11/14/18 Wednesday- We’ve officially been on the loop for 8 months! And it looks like we’ll be home within a week. People wonder why we did it so fast. But we really didn’t. We’ve been tootling along with the rest of the loopers on the seasonal track. We left the west coast of Florida in March, went up the Atlantic in the Spring, across Canada in the Summer, down the rivers in the Fall, and will do winter in Florida. We will spend the winter in Florida/Bahamas, just like the rest of the loopers…. but we will have crossed our wake. So that is why we can do it in just over 8 months. We just happen to live where many loopers spend the winters! How lucky is that?!
Hey – I missed sharing a picture with you from the other day. This was a lighthouse in the middle of Mobile Bay. The station was activated in 1885, and automated in 1935. In 1916 the keeper’s wife gave birth to a baby at the station. According to the Alabama Lighthouse Association web site, the keeper brought a dairy cow to the station and corralled it on a section of the lower deck because his wife was unable to nurse the newborn baby. Wow! The lighthouse was placed on the National Register of Historic Places on December 30, 1974. I sure wouldn’t want to be out there in a storm! It is amazing that it has survived all that nature has thrown at it for over 130 years!!
On to today’s adventure: It started out Cold. Wet. Damp. Humid. Foggy windows. Wind. And ended the same way. Our buddies left their dock at 6:00 and arrived at the entrance to our marina about 6:30, just as we were pulling into the ICW. Away we went, with Island Girl in the lead, then Parrot Bay and Bay Tripper. We were all headed to Fort Walton – about 70 miles. I saw these colorful homes that reminded me of the famous Dutch buildings in Curaçao. The bright colors were nice to see on such a dreary day!
This sign officially welcomed us to Florida. We knew we had arrived when we started to see the all familiar ICW signs indicating No Wake.
We had a few places where we were quite close to the Gulf – just separated by a thin strip of sand. Kenny looked out at this and thought there were some big Washington coast size breakers out there. Then he realized that these were sand dunes. I think we’re both over-due for some eye doctor checkups!
The interior of our windows were dripping wet all day. I had two fans running, and was constantly using a squeegee and towel to try to keep the INSIDE of the windshield clear enough to see through. It was WAAAAY too cold and wet to drive upstairs today.
Yes – 47 degrees. That’s way too cold! We actually started the generator and ran the heat for a few hours, but it just couldn’t keep the windows clear with all the humidity in the air.
We saw this big tower on the beach on Santa Rosa Island. We don’t have any idea what it was, but it was pretty impressive. Maybe some kind of weather thing.
We arrived at the Fort Walton City Dock around 3:00. It is a free dock with no power or water. You just have to call City Hall and let them know you’re there. It is an easy walk into the town where there are all sorts of restaurants, bar & grills, and grocery stores. The seven of us went up to Tapworks/KC’s Sandbar & Grill. It was nice to sit in a warm dry place for what may be our last meal on land for awhile. We may be anchoring the next two nights if we can’t find a place in a marina, and then we’ll be traveling all night on Saturday. We are getting closer to the area that was devastated by Hurricane Michael, so many of the marinas are still not accepting transient boaters. Only a very few even have fuel available.
This place had a zillion beers on tap, and a great happy hour. It was a good choice!
I don’t know where the Sweet Water Brewing Company is, but this was a pretty neat piece of art on their wall. You can’t tell the size of it in the picture without a point of reference, but this was nearly floor to ceiling.
Outside, they had a big giant chair, but it was way too wet to sit in it, so Wayne posed so we could see how big it was.
We had a nice evening! We discovered that both couples – Mike & Patty, and Bruce & Bev, will not be going “home” for Thanksgiving. They were trying to figure out what they were going to do, as were we, so we invited them to our house! We don’t have family in the area. We’ll be home and settling back into life on the dirt. We’ll probably be lonely and suffering from post-loop-depression. It sounds like a fun looper family holiday for all of us!
Back to the boat in the rain, bundle up, and watch a little TV. It was cooling down – it was supposed to get down in the 30’s tonight! EEK! Time for long underwear jammies tonight! Welcome to Florida!? This is not a good first impression for our looper friends! I hope it will be better down in our neck of the woods!