally, and I guess it always has been. After all, Daddy sold a hog each fall to buy us kids shoes. On the flip side, there’s a lot of wealth–just drive down a horse-farm back road. Those splits, poverty/wealth, whiskey/conservative Protestants, urban/country, they all seem harder in Kentucky than in other places, at least harder than I’m used to. Kris thinks I’m making it up. She thought Louisville was great.

Where We Didn’t Go

I never made it to the Louisville Slugger Museum. It was two blocks from our hotel, and I never made it.

We never made it down by the Green River where Paradise lay. We never saw Appalachia from the Kentucky side (we’ve been to West Virginia, Tennessee, North Carolina, and Pennsylvania), or Mammoth Cave.

Restaurants

I wouldn’t write home about the donuts or the barbecue, but Louisville has pretty good restaurants. We ate at the hotel one night, at Proof on Main, and the next night at a very good interior Mexican food restaurant, Maya Cafe. The last night we ate at at Everyday Kitchen, and to my eye its menu had a lot of East European food. East European food is to me mighty exotic, it’s just not something I’ve seen very much of, and at the same time it’s completely comprehensible, like Mom’s home cooking. My brushes with East European food in Milwaukee and Chicago and Louisville may be one of the things I like most about the Old Northwest.

I had stuffed cabbage.

The most remarkable thing about the restaurants in Louisville was the amount of whiskey on the menus. There were moderately priced whiskeys by the barrel, and expensive whiskeys that made fly reels look cheap. There were pages of whiskeys, regiments of whiskeys, whiskeys waiting in the wings just to get on stage. I didn’t know there were that many whiskeys in the world.

Mind, that picture only starts with the letter “O”. There were 13 letters of the alphabet preceding. Those aren’t bottle prices either.

Route

Going out we drove from Houston to Nashville; coming home we left early and drove straight through. There are more eighteen-wheelers on the road from Little Rock to Memphis than there are distilleries in Kentucky. If I ever drive to Kentucky again, I’ll drive through Louisiana.

Music

What a lot of music there is from Kentucky. There’s not a lot of jazz; Les McCann and, if you stretch it as to the jazz, Rosemary Clooney. There is a lot of bluegrass and country. Besides Loretta Lynn, there’s the Monroe Brothers, Tom T. Hall, Crystal Gayle, The Judds, Rickey Skaggs, Merle Travis, and Dwight Yoakum. “Don’t It Make My Brown Eyes Blue” isn’t nearly as bad as I remember it.

I looked forward to Sturgill Simpson and My Morning Jacket coming up on the playlist. Simpson put out Metamodern Sounds in Country Music in 2014, and a A Sailor’s Guide to Earth in 2016, and both albums astonish me, as much for the lyrics as the music. “Turtles all the Way Down” is a country song about Jesus, or Buddha, or LSD, or the turtle that holds up the world. Or something.

My Morning Jacket always satisfies.

Main Street, Paradise Kentucky, 1898. From Wikipedia.

And then there are the 37 versions of John Prine’s “Paradise.” John Fogarty, Johnny Cash, John Prine, Tom T. Hall, Dwight Yoakum, Jackie DeShannon, John Denver, Roy Acuff, Tim O’Brien . . . And Sturgill Simpson. Everybody’s recorded “Paradise.” I think if you are from Kentucky, you have to record a cover of “Paradise” before you’re allowed to open a distillery.

Guitar

I took the Kohno, and played a good bit. I’ve been working on the first movement of Bach’s 4th Lute Suite, but I can never get much past page 2, and it’s a lot longer than two pages. I’ve also been working on songs I once knew but don’t know any more–an arrangement of Summertime, some Tarrega, some Sanz, and a transcription of Albeniz’s Cadiz. That’s gone a lot better.

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Hawaii Packing List, Part Elua

We went to Hawaii two years ago and didn’t catch a fish, so this is my second Hawaiian packing list. This trip was different enough that it’s worth the effort.

Gear

We took 9 weight rods again, with big Orvis and Tibor saltwater reels. This is heavy-weight stuff–we normally use 8 weights (which are considered heavy); this was heavier, but when the first bonefish ran I was scared that the 9-weights were too light. They weren’t, but I wouldn’t have minded a 10-weight.

In addition to the bonefish, I saw three giant trevally, and with only the 9-weight, I was kinda glad they ignored my flies. The 9-weight really isn’t enough for giant trevally.

Our flies were weighted–they weren’t just a hook and fur and feathers. They had barbell eyes so that the flies sank as soon as they hit the water. Barbell eyes are also a spur to better casting, because they hurt more when you blow it and the fly whacks the back of the head. The first day I fished with weighted EP mantis shrimp. I lost both heavy shrimp flies I’d brought, and the second day fished with a similar fly donated by our guide, Joe Kalima.

EP mantis shrimp

Joe wanted us to use 30 pound leaders to tie the fly to the line, which is crazy heavy, but maybe he wanted the heavy line because it’s harder to lose in the coral. Because of leader breaks I lost enough fish the first day that the second I used one of his. On Kauai we went back to 16 pounds.

The Molokai Ferry

There used to be an inter-island ferry from Maui to Moloka’i, but it seems to have shut down in 2016 (though there’s still a website). Now you have to take a plane or drive, and driving between islands really doesn’t work that well.

There’s something about flying on a pond hopper that makes every adventure better, even if the flight itself isn’t really adventurous. It sure feels adventurous when I walk across the tarmac to that bit of a plane. When I get on a pond hopper, I know I’m heading someplace out of my ken.

Traveling between three islands we took a lot of planes, so I likely raised the earth’s temperature a couple of degrees. Sorry. We flew to Honolulu on Delta, took the Mokulele Airlines flight to Moloka’i the next morning, flew back from Moloka’i to Honolulu a few days later, and then immediately flew Southwest from Honolulu to Kaua’i. We flew back to Houston direct from Kaua’i. The only flight we couldn’t cover with mileage points was the flight on Mokulele Airlines, and it wasn’t cheap, maybe $300 by the time we paid added luggage fees. That’s about $10 per minute for the flight.

There was no in-flight meal, but there was a black lab puppy.

Hotels

We spent the first night in Honolulu at the Equus Hotel. On our trip to Honolulu two years ago, we rented an AirBnB for three nights, and spent our last night in a dank dark motel near the airport. I wouldn’t stay near the airport again. The Equus is a bit off of the Waikiki strip, and it’s a $40 cab ride from the airport, but it’s also well priced (for Honolulu). Our room was small and the hotel needs another elevator, but I’d stay there again.

Because we had to fly out early the next morning, we paid the extra $15 per person for the hotel breakfast. I assumed it would be the typical hotel buffet, but instead the Hungarian barmaid at the Paniolo Grill made us bagels and lox. It was lovely, and she gave us her recipe for pickled red onions.

On Molokai, we stayed at the Hotel Molokai. There wasn’t any real choice for hotels on the island, and I’d guess the Hotel Molokai was built in the 60s. The rooms are scattered about the grounds in separate clusters, which gives it a nice open feel. The rooms and grounds are well-maintained, the staff was helpful, and the island’s best restaurant and bar are at the hotel. Internet service kinda sucks, but every room comes with its own rooster.

North Kauai seems to specialize in family condo vacations near a golf course. We stayed at The Westin Princeville Ocean Resort Villas. It was fine, and on a beautiful part of the island, but there were no chickens.

Food

On Kauai, we went to a luau. Tourist luaus are commoditized Hawaiian traditions, but how do you go to Hawaii without sooner or later going to a luau? The mai tais were good, there was a pineapple appetizer, and the poi was surprisingly purple. The music and dancing reminded me of a Ballet Folklorico, or that evening in Spain when we went to see flamenco, or in Lisbon when we went to see fado. The performers took pains to educate the audience, and there was a Tahitian fire dancer. I think it’s Hawaiian law that you can’t have a luau without a Tahitian fire dancer.

On Moloka’i, we ate dinner every night at Hiro’s Ohani Grill at the Hotel Moloka’i. Just like the hotel choices, there aren’t a lot of restaurant choices on Molokai, and the grill had excellent poke, the bar had martinis, and the tables were on a veranda that overlooked the Pacific. There were table cloths. The last night the sun was setting and I thought, “they’ve done a really good job copying a tropical bar,” and then realized it was a tropical bar.

There is a national park on Moloka’i, Kalaupapa National Historical Park. Beginning in the 1860s, about 8,000 Hawaiian lepers were exiled to the Kalaupapa Peninsula. It was an active leper colony until sulfa drugs were available to control leprosy, and there’s still a remnant resident population. Ironically, the peninsula is currently closed to tourists because of Covid. There’s an overlook though, on the cliffs a couple of thousand feet above the peninsula, and on the walk back we talked to a lovely woman who had retired to Molokai from Eugene, Oregon. She was originally from Lake Charles, Louisiana, about 90 miles from Houston. I told her that I had tried the saimin–the Hawaiian version of Japanese noodle soup–at the Ohani Grill, and that it was bland and that I had to ask for hot sauce. The Louisianan in her came to the fore and she said that a lot of Hawaiian food needs hot sauce. She was pretty much right.

When we were planning, I found an internet post on where to eat in Hawaii, and on Kaua’i we followed its recommendations. We ate at Hamura Saimin, which is a working folks soup joint in a warehouse district. It was better saimin than on Moloka’i, and there was sriracha on the table. There weren’t any table cloths though.

The luau was at the Tahiti Nui, a restaurant and bar in Princeville near where we stayed at the Westin Villas. Our first night on Kauai we also ate there, when there was no luau and it was only open as a restaurant. Like the Ohani Grill on Moloka’i, the Tahiti Nui did a good job mimicking a tropical bar by being one, and to celebrate its authenticity we drank mai tais. They didn’t have little umbrellas.

Where We Didn’t Go.

We fished on Moloka’i’s coral reef, but didn’t snorkle. We never saw Moloka’i’s southern beaches, and we couldn’t go to the the Kalaupapa Peninsula. I would like to, and I’d like to visit the Catholic chapel dedicated to Saint Damien of Moloka’i. Damien was a saint in anybody’s book, and I should have stopped at the chapel, at least to pay my respects.

We didn’t visit Mau’i, or the Big Island, or The Four Seasons Resort on Lana’i (though at $1500 a night, it’s out of my price range).

We haven’t eaten at Helena’s or Ahi Assassin in Honolulu. I keep missing Helena’s, and I suspect it’s a real failure on my part.

Covid

You can’t travel to Hawaii without parsing through its Covid regulations. Unless you plan on a 14-day quarantine, you can’t enter the state from the mainland without either proof of vaccination or a negative test within two days of entry. Those are the liberalized rules as of November. Before November there was no entry, vaccinated or unvaccinated, without a negative test. Before testing, the state effectively shut down outside travel. Testing requirements are still in effect for foreign travelers, but those are federal rules for foreign entry to any state.

You can’t enter buildings in Hawaii without a mask, and most people are wearing masks on the street. The grocery store on Moloka’i would only allow one family member inside at a time. Kris guessed that was enforceable because everyone knows everyone else’s family on Moloka’i.

Meanwhile every place was packed. The plane from Houston to LA was packed. The LA airport was packed. The plane from LA to Honolulu was packed. The plane from Honolulu to Molokai was packed (though since it only carried 12 of us, that’s relative). Restaurants were packed. Given the spike in infections, it was nuts. Everybody should have cleared out for us.

You can’t travel in crowds without exposure, and I’m sure we were exposed. We tested negative before we left and we tested negative when we got home. We’re vaccinated, boosted, and we wore masks, but we were lucky.

Once you’re in Hawaii, you can fly from island to island without additional documentation. Returning to the mainland doesn’t require documentation either.

Music

A lot of stuff in Hawaii has to be imported: most of the food, building materials, cars, gasoline, tourists . . . For that matter most residents are imported.

Music is an exception, and Hawaiian music is everywhere, all the time. When you unload from your arrival plane, there’s Hawaiian music playing in the airport. When you get to your departure gate there’s Hawaiian music playing in the airport. At restaurants there will be Hawaiian musicians, really good musicians. When we got into our rental car in Moloka’i, the radio was tuned to a Hawaiian music station.

