Dunedin FL, December 1-14

As I said in earlier posts Marker 1 Marina is where Jill won a free 2 week stay and we sure made the most of it!! It took us a couple of days to recover from our crossing. I guess we don't do all nighters like we used to. Dunedin is a very nice little town with a great bike trail that goes from Tarpon Springs to the north all the way to Clearwater in the south. We rented a car the first weekend to cover some more ground and get some larger items that we needed. It was time for an oil change and 15 gallons is a bit much on a bike. We also changed out the other engine battery...I guess we should have done both back at Aqua Yacht (thanks Tex).

One of our stops was in Tarpon Springs which was a big Greek sponging town back in the day. Today they still do some sponging but it is really a touristy kind of town with some great Greek food. I remember going there as a kid and it doesn't seemed to have changed much.

  

 While we had the car we went south to Bradenton Beach to meet up with our friends Vickie and Bryan who were down here visiting relatives. You may remