Today we are heading home to sunny San Diego and our little Buddy. We wrapped up our visit with Frank & Barbara in Stuart by visiting the Elliot Museum, which is a well-appointed vintage car and motorcycle museum. We went to look at Frank’s old 1931 Model A replica, which is exactly like the car he purchased in blue when he was 11 years old and has fastidiously maintained ever since. Not many of us keep our first car or motorcycle over a 75 year span, but apparently Frank does. After touring the lovely and very well-funded museum (which has expanded to other memorabilia than just cars and motorcycles) we had a nice Florida lunch at the attached Tikki Bar. It was a great way to end our visit with some of dearest friends.
From Stuart, we headed up Rt. A1A along the beach through Fort Pierce and then up along the sand bar to Vero Beach. I started my trip writing about the tropics and my fixation on all of the things to dislike about the humidity and dampness of hot and sticky climes. There is no doubt that there are lots of lovely spots in Florida where one can prove that throwing money at a problem can solve almost anything. But in between those well-heeled places, Florida quickly reverts to its tropical origins and turns into the real Florida with its host of abandoned roadside buildings and local retail stores that make the Dollar General the upscale anchor tenant of the area. As best I can tell, Vero Beach is all about inland commerce, beachfront condos and lush hidden communities of lovely homes on places like Johns Island, set against the backdrop of the Indian River Lagoon, which is part of the Intracoastal Waterway.
The Intracoastal Waterway (ICW) is a 3,000-mile inland waterway running along the Atlantic and Gulf coasts of the United States. It stretches from Boston, Massachusetts down the Atlantic seaboard to Miami, and then continues along the Gulf Coast through Alabama, Mississippi, Louisiana, and Texas, ending at Brownsville, Texas near the Mexican border. The two sections are sometimes called the Atlantic ICW and the Gulf ICW. It’s not a single canal but rather a connected system of natural inlets, saltwater rivers, bays, sounds, and lagoons (like Indian Harbor Lagoon) linked together by man-made canals. This allows boats to travel along the coast largely protected from the open ocean. It’s purpose is a blend of commercial (barge traffic carrying petroleum, chemicals, and agricultural products), recreational (hugely popular with recreational boaters, sailors, and “snowbirds” making seasonal trips), with a touch of military history (it was originally developed in part for protected coastal shipping during wartime, particularly WWI and WWII, when German U-boats were sinking vessels in open Atlantic waters). The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers maintains the waterway and is responsible for dredging to keep it navigable. The standard maintained depth is 12 feet, though shallower sections exist and are a constant challenge.
We headed into Johns Island to find Andy & Betsy’s home, which I visited four years ago during my last trip to Florida. I have spent four years telling Kim about their lovely home and this is my chance to show it to her as we were invited to spend the night with Andy & Betsy. Johns Island is a community that Andy describes as having 1,300 “doors”, so perhaps 2500 residents. It has three golf courses, lots of tennis and pickleball courts and a beach club over on the sand bar with several restaurants and beach access. From what I can tell, Johns Island is a lush island of spreading southern live oaks that look particularly southern, but not really dripping in Spanish Moss like in the Carolinas and Coastal Georgia. The houses, are mostly built to conform to what looks like a Colonial Bermuda style. The distinctive architecture has as its defining features a white stepped gable roof (of limestone in Bermuda, but made of cedar shakes on Johns Island from what I can tell) and a bright white paint job with large divided light windows and colorful pastel shutters. In Bermuda the style evolved from the 17th century English colonial building adapted to Bermuda’s specific conditions of hurricane winds, salt air, no fresh water, and abundant local limestone. On Johns Island, its about looking serene and quaint like a trip to Bermuda.
What makes Andy & Betsy’s home so special is that they managed to find a home that avoided the local Bermuda White code and adopted the look of a French Chateaux. In fact, it feels like you could carve it out of Johns Island and drop in in Provence and no one would be the wiser. It is all about unpainted limestone and clinging ivy trellises and boughs. Is sprawls across the property with a guest house over here and a tiled collonade there. The ceilings are all open and whitewashed with natural wood beams that were trucked in from some old barn in upstate New York, even though they look like they came from the Loire Valley.
We sat with Andy & Betsy on the patio shaded by what could be a grape arbor, looking out at the small creek that separates the island from the sand bar. Like everything coastal in Florida, the creek is lined with mangroves and the good news is that its not an active waterway due to a low bridge nearby and other than the occasional kayak, the only traffic on the creek is a stay egret. It all creates a lovely and tranquil setting that is about as un-Florida as any place I can imagine. After a quiet afternoon in the shade, we headed over to the Beach Club for dinner, getting a tour of the area from Andy as we went. A sea breeze on the veranda and a fine selection of food and wine was not hard to take for an evening’s repast.
When I awoke this morning in the early days of Daylight Savings, it was dark, so I got a chance to see what sunrise at Chez Forrester was like. It was nothing short of magical. Andy & Betsy were great hosts and we thoroughly enjoyed our day on Johns Island, perhaps because it felt less like a day in Florida and more like a day in paradise. Their special Chateaux on the Creek needs a name that combines the eco-friendly location and the French countryside feel of their lovely home. I’ll start working on that for them right away.