Michael Keale, Tahiti Nui

If you think about what Hawaiians gave us musically, the steel-stringed guitar, the ukulele, the slack-key guitar . . . If you think about their lovely vocals and gracious melodies . . . Ok, ok, it can get cloying after a while, but then I find Jimi Hendrix cloying. I’m fairly easily cloyed.

But any guitarist has to be fascinated by Hawaiian slack-key guitar tunings. Ry Cooder is the most famous mainland student of slack-key, and Gabby Pahinui and Keola Beamer are famous Hawaiian players. Meanwhile I found this YouTube recording of Chet Atkins playing slack-key, and making it sound a good bit like Delta Country Blues, which is a pretty peculiar bit of cultural fusion. It’s great stuff, but it would have been perfect if he’d been playing a sitar.

Guitar

I took my old Kohno, and sat on the veranda at the Hotel Molokai and played to the chickens. I don’t remember what I played, but it wasn’t Hawaiian. The chickens didn’t seem to mind.

William Brigham photographer, 1889, Saint Damian of Moloka’i, shortly before his death.
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New Mexico/Colorado Packing List

Gear

On Latir Creek in New Mexico we fished 8.5 foot 3 weight rods. On the Cimarron, I stuck with the 3 weight and Kris switched to a 4 weight. On both streams we fished 7.5 foot leaders with a 5x tippet. I wet waded the Latir, Kris wore waders. We both wore waders and boots on the Cimarron.

Wading staffs are always helpful.

In Colorado, we used 9 foot 5 weights, which have just a bit more punch. There weren’t any overhanging trees, and the stream and the fish were larger. Leaders were 9 foot 5x.

I dug out a 30-year-old vest to take to New Mexico because I thought I’d be carrying lots of stuff. I’m not sure why I ever quit using it in the first place. It holds lots of stuff.

Where we stayed

The first day we drove from Houston to Tucumcari, which has a great selection of Route 66 motels from the 50s and 60s. We stayed at the Roadrunner Lodge because they advertised as pet-friendly, and they were. It’s a great place to stay with dogs. In Taos we stayed at an AirBNB, and it was outstanding. It had a kitchen and we cooked a lot of green chile sauce.

Where we ate

During the past year, I seem to have migrated to spicier food. Maybe it’s age and declining taste buds, maybe it’s Covid boredom, but a trip to New Mexico seemed timely. I vowed that on this trip I would learn to like green chile sauce–in New Mexico you’re supposed to choose green sauce or red, and in the past I always chose red, under (the mistaken) impression that green was hotter. Here’s what I ate:

  • Green chile sauce cheese enchiladas at the Pow Wow in Tucumcari.
  • Green chile sauce huevos rancheros at Kix on 66 in Tucumcari.
  • Green chile cheeseburger at Santa Fe Bites in Santa Fe.
  • Green chile sauce chile relleno at Rancho de Chimayo in Chimayo.
  • Green chile cheeseburger at the Abiquiu Inn in Abiquiu.
  • Green chile sauce chile relleno at La Cueva in Taos.
  • Green Chile cheeseburger at the Blake’s Lottaburger in Tucumcari. On the way out of town. Just in case.

Plus I had ordered a copy of the Rancho de Chimayo cookbook, and we made two batches of green chile sauce at our AirBnB, one vegan and one con carne. I made green chile cheeseburgers one night and enchiladas another, plus huevos rancheros a couple of mornings. Kris made posole with green chile sauce one night.

I love green chile sauce. The Rancho de Chimayo cookbook has both a vegan and con carne recipe. Both are great. Here’s the Ranco de Chimayo vegan recipe, more or less:

  • 4 C vegetable broth
  • 2 C chopped roasted mild to medium New Mexican green chile. I bought a tub of frozen, and didn’t bother thawing.
  • 2 chopped tomatoes. Or a can of chopped tomatoes would work.
  • 1 T minced onion
  • 1 t garlic salt
  • 2 T cornstarch dissolved in 2 T water

Combine everything but the cornstarch in a large saucepan and bring to a boil for 15 minutes. Add the cornstarch slurry. Reduce to a simmer and cook for about 15 minutes more.

It goes with everything, though I didn’t try any green chile sauce donuts. The con carne sauce basically adds a quarter pound of browned ground beef to the vegan recipe.

Donuts.

