Reunion with our river buddies

Hello to all of our faithful followers.  We traveled to Daytona Beach and had a wonderful visit with our friends.We made the river trip down to the Gulf of Mexico with them.  We traveled off and on with these two couples from the first of September 2010 to December 2010.  It was such fun to catch up with both of them.  We did have a few glitches along the way.  We were late for one of the dates we had set up because there just happened to be an event in Daytona that you have heard about.  It is called "bike week".  There were about 200,000 visitors to the city and many of them were on their Harley motorcycles.  Well needless to say it does make for a lot of interesting folks and the traffic can be a hassle.  Of course, we had no camera on us at the time, so we just have our memories.  Here are the folks we got to get together with.

 This is Woody and Judy Post from Rockland, Maine.

This is Larry and Dorothy Rand from Harbor Heights, Florida.

We hated to part company with all of these great people, but we have built lifelong friendships with all of them and know that we will be seeing them again.  Each of these couples has already completed the Great Loop.  They totally understood that we had to take off and push North back to Michigan.

This boat was just north of Daytona.  It may have suffered from a high tide or it may be the result of a hurricane, either of which is never good.

We traveled a long day, but were able to make it to St. Augustine.  This city was settled in the 1500's and has so much history.  We did our own walking tour through the city.  These are some of the sites that we thought were interesting.

These are of one of several churches in the downtown area.

These next photos are an important part of the history.

This is one of several clock towers in the city.

These are several pics of the fort that is located at the harbor and also a part of the downtown.

We also walked through the old hotel which was built by Henry Flagler (he also built a railroad here in Florida)  It was very extravagant and was designed like much of Europe.  The stain glass and elaborate wood carvings were especially pretty.  We could only see a portion of the hotel as it is now Flagler College.  I can not imagine attending school in such an interesting historical building.

The many stained glass windows are all Tiffany Glass.

There is also a famous bridge called the bridge of lions.  These statues are located by the bridge and here is the bridge itself.

 

East Coast of Florida

This was one of the towns that we anchored near, Cocoa Beach.  It is a charming little town with very interesting and unique shops.  This next picture is the beautiful park at the waterfront of the Intercoastal Waterway.

We had a great time walking around the park and enjoying the town.  As you can see the anchorage was just the other side of the park.  

Here is a couple of pictures of the geckos in the park, they were everywhere as they are in most of Florida, but this park was full of them.

The next town that we visited was Titusville.  It too was an interesting town.  They have a brand new mooring field that opened in October of 2011.  It was a great stop for us as we both need a haircut (and of course I needed to get rid of the gray hair) so we stayed in town a couple of days, but now we both are looking good.  

This is a picture of Solitude on the mooring ball.  We had to take a picture as the water was finally really calm.  We had several days of the wind blowing like snot and we were very happy to be sitting still.  

One of the days while we were walking I noticed that the pond in the park that we were walking through had something that looked different on the bank, yes, it was an alligator.

After we watched him a few minutes, I thought I had spotted a second alligator popping his head up.  Check it out!

Run Mr. Turtle, this is not a good place to catch some sun.  Lucky for him the alligator had eaten breakfast.  He swam away and I was glad that he was not a snack.

We also saw some fascinating animals at the dock of the marina.  The manatee love this area and we spotted several each time we went to the dinghy dock.  

You can see from this next photo that this manatee had a couple of scars on his body from coming in contact with the motor of a boat.

The highlight of our visit to Titusville was meeting our old cruising buddies, Tom and Sheryl.  They have cruised with us for a number of years in Michigan, Washington State, and when ever one of us was cruising, the others would come for a visit.  It was great fun to catch up with them.  We had dinner at the boat and had a wonderful visit.  Here they are enjoying the sunset at the bow of our boat.

The next day we traveled to and anchorage close to the Ponce Inlet.  I got a picture of the the lighthouse there.  It is the tallest lighthouse in Florida at 175 feet.  It was a great sunny day and we enjoyed it.

There is a beach near by called the New Smyrna beach.  It is dog friendly and there were a lot of folks enjoying the sun, the beach, the sea, and we went shelling on the beach.  Isn't it pretty?

