I-10

After my road trip post about the I-10 earlier this week I happened to come across this picture today and felt I had to share it. This is how wide and busy the I-10 is where it goes through Houston. What an incredible amount of concrete.....

 

Florida - Find your beach

Lots of posts this week after some radio silence on my side. I always find it especially hard to keep this blog up to date when we have been on holiday as so much happens and we have so many pictures to sort through. So this time I thought I would try to keep up and post as we go. So far so good (although I'm still a few behind).

Here in the States, Corona have a commercial series and the main theme is 'find your beach'. The idea behind it is that anywhere you can relax and enjoy your Corona is your beach. Well, I have found mine!

 

100th Geocache and more!

Haven't had a geocache post in a while but we are still going strong! Today is the day we found our 100th geocache! 'Applausje voor jezelf' we would say in Holland (roughly translated: give yourself a hand).

In geocaching they have added an extra dimension in the form of travel bugs. These are tags with a unique tracking number. They are moved from cache to cache by geocachers and its movements can be tracked online at www.geocaching.com.

We have had two of these tags for nearly a year now with the intention of putting them into our own cache. This however, has not happened yet but we thought it was about time they started their journey. Today was the day, as the 100th geocache seemed like the perfect occasion.

Both Famke and Floortje got one each. For those of you who don't know our girls very well, the pink one is Famke's, the orange one Floortje's.

You should give them a name and Thijs came up with these ones.

Both girls decided they did not want to place their travel bugs in the same cache. So after the toss of a coin Floortje's ended up in the 100th find.

The 101st find was rejected by Famke so hers ended up in the 102nd one.

We can't wait to see where they will go and are every excited about this new dimension to our geocaching adventures! We'll keep you updated.

 

Florida - Footprints

As I was walking along the beach the other day I came along lots of prints. People, dogs, horses, tire tracks, small birds, crabs and probably some others. One of them stood out among the others due to its size....

Pretty big in my opinion!

Further investigation was required here. I had read on the rental website that bald eagles were nesting in the vincinity and on my 'footprint' Google search I also came across the heron as an option.

If any of my ornithologist friends (not sure if I have any but if I do, please make yourself known) can shed a light on this mystery, please let me know.

While on the subject of footprints, I'll throw in a few more :)

No clarification needed here, from left to right: Floortje, Barbara, Famke.

And this one is yours truly ❤️

 

 

Florida - Fishing

Yesterday we were supposed to go on a fishing trip but unfortunately a stomach bug kept Famke and myself housebound for the day.

Floortje and Thijs, however, were determined and headed out to the local tackle and bait shop for a 'starter kit'. The fish shop down the road supplied advice on the best spot to give it a try.

After the first throw and a two minute wait, this was the result! (Floortje sent me the following text from her dad's phone: 'Hallo dit is Floortje papa hat de ersta fis gefagen' - yes, I know we need to work on the Dutch, but she is trying)

Now it was Floortje's turn to give it a try. Looks like a pro to me.

 

And this was the result!

As they had no idea what kind of fish they had caught they released them back into the Gulf. Lucky fish! Today the guy at the bait and tackle store told us they were good sized whiting which are apparently very nice to eat. Oh well, will need to try again. We have a license for three days.

 

 

Florida - Beach house

Arriving at our destination made the trip all worth it. Wow, what a beautiful place! Long, wide, white beaches with hardly a soul on it, lots of shells and even dolphins that swim in the Gulf right in front of the house.

Our view. The walkway leads us right to the beach.

 

Florida - Road trip

This year for Spring Break we decided to take a road trip to Florida to spend some time on the beautiful beaches there.

When planning a trip like this you realize how big this country really is. Driving from Katy to the Florida panhandle is about as far as driving from Amsterdam to the south of France. And then we have only been in five of the fifty states (Texas, Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama and Florida)

The other interesting thing is that you get on to the I-10 highway less than 10 miles from our house, only to get off it more than 600 miles down the road. Incredible!

Interstate 10 (I-10) is the southernmost transcontinental highway in the American Interstate Highway System. It stretches from the Pacific Ocean at State Route 1 (Pacific Coast Highway) in Santa Monica, California to Interstate 95 in Jacksonville, Florida. This freeway is part of the originally planned Interstate Highway network that was laid out in 1956, and its last section was completed in 1990. I-10 is the fourth longest Interstate Highway in the United States, following I-90, I-80, and I-40, with about 1/3 of its length existing in the state of Texas, where the freeway spans the state at its widest breadth. The total length is 2460 miles (nearly 4000 km).

Most Americans think this is just a drive down the road but we decided to do this in two days. We picked the girls up from school a bit early on Friday to beat the Houston traffic and made it to Baton Rouge by around 7.30 at night. The advantage is that we got to stay at the lovely La Quinta Inn with amazing views of the highway we needed to continue our journey on :)