Rebel Donut in Albuquerque is decidedly on the “I-learned-my-skills-in-Portland” ledger of the donut world. My son explained that the Blue Sky donut with the blue rock candy is an homage to Breaking Bad, which was filmed in Albuquerque, so civic pride! The strawberry/chocolate donut is high on my list of not-to-be-missed donuts. It’s a great place.

I asked at the counter if they’d fill my thermos with coffee, and it kind of shook them. I asked if they’d sell me the number of large coffees it would take to fill my thermos, and they smiled. They filled my thermos and charged me for three large coffees. I think there were actually four. Friendly folk.

Where we didn’t go.

There are so many things I’ve seen in New Mexico, and so many I haven’t. I hope I get to go again.

We didn’t go south to fish for Gila trout, one of the smallest and most fragile of North American trout populations. Probably best to leave them alone. Still . . .

In Taos, we didn’t visit the Taos Pueblo. I wanted to. I haven’t been since I was a child. The reservation is closed because of Covid. We also didn’t re-visit the Millicent Rogers Museum, or stop at Georgia O’Keefe’s home in Abiquiu. Next time.

Books

I listened to most of the mystery novels by Tony Hillerman, and his daughter Anne Hilleman. I’d read the Tony Hillerman novels before, years ago, and they hold up well.

Hampton Sides’ biography of Kit Carson, Blood and Thunder, is outstanding. All the problems and glories of westward expansion are focused in Kit Carson’s life, and he really was extraordinary.

I re-read Death Comes for the Archbishop. There’s even a vignette about green chile sauce. And Kit Carson.

Playlist

Our Colorado playlist consisted of Rocky Mountain High. Like I said, there wasn’t a lot of preparation for our trip to Colorado.

Our New Mexico playlist was also pretty short. The Shins are from Albuquerque, and I included Michael Martin Murphy because, even if he’s from Dallas, he’s connected in my mind to Red River. The folksinger Anna Egge grew up in a commune near Taos, presumably populated by the kind of near-nuff Buddhists who open their hook gaps. I downloaded a bunch of what I would call Norteño music off of a New Mexico playlist. There’s supposed to be a difference between New Mexico Hispano Norteño and Tejano Norteño, but I’m not that subtle.

We tried to listen to Aaron Copeland’s Billy the Kid, but frankly IMusic sucks and it kept playing the Gun Battle over and over and over.

Around Tucumcari–I really liked Tucumcari–we started listening to (Get Your Kicks on) Route 66. There must be 37 covers, including versions by The Rolling Stones, Chuck Berry, Manhattan Transfer, and Nat King Cole. Then we started listing to versions of Willin‘. Just to be clear, the lyrics to Willin’, which goes from Tucson to Tucumcari, are not “just give me wheat, rice, and wine.” Kris was right, even if she did laugh at me 38 years ago.

I don’t care. “Wheat, rice, and wine” is altogether better than “weed, whites and wine.” That lyric doesn’t even include the Oxford comma.

Guitar

I took the Kohno, and played transcriptions of lute music by John Dowland. I got a new sticker for my guitar case.

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More Florida Playlist

Gear

We took five rods. We took my 7 weight G. Loomis Asquith with a Tibor Everglades reel and a bonefish line. When we weren’t fishing for big tarpon that’s the only rod we used in the Everglades. It’s a little known fact, but Lord Asquith was the commander of the British forces in Florida during the Revolutionary War, and made a pile selling swampland to British loyalists escaping from New York and New England.

We also took Kris’s 8-weight Helios 3 with an Orvis Hydros reel, a 10-weight Helios 2 with a Tibor Riptide reel, and a 11-weight Helios 2 with an Orvis Mirage reel. All of them had floating lines. In the Everglades we used the guide’s 11-weight H3 because we needed an intermediate line and because H3. We used the guide’s 10-weight H3 out of Key Largo because the guide didn’t like my leader and because H3. My leader was tied with lots of bits and pieces of fluorocarbon and his was a simple 40-20-40 or thereabouts.

It rained out of Key Largo, so our rain gear came in handy. I wore my Converse high tops. Kris kept wanting me to go barefoot so I’d feel the line under my feet, but I never did. Together with my blue sun gloves, blue Buff, blue cap, and blue eyes I was very color-coordinated, and going barefoot would have ruined the whole ensemble.

