Ah-Ooo-Gah, Ah-Ooo-Gah!!

Heck, we have to do something for excitement, and when we leave one state and enter another, we always blow our horn, whether it is in a car or on the boat.  Yes, we will finally leave Florida and enter the Peach State during this blog entry (admit it, you thought we would motor around Florida, indefinitely, didn't you?).  But first, we have one more Florida stop to make, right at the tippy-top of the state, at Fernandina Beach on beautiful Amelia Island. 

Fernandina Beach's Shrimp Fleet

Beautiful sunset at the mooring field

  We did the ol' trick of getting a mooring ball for the first evening, saving mucho dollars, then pulling into the marina the next morning. Our first evening we enjoyed a wonderful Mexican meal, along Fernandina Beach's lovely main thoroughfare. 


Gigantic Margaritas!!!!!!!  (Thad's, not Cindy's)

This is where we first are encountering significant tides, about 7', and will begin using our fenders (you know, the bumper thingies) as we will be at floating, not fixed docks, as we continue north.  With a floating dock your boat is tied to the dock and you both go up or down with the tide, vs. a fixed dock where the dock does not move but your boat goes up or down with the tide, while still tied to the dock.



You do NOT want this to happen, not a pretty picture!

Imagine a 7' tide in which your boat moved that much but the dock stayed in place.  And remember, tides also mean current, and we had quite a juxtaposition of the wind and current when we left Amelia Island.  Once again, the wonderful dock hands worked hard to get us safely to the pump out dock and then away.  What might we be pumping out, you ask?  One guess; you're right - two people can make, quite a lot it seems, over a number of weeks.  Enough said, as this is TMI (Too Much Information)!



While on Amelia Island, we had a very important person to make contact with.  Thad's boss at his previous employer, PivotHealth, the much loved, much admired John Phillips.  He and his wife, Carol, have a home on Amelia Island, which is one reason we stopped, as we wanted to see the two of them.  We had an absolutely wonderful dinner with them but were so busy talking (imagine that, John!!), that we forgot to take any pictures,  So, though we have no pictures of our evening together, I will leave it up to you to choose which of these very distinguished fellows (if any), all bearing the moniker, John Phillips, is the REAL John W. Phillips!

The morning we left I witnessed a scene right out of the Alfred Hitchcock movie, The Birds.  Several seagulls were attacking a ray, which was swimming in the marina.

Does anyone really like seagulls??

Over and over they flew down, pecking and tearing at its flesh, crazed Genus Aves Iratus.  Definitely brought back memories of Tippi Hedren in the scary phone booth scene!

We also had an intriguing neighbor at the Fernandina Harbor Marina.  The legendary 104' Trumpy designed, fantail motor yacht, Freedom, built in 1926, and perfectly restored within the last several years.  She's a sister ship to Sequoia, the former United States presidential yacht, used from Herbert Hoover to Jimmy Carter.

Absolutely beautiful.

So we left Amelia Island on late Friday morning, the beginning of Memorial weekend, bound for Cumberland Island, a short hop of only 5 miles, just over the Georgia border.  More about that adventure in the next blog entry.  I'll leave you with pictures of the roses growing at the marina. 

Lovely, aren't they?

 

29°53′39″N 81°18′48″W (St. Augustine, FL)

 

A bit of an explanation to begin this post.  We (I am graciously sharing the blame with Thad)

 are way, way behind in actually writing this blog.  Suffice it to say that as I am writing about each of the legs of our journey, it actually happened one - two months ago!  (except for the road trip, and that was written as it was happening)  Remember several posts ago, when I said hooray, we finally have this blog up and running?  I meant it when I said it took me a long time to figure out how to do it.  And how to get my pictures from my cameras to the computer itself, how to format the blog, etc.  These are the times when you miss having your kids right under the same roof, so they can come to your assistance, ahem, rescue, to help you figure out all things technical.  Thanks, kids, for all of the

What I wish I looked like after blogging

many times you have helped me out!

What I actually look like after blogging!

  We love Florida.  We love living in Florida.  We love the fauna and flora of Florida.  We love boating in Florida, especially in our own local waters.  We loved cruising across and then heading east up Florida.  And now we were coming to our favorite stop in Florida, St. Augustine.  Neither of us had been there before.  Had whizzed by it as we went north/south on I-95, never taking the time to stop.  First, on the way from Titusville to St. Augustine, we stopped in Daytona Beach, overnight, at an anchorage.  This anchorage gave no indication that it was anywhere near Daytona Beach.  Here, judge for yourself. 