We are on our way to new waters

We were finally able to leave Marathon by March 1, 2012 and we began our trip into new waters for us.  We went into the Atlantic Ocean up the Hawk Channel and into Key Largo.  The trip forecast was for 2ft seas, well let's just say the weatherman could have done a better job at his prediction.  We had a lumpy ride, nothing threatening, but not very comfortable and the seas were at least 3-5 ft.  We arrived safely at Key Largo and got a mooring in a very small mooring field of about 12 mooring balls.  It was very peaceful and there was only two other boats there with us.  We went up to the office and checked in and inquired about the glass bottom boat.  The boat was leaving in less than 5 minutes and it was already around 3 pm.  Well with no camera or phone to take pictures, we made a snap decision to go on the boat ride.  It proved to be a great decision as we had late afternoon sun on the reef and a great captain.

Marilyn sat as close to the glass bottom as possible.  There was seating around the windows and you dangled your feet then the folks seated above you could see also.  Anyway Marilyn was glued to the reef and ocean floor.  We saw an amazing number of fish and corral  They were so beautiful and some were very colorful.  It was such fun to share Erwin's diving hobby by looking at what he sees when he is diving.  It was a wonderful afternoon even though we did not get any pictures.  If you get to Key Largo, go to John Pennekamp State Park and take the tour on the glass bottom boats, you will not regret it.  We even got to see a green sea turtle swim by a couple of times.

This was the channel to get to the mooring field at Pennekamp State Park.  It was long and winding through the mangroves.  The next picture tells part of the story.....

Yes, we did not understand that several of the dive boats and the glass bottom boat exit the park and enter the waterway at this bend.  It turns at least 90 degrees and you are blind to see what is coming.  The captains blow the horn as a signal they are approaching the blind corner.  Lucky for us when we took our boat in and out of the channel we did not encounter any other boats.

The second day out in the Atlantic was much nicer travel.  This was sunrise on day 2 while we were heading to Miami.


This is a picture of the lighthouse as we approached Biscayne Bay which was interesting as we do not see lighthouses like we have on the great lakes.

Well you can see that Miami is larger than life from the water just like it is on the land side.  It is a thriving metropolis area.

As we traveled closer the the intercoastal waterway we came across these strange buildings built out in the water,  we were not sure if they were homes or cottages but they were interesting looking.



This is a quiet little spot just off the intercoastal waterway in Miami.  We could see several beautiful homes and a least two cruise ships parked behind the homes.  When we were eating our dinner we watched as the crew cleaned this yacht (note:  the small boat is a runabout that is probably about 21 feet long.  They took it out the back of the large yacht which also had room for 2 jet skis.  Hard to imagine!

Even though we were in the heart of Miami, the sunset was just a breathtaking as it is on a peaceful anchorage.

So we were glad that we had decided not to spend extra time in Key Largo and now we have completed the ocean part of the trip until we get all the way up to New Jersey.  We will be traveling the intercoastal waterway up the east coast.  It is fully protected water and a wonderful way to travel by boat.  We had ducked in just in time as the winds starting howling at 30 knots and kicked up the ocean swells considerably.

As we traveled toward Vero Beach and north up the coast we saw some very interesting sites between Miami and Fort Lauderdale.  We went past an inlet from the Atlantic Ocean called the Port Everglades inlet.  Here are some of the ocean container ships that were there either loading or unloading.

There were also several cruise ships at this inlet loading and unloading passengers going to Bahamas and to other islands.

Here are some pictures of the mega yachts, and I do mean mega yachts that we saw between Miami and Fort Lauderdale.  Some of them were over 40 feet wide and 200 feet long and there were literally hundreds of them.

Here is a typical picture of the waterway and one of the many bridges which connect the mainland to the islands all along the ocean side.  By the way, since we are not as tall as most of the boats (including the sailing boats) we did not have to have many of them raised for us to pass under them.  In one day we went under 19 bridges, but it was only about 6 or so that we had to have raised for us.  Interesting, these bridges have schedules that they open on either the hour and half hour or the quarter to and quarter after the hour.  This is so the traffic can also keep moving.



Well after a couple of long travel days we made it Vero