Florida Seafood Festival

We planned a lunch trip to X01 Everglades City for Saturday. Weather was 200-400 overcast and raining. Decided to put it off until Sunday.

Sunday weather was severe clear


Our three ship left from KSFB Sanford Florida and headed South to meet up with Carl from Zephyrhills. As we got South we ran into the front that had moved through.


X01 was still IFR so we had to find a quick alternate. We decided on LAL since they have a nice restaurant.
KLAL Lakeland was reporting 15sm. That is the first time I have heard that in Florida for as long as I can remember.


Good day.

DR flight! 11 minutes takeoff to landing!

Mark, You must have gone early on Saturday, by 11am it looked like this




This guy made a special amount of food for Vlad!



I was able to make the flight non-stop since there were no headwinds

Mark, John you guys are fattening there. Here in deep North my food is still swimming under me, not caught yet. Runway is short, narrow and plowed wavy to keep Piper Cubs out. To turn around you need full power. I am not even talking about OAT






Hey Chris could you take my camera and snap a picture of me because nobody would believe I was here

Not what is use to be

I grew up just outside of Everglades city in a little town called immokalee. My family would go to Everglades city a few times a year to fish in the Ten Thousand Islands. Every year as a kid we would go to the seafood festival to enjoy the local catch from the islands. Fresh stone crabs, live blue crabs cooked as you ordered and fresh smoked mullet. Wih all this said, I took my wife there in the 4 two years ago so she coul have a taste of fresh local florida. We arrived and walked the 1/2 mile or so to the festival and boy was I dissapionted! The famous Everglades seafood festival has turned into a giant flea market with absolutely not one vendor selling local food. Everything being served you could buy from the frozen section of your local grocery store, except for the funnel cakes.

Everglades city is still a beautiful destination that everyone should go visit! Just don't waste your time during this festival. Go on a weekend when the weather is nice and visit one of the local restaurants, you won't be disappointed.

You are right Bill. I saw the prep guys opening frozen food bags in the back coooking.

But, it was a fun flight and nice to see.

We wanted to see what is around so next time we will do as you suggest.

Pat Hatch also told me to go to the docks and get the stone crab directly from the fisherman. So we will trry that too.

Sat all day OVC

Entire Tampa Bay are was about 1300' ceiling and BR. Nasty miserable day.
Sunday was severe clear south to about Sebring/Avon Park and from there deteriorated to 1400' ceiling. Thought Venice was a good alternate and wrong there too. Sea Fog rolling in.
LAL was the answer. Even though the tower required a go around because of some slow RV's. What was that all about anyway Mark?

Here's LAL from a direction most Sun n Fun attendees don't see on arrival. See if you can pick out some spots you've walked through.
https://vimeo.com/86272467

Vlad "plowed to keep Piper Cubs out"

Plowed to keep Piper Cubs out. That is one of the best lines I have ever heard!
Florida looks nice and the food great. We had 14" of snow and it was -12 when we left Thursday for sunny CA. Now we are here and it is raining like a big dog! I am making reservations for Sun n Fun right now!

Cool video of some of the places I saw last year. Thanks.

Hey Carl nice video, need to turn up that green though. Playing it on my screen made Florida look brown not the green you see in my picture.

I don't know what was up with your go-around. I don't think the controller could handle 4 inbound and one in the pattern. He seemed a little stressed on departure too. Good thing he isn't one of the controllers for Sun-N-Fun.

We will try to pick up the pacee a little for you next time.

So THAT is where everyone was on Sunday; the ramp at GIF was lonelier than usual. Ironically, the only other RV I saw at the restaurant was Brian (RV-8A)....from LAL.

Mark - Apparently you used Kodachrome Electrons

Controller did mention something to me about talking to airplanes all day on SUNDAY. He probably wanted to be home by the pool.

The ND filter on the GoPro does tone things down. It's either that or Jello effect and the dreaded prop slices. Wonder if I can pump up the color after the fact? There's a feature in GoPro's editing software that allows tweaking of the white balance. I'll try that tonight.

Maybe some expert here can help.

Have fun in Abaco!