May 3, 2017
               After two nights in Hilton Head we headed north and felt like we were really starting out loop, slowing down and little and discovering interesting off of the beaten path spots.

   The first one we encountered was Edisto Beach, a little marina just off of a river close to the beach.   This was the first time that there was no one to help us dock so I had to lasso the cleat on the dock to pull us in.  John got me close enough that I got it on about the third try.   We both have to get better at that with a name like Colorado Cowboy on our stern. 

        Pretty good bike path through a jungle like area and down to the beach.  We headed out together, but I found a Farmers Market and stopped while John headed on.   I stopped on the beach to walk out to the ocean.  The area really reminded me of Gearhart.  Reasonable homes sitting right on the beach, a small commercial area and back water sloughs.    I found a fresh seafood place and got a piece of Wahoo for dinner and we have a nice dinner on the boat.

      

  Next stop on Thursday was Charleston.  I had insisted that we stay two nights so I could get a full day in Charleston.

  On Monday we got going early, and go to Harbour Town on Hilton Head Island early in the afternoon.  John was really excited because he has been wanting to do this for years.  Bring his boat into the marina and then play the golf course.

         The marina had been destroyed by Hurricane Matthew but they had rebuilt it pretty quickly.  They just hadn’t gotten the power pedestals up so we were on the generator again, but I wasn’t going to cook anyway with restaurants all around.  We both set off on our bikes, me to a knitting store to get some needles I needed and John to cruise the area.  The island has really wonderful bike paths.

     Next morning we played golf at Harbour Town golf club and had dinner there that evening.  The course was great, but not too long and really tight.  Lots of sand traps.    I played well enough to post  the score on GHIN, which I really wanted to have for the record.

    April 29 and 30 were all one blur of sea grass and water as we headed out of Georgia and into South Carolina.  It isn’t very far from Amelia Island to Hilton Head, but since we really can’t go out into the ocean, the ICW winds like a pile of rope that someone just dropped. We decided to try anchoring instead of going into a marina on Saturday because there really weren’t any in a good spot for stopping for the night.  We try to make 50-60 miles a day when we’re trying to get somewhere and 40 if we want to stop and see something.  We managed to anchor without too much trouble.  John is going to do a guest blog on anchoring and docking at marinas.  I liked it because it’s lots easier than docking at a marina on my part.  Of course you can’t get off the boat, but we are really self-contained with and generator to run all the electrical (even air conditioning) and full bathroom facilities. 

      Sunday we got an early start, not much else to do and were planning on staying near Savanah.  So we could Uber into town.  It wasn’t worth going 10 miles out of our way since both John and I have been in Savanah more than once, but when I started calling around for a slip for the night I struck out.  All of them were full up.  (Made us realize we probably better start planning a little farther ahead.  So we found another nice anchorage in Herb River, just off of the docks of some beautiful Savanah homes.  That night we I grilled a great rib eye for dinner on our propane gas stove.  Great dinner for the middle of a river in the Georgia low country.  (More on food later) .

Oops, correction, St Augustine was Thursday, April 27.  On Friday, April 28 we stopped on

Amelia Island, our last stop in Florida.  The Island had been badly damaged by Hurricane Matthew in the fall and the marina in the downtown area was still not open so we tried the Amelia Island Yacht Basin this time.    It is really easy to dock in the closest place to the town and then just walk around and not see much else of the area.  I from previous visits I had thought this was just another cute tourist town with lots of good restaurants,  but from our dock farther south we took off on our bikes and went all around the island.  John got a little carried away and it was after dark before he got back.  I headed home earlier and still had a hard ride to beat the sunset.  The island has some very nice old neighborhoods, beach areas, and is pretty much a middle class town, with parks and schools.

The marina itself was only partly dredged out from the Hurricane and at low tide we were sitting on the bottom, but our bottom is flat so we don’t tilt too much in the mud.

Leaving in the morning we saw even more of the real life of the town.  The far north end is still industrial with a port, some kind of mill and shrimping boats.  It was really good to see that all of that could coexist together.

John on the beach at Amelia Island.  Atlantic ocean in the background

          Our next stop April 28 was in St Augustine.  We didn’t do much on shore,  and we had eaten in the restaurant at the marina on our trip down, but Camachee Cove was a very nice marina with a pool so I could get in a different kind of exercise swimming laps.

       St Augustine is one of those places whose history is a record of European colonization.  The oldest city in North America, the Spanish had it first, then theFrench, then  English, then the United States, then the Confederacy then the Union.  We had seen most of the city on earlier golf trips to Florida, so we skipped the tourism and enjoyed a quiet evening and next morning on the boat.  And we could hear the music at the restaurant on the boat. 

     From  Cocoa Village we headed  up the endless Indian River passing  Titusville and the Kennedy Space Center which we had visited on our way down in the fall.  
     A note about the rivers and creeks that make up the Intercoastal Waterway (ICW) which we are following up the east coast.  Most of them are hundreds of yards wide, 6 feet deep and nothing up grass and a few scrub trees for as far as the eye can see. As we moved through Georgia they were interspersed with sounds off of the Atlantic that poke like fingers into the Low Country.
      On Wednesday, April 26 we landed in New Smyrna Beach and had our first real "Looper" party.  We ran into two couples who were just finishing their loops.  Both had purchased boats in the Vero Beach area a couple of years ago and taken them to New York and Rhode Island where they started the loop last spring.  So technically they had "crossed their wake" though they weren't planning on celebrating till they got back to their homes.
    We chatted on the dock for an hour and then headed to a great brewery for beer and more   conversation.  That led to pizza  and needless to say I didn't get the laundry done that night.  Next morning I wandered around another old Florida town trying to revive its downtown area along a river, and doing it quite nicely..Found a great re creation of the old Woolworth's stores with a soda fountain that really looked like a going concern.

April 24-25, 2017; Cocoa Village Marina

24th: Continuing north, running longer days since we are a month behind.  Got into Cocoa Village Marina early afternoon on the 24th.  Dinner w/ Caroline (Tootsie) and Charles Davidson at Chez Marquesa, nice restaurant in the restored "village".  The Davidsons own a ranch north of Yellowjacket Pass NE of Meeker.  Joan Savage met Carroll Carol, Tootsie's mother in the Women's Forum and I have done some legal and consulting work for them.  Charles and I mostly listened, Tootsie and Sally drank the wine and had a great time.

25th: Turned 66 today!  Guess I should be glad health is still decent and we are on our great adventure, but its still 66!!

Spent an extra day in Cocoa so we could go to dinner w/ Craig Macnab and his wife Diedre in Winter Park (north of Orlando).

Took  a nice bike ride in AM north on Riverside Rd.  Great residential street along about 15 miles of the Indian River.  No bike  paths or shoulders, but minimal traffic.

The Macnabs have a house in Steamboat Springs and recently purchased Oscar Wyatt's ranch on the White River (formerly Raley ranch and others).  They now own the ranches on either side of our White River Ranch.  Very nice dinner at Chez Vincent in Harbor Square in Winter Park.  Much different than I expected.  My only experience /w Orlando had been the airport, amusement parks and glitzy shopping malls along the freeways.  Winter Park is a modest, "old Florida" town, now swallowed up by the Orlando megalopolis.  Old downtown area redeveloped with several restaurants and shops.  Traffic in central Florida as bad as everywhere else and lots of construction going on.