Hopetown Harbor

Today we find ourselves in Naples Florida. We drove from Homestead yesterday across Alligator Alley. It's a stretch of road that runs East to West and is as straight as Elvis Presley and flat as Brooke Shields in Blue Lagoon. Nothing but swamps on both sides for as far as you can see.

We checked into this "Resort" and found out how the rich RV'ers live. This is truly a Resort. It has 3 swimming pools, exercise room, tennis courts, boccie ball, putting green and of course the resort favorite, shuffle board. It gets pretty competitive in the morning. We are only 7 miles from the beach but we haven't had a chance to check it out yet. Still running errands during the day. I took the Pickup out to a Goodyear place to get the oil changed today. The guy said it would take about 1 hour to 1 1/2. OK, I'll kill some time and walk around the shops and have lunch. After about 2 hours I went to pick up the truck and noticed that it looked like it hadn't even moved! I went in and the manager was like "It's all ready to go!" I said that it looked like its still in the same spot and the tires don't look like they have been rotated. He started to look for the ticket and several minutes later came out and said that the ticket had fallen out of the box and no one has worked on it yet. Can you believe that crap? Give me the keys and let me get the f#$% out of here! That's how my day has been. I went back to RH and took a nap. Tough day in the office for me.

WATER HAZARD - Hopetown Harbor
Our next destination in the Bahamas took us to Hopetown Harbor. It is the most photographed city in the Abaco's. You'll see why because of the harbor and the lighthouse. This is my favorite island that we visited. The little city is small so it seems you know everyone. The streets are very narrow so you can really only walk or if you take a golf cart you have to go pretty slow to make some of the turns. The houses are all colored differently and overlooking beautiful blue water that I am always talking about. The people are so friendly. They will stop and talk to you and if you're not careful they will tell you their whole life story. The second day, we went off to explore the light house. We found it and climbed the many, many, many stairs to the top. We were rewarded with a view that is hard to describe because of so many amazing sites. Water, boats, harbor, houses, sky...
I decided to be brave and open this little hatch that took you out on a small platform that encircled the top of the light house. To get through you had to literally get on your hands and knees. I got through and as I did my sunglasses fell off and landed on the platform. I had enough time to look at them sitting there until a big gust of wind took them right off the side. I swear I saw some Bahamian walking around with them. We took off on day 3 of Hopetown Harbor and left behind my sunglasses and a little paint from our hull. That is when Reta and I learned the importance of tides. Not a good idea to leave on low tide.
What an amazing place. I took many pictures there and I tried to select the best ones. Enjoy!