Unfortunately my boat bag was orange. I need to work on that.

We also took Kris’s 5-weight Helios 3 for the Miami canals. More on that later.

Flies

We only used a few. For the bonefish it was a lead-eyed root beer crazy charlie, probably size 8 or 10. The tarpon fly we used was a black toad, not very big, only a couple of inches long, tied on the the usual sized hook for tarpon, 1/0 or 2/0. For the smaller fish and the baby tarpon we switched to an orange and white baitfish pattern, size 4 maybe. it wasn’t a fly I knew, but any clouser variant or baitfish pattern would probably have done. These were all guides’ flies.

The Canals

I wanted to fish Florida canals on our first trip to Florida, but we didn’t have the time, or at least the energy. This time we did, but only for an hour because of a luggage snafu. ProTip: Don’t try to late-check a bag of food and expect TSA to get it onto your plane, and if you do be ready for the recriminations of the lady at the Southwest baggage claim who feels wronged because you late-checked luggage. Also, buy the Coke Zero when you get there. When one explodes in the plane and mixes with the instant oatmeal it’s a real mess, even when you bag is waterproof. Maybe especially when your bag is waterproof.

At the canal it was too windy for Kris’s 5-weight, and it was hot. We were fishing on the side of the road in a warehouse district. It wasn’t a transcendent outdoors experience.

Hotels

We had great luck with hotels. We stayed at The National in the heart of Miami Beach. The National was built in the 50s, and is immaculate. I wanted to spend the weekend floating by the poolside bar and drinking mai tais, and if I’d done it the other guests could have gone home and told their friends that in Florida they’d seen the Great White Manatee.

In Key Largo we stayed at Popp’s Motel. There are nine cottages with a beach. There are palm trees and hammocks. Nobody was there but us, though in-season my guess is it’s packed.

Restaurants

On the way out of the Everglades we stopped at Robert is Here in Florida City. I had the mango and strawberry milkshake, Kris had the blackberry. There is a low-rent zoo in the back where you can sit at picnic tables and watch tortoises and goats and the other customers while you drink your milkshake. There are parrots and motorcyclists with tattoos and The Great White Manatee. It’s a fine place.

In Miami we went to Joe’s Stone Crab for lunch. I had expected something close to Felix’s Oyster Bar in New Orleans, something with a formica counter and twirly stools. Instead it was white table cloths and waiters in tuxedoes. A waiter who spoke tourist gave great guidance, and there was crabmeat and key lime pie. The waiter had a good Houston story about being stuck in Houston during Hurricane Harvey, and volunteering at the George R. Brown shelter.

The guy behind us had stories too, and he announced them with unflinching gusto. Here are his stories.

  • He was raised right here in Miami, and every time he came home he came to Joe’s, and he especially wanted to bring her to Joe’s.
  • He loved her, and that story she told about her parents was funny, and her family must think he was robbing the cradle.
  • Don’t worry about how much food he was ordering, because he could eat it all. Gusto!
  • People come for the crabs, but really it was the coconut shrimp that he loved.
  • These weren’t local crabs. These were west coast crabs. He could tell, he was raised here.
  • She would love the key lime pie.
  • Ok, she hadn’t loved the key lime pie. They’d order the chocolate cake.
  • She was so funny. He loved her.
  • He loved her.

My back was to them, but while it was impossible to see I could hear him fine, more than fine, more than I wanted. Whether or not raised in Miami his accent was Jersey, and she was 25 (or at least he said she was 25) and her accent Asian. She didn’t talk much.

When we left I got my only glimpse of them. He was closer to 60 than 25, a bit rotund, a bit worn, a bit sagging. If he’d been a fish he would have been a gizzard shad. She was nondescript. She could have been 25 or 30 or 40, a bit rotund as well, and not glamorous, nor seemingly striving for more glamour than any of us might seek. Was she Korean? Vietnamese? How did these two meet? Online? Was there some sort of matchmaker? Would things end well? I wished them well if well was in the cards, but I guess didn’t really think it was.

