I woke up a little earlier than Bob and got caught up on my blog. This morning, every time a dark cloud came over it dropped a little rain, so we decided to check out Coral Gables and Coconut Grove today and save the beach for tomorrow.
We left around 11:30 and made our way east to Coral Gables, an area in South Miami. We got off the highway and were driving along a very busy commercial area when …WHAM! We crossed the street and into a whole other world. The road had a canopy formed by live oaks overhead.
The houses were beautiful surrounded by lush foliage.
Traffic started to back up and finally came to a standstill. We thought it was due to the crowd of people going to Coral Gables, but it wasn’t. A huge branch from a live oak tree had broken off and landed on a car after a rain shower just a few minutes earlier.
Upon closer inspection, the branch landed in front of the car and there was very little damage to the car. The woman got out–shaken, but unharmed.
The cops just arrived as we moved past the accident. How exciting! We continued on and found our way to the Miracle Mile–an area of high end stores and restaurants.
The sidewalk on both sides of the street was shaded which made for a very pleasant walk.
Fountains marked the east entrance to the Miracle Mile (which is actually a half mile).
At the western end was the clock tower of Coral Gables City Hall built in 1928.
After walking the Miracle Mile and seeing all the bridal shops (I counted at least 10), jewelry stores, and restaurants, we were ready to move on to Coconut Grove–a Miami neighborhood south of downtown.
In Coconut Grove, the CoCoWalk is a courtyard full of shops and restaurants.
We left there and drove down to the water’s edge of Key Biscayne. There we discovered the Dinner Key Marina.
We looked around there for awhile for a cute tiki bar on the water to get a beer, but nothing could be found. Rats!
We decided to head for home and have appetizers and drinks at the campground. We saw this unusual looking building on the way out of town.
Auggie was glad we came home early. Once outside, he checked out the trees for squirrels and then rested on Bob’s lap when he needed a break.
In driving around the campground, we had noticed this unusual license plate on a bus near us in the campground–Fairly Reliable Bob’s RV’s. We got a laugh out of that.
We spent the rest of the afternoon outside in the shade at our campsite. The breeze switched from steamy warm to cool depending on the cloud cover or sun overhead. We heard rumbles of thunder to the north of us, but never any rain drops. Somebody was getting rain, but it wasn’t us. We had dinner and took it easy for the rest of the night. Auggie and I took our evening walk and were in awe of the cloud formations in the sky as the sun went down.