Our early morning neighbor at Daytona

Peaceful and picturesque

 I was so happy to actually have to cook again when I fixed our dinner.  I was so happy I took a picture of it!

Yum, taco salad

Stopping in marinas makes it all too convenient to eat out.  I like it, well usually, when I am forced to fix dinner myself.

The ICW, between Daytona and St. Augustine began to look a little different.  We loved it.  The land became marsh-like and the tides were about 4 feet in this area.  It was very interesting with lots to look at and enjoy.  We even saw beautiful pink flamingos flying.  We tied up to a mooring ball in the south end of the St. Augustine municipal mooring field.

North mooring field

Our view in the south mooring field



They do it right - the line from the mooring ball was neatly coiled right on top of the ball so it was not even wet!  We got in at 2 p.m. so had the rest of the day to explore the city.


Twofer at Happy Hour = a Double!

 St. Augustine was where Eloise started becoming a real dog.  At least a start at becoming a real dog.  If you know Eloise, you know she does not hold other dogs in much favor; in other words she wants nothing to do with them.  Our theory is that she thinks she is a person.  She can even be stand-offish with people.  Never mean, just not very interested, unless she already knows you.  And, to be entirely truthful, she is a mommy's girl.  Or daddy's, if Mom is not around.  She personifies the term "lap dog." We had decided to take her with us whenever possible, so she came along when we dinghied to the dinghy dock


Eloise rides comfy in the dinghy

and ventured into St. Augustine.  And she surprised us.  She marched right along, through the throngs of people (it was pretty crowded all through the old part of the city), sat nicely with Thad while I went into shops, allowed people, especially children, to pet her, and even greatly surprised me by sitting quietly while we ate dinner.  She even rode along, looking around, on the hop on-hop off red sightseeing trolley tour we took.  I do not mean to be bragging, she just thoroughly surprised us with how adaptable she was.  We know the Lord is doing some work on the two of us as we take this trip, but we did not foresee that He would bring some healing to Eloise! 

Beautiful B & B

We so very much enjoyed our day and a half in St. Augustine.

    And we enjoyed exploring Castillo de San Marcos, the fort dating from the 1670's.  Wonderfully accessible to visitors.

Castillo de San Marcos

The famous Bridge of Lions was just a few hundred yards from the marina.  I posed Eloise on top of one of the lion statues. 


Eloise at the famous Bridge of Lions

We also saw a boat that so reminded us of Dale Harvey, Sr., Thad's father, as, for its name, it bore a similar expression to what he used to say when breaking out the Cutty Sark.


Dale Sr.'s Boat!

 

It is a beautiful city and so walkable.  And, needless to say, chock-full of history.  Our second day saw the arrival of El Galeon the 175' historically accurate replica of a 17th century wooden Spanish galleon, in support of Viva Florida, to commemorate Florida's 500 year old history. It docked right at the municipal marina and will be in St. Augustine for several months.  Unfortunately they started tours of the ship the day we left the city.

El Galeon

I also began taking the first of many pictures of flowers.  They are everywhere and so colorful they just beg for picture taking.  So bear with me, as in posts to come you'll often have to suffer through pictures of flowers at each of our stops!

My Dad loved Snapdragons

Florida's Ubiquitous Hibiscus

Adios San Agustin, gracias por sorprendernos con su belleza e historia!

Morning clouds when leaving St. Augustine

Bourbon Street via the ICW??

Hey, we're taking a detour here, from our water trip to a ROAD TRIP! 

 Yep, we left the boat at Atlantic Yacht Basin in Chesapeake, VA, grabbed a Hertz rental car and headed west.  Then south, then further west, then back east, south some more, northeast and, well, you get the idea.  What started out as a one week trip from Virginia to Indiana for some family time, morphed into a full-fledged road trip, spanning three weeks, 4,000 miles and 16 states!  Needless to say we are super grateful for Hertz, Hilton and Marriott points.

 

We paid for one month's dockage at Atlantic Yacht Basin, as that was the cheapest way to go.  Great rates and a really safe place (hurricane-wise) to leave the boat, so we had no trepidations.  Then back to Indianapolis for some always-the-best family time.  Our nephew, Luke, was visiting from Portland so that was the perfect excuse to check in with our Hoosier family.  My mom hosted the family at the ISO's Symphony on the Prairie, which turned out to be a very wet experience.  But the orchestra stayed dry and kept on playing, so we hunkered down under ponchos, garbage bags and even under the tables to try to escape the rain.  Great fun and terrific music, even while wet.