That evening we went to The Surf Club at the Four Season’s Hotel. The blurb promised nostalgic cuisine and the Thomas Keller touch. That sounded fun, expensive what with Thomas Keller touching our bank account, but fun. And nostalgic cuisine! 50s-60s cuisine! It sounded just right for Miami.

Here is what I learned: you can’t high concept authenticity. You can high concept all you want, and if the concept is good it will travel, but if a restaurant is concept and the concept is authenticity (and that’s really what you’re at when you’re grabbing nostalgia), well, you can’t Make America Great Again. It doesn’t matter how good the service, how finely sourced the beef, how excellent the dang-that’s-really-expensive wine list, a $46 soft boiled egg is still a soft boiled egg, even if it comes with caviar and a buckwheat blini.

I was dressed in my finest fishing wear, including my bright blue Converse high tops, so I didn’t exactly fit the space, but I figured nothing said 1960 like Converse high tops. Kris told me not to get the oysters Rockefeller, but I’m a sucker for roasted oysters. It never works out though. Except for the Oysters Gilhooley at San Leon’s Gilhooley’s (cash only, you can smoke at the bar, and be sure and stop and admire the Harleys out front) I’m always disappointed. The oysters were surprisingly fine, still plump and fresh, but how do you make bread crumbs bitter? Were they scorched? And why ruin an oyster with a slather of spinach? I ate the oysters anyway, just so Kris wouldn’t know she was right. They needed some hot sauce, but so did much of the 50s.

Kris didn’t do more than taste her lamb chops and said they were over-salted and overdone. They took them off the bill. Great service, and the crudite and martinis were magnificent. They cook magnificent crudite. My steak was a steak. It was a bit over salted in pockets, but I didn’t tell Kris.

Just like lunch there was an old man with a much younger woman, and this old man was frightening–if he wasn’t Miami mafioso he had missed his calling–while Kris was certain that any woman that tall and with arms that thin was a young man in drag. She was so coiffed and painted that you couldn’t tell what she’d begun as, male, female, beautiful, plain.

She had a mass of frosted hair over a dark underlayer–there were a lot of women in the room with a mass of frosted hair over a dark underlayer, and there was a magnificence in the complexity of it. How did they do that? In more innocent places you’d just guess their roots were showing, but this was so planned, so well-executed, and so universal that it could be nothing but premeditated. Did they dye their hair dark, then dye it again light? It had to take hours, did it take days? I wondered why Kris didn’t do the same, but she’d have to add more hair to get the effect. I like her hair just fine.

I don’t think she was a young man in drag, but I didn’t ask. When I was leaving the maitre d’ asked if I’d enjoyed my golf. Our kind of place.

South in Key Largo we ate at The Fish House. Its concept was to throw fishy looking bibelots on the wall and serve the same menu they served last year and the year before and the year before that, with whatever fish was fresh that day. The couples at the tables next to us got into a heated argument about the President until one stormed out. My nose was so far into my plate that I couldn’t tell who took which side, but the remaining couple, the couple immediately to our right, lived in Manhattan on the Upper West Side, and guessed from our intro that we’d dined with Thomas Keller the night before. They were younger than us, but not by much, and said that they’d had dinner the night before at the Trump Doral, the one that had made all the headlines for the G7 conference, and that there had been a woman in a sequined Make America Great Again dress that wasn’t meant to be ironic.

At the fish house the oysters were from Texas, just like us. There was no slather of spinach. On our way out of the Keys the next day we stopped again for a second lunch.

Our final night in Fort Lauderdale we found a red-sauce Italian place, Il Mulino, and ate comfort food. We didn’t talk to anybody. We didn’t watch anybody or overhear any conversations. We split a pair of Apple Airpods and streamed the Astros beating the Nationals in World Series game 4 through Kris’s phone. Those were more innocent times.

Donuts

No donuts. We didn’t eat a single donut.

Playlist

I’ve covered my Florida playlist before, and there’s nothing more to be said except this time I liked it. I liked Mel Tillis. I liked the Adderly Brothers and Ray Charles and Arturo Sandoval and John Vanderslice. Not a single Jimmy Buffet song cycled through, and I liked that. I’ve made my peace with Florida. I’ve caught my Florida fish.