Looking good in those garbage bags!

Hiding under the table to keep dry!

 

Gary and Linda, Cindy's brother and sister-in-law, had everyone over for an afternoon and evening, so the food, fun and games, as in corn hole (a family tradition), continued.  Olivia and Terry surprised us by being that day's corn hole champions.  We had dueling pontoon boats.  Olivia took honors in fishing.  We celebrated Kathy's birthday.  We ate, played, visited and laughed.  Family! 

Ally and Ryan

59 and holding!

  The cousins love being together and we all spent as much time together, as possible, over a long weekend.  Cindy's mom, Jean, was right in the thick of things and her Sunday brunch comments were quite a hit with the grandchildren.  One highlight was the Friday night midnight arrival of Seth's girlfriend, Alina, visiting for two months over the summer, all the way from her home in Moscow. 

Ahhh, young love.

 

From Indy we headed south to Memphis, to visit where we used to live and where our eldest, Ryan, was born. 

Our first home, 4795 Roswell Drive, Memphis, Tennessee

We had not been there in many, many years and it was quite fun to visit old haunts.  Then it was south through Mississippi, west through Louisiana and to our next stopping place, Montgomery (Houston area), Texas, home to our Texas family:  Thad's mom, Jean, his brother Dale and wife Bette, their daughter, Cathy (lives in Austin), son, Stuart with wife, Gracie, and girls Courtney and  Cailey.  Plus lots of dogs!  It was, to put it simply, a wonderful visit with our family that we do not see nearly enough.

Gracie and Courtney

Cathy and Jean

Dale, Bette, Stuart, Gracie & Cailey

 

Time to head back east, but first we had a great day and a half in New Orleans.  I had never been there so was quite anxious to visit.  Our hotel was in the French Quarter so we were able to walk all over the place.  The weather was a bit uncooperative, as it rained very, very hard late the first night and a bit during the next day, but we just soldiered on and dried out back at the hotel.  Though Bourbon Street itself was a bit, shall we say, different from our usual routine, it was all great fun. 

Eloise is cuddled by musician "Steamboat Willie"

Mmmm, pralines, heavenly good!

Eloise on a NOPD horse

Beautiful French Quarter Houses

 

From New Orleans we decided to take the scenic route and drive along the Gulf coast.  We so loved seeing the water and stopped at a beach to give our legs, all 8 of them, a stretch.  We have had Eloise along the whole time and she is getting to be one well-traveled canine.  Thank heaven she is small as she rides on a pillow on the console of the rental Camry, right between our two seats.  And, being small, we are able to, dare I say it, sneak her into the hotels.  We have discovered that there is a HUGE pet fee in most hotels.  Do not lecture me here.  I am trying to not feel too much guilt over the sneaking business. 

Guess who is hiding under the towel, inside this bag??

 

Another road trip highlight was the next evening, in Mississippi, when we stayed in the  Biloxi area and visited the Margaritaville Casino. 

Alas, Jimmy Buffet was not there that night

Me and my gal, Dolly

Hey, did you know they give you money to play with?  Yep, we each got player's cards, preloaded with $10 of the casino's money.  But it is sad, as it is not like the old days, with those wonderful slot machines you load with quarters and then pull the big ol' arms down.  Now you just put your player's card in the slot and push some buttons.  Not nearly as fun.  I did not have the slightest idea what to do but there were friendly people to help me out.
We chose two machines to play, one an Elvis and one a Dolly  Parton (imagine me picking those two!), and I made big money off the casino's ten dollars.  I wish.  But still, I came out ahead, by a whopping $5.60.  Plus, I found a nickel on the floor, so I actually ended up with $5.65!   Before gambling we did the buffet.  Yes, the infamous casino buffet.  We actually first got those player's cards to enable us to get a $5 discount off the buffet and did not even know we would get it preloaded with casino money.  What a great place!  They pay you to play their games.  And heck, the buffet food was pretty darned good, to boot.


My big casino winnings!

So now we are in the process of heading back to our boat.  We miss her.  We have loved, absolutely loved seeing family and having fun along the way, but we are ready to get back into our travel routine. 

 

Thanks for going along with us while we detoured slightly, well greatly, off our ICW route up the east coast.  We were not planning to be gone three weeks but we are grateful the Lord had it in mind for us, all along.  He's a lot of fun like that, isn't He?

Are these really that much different?  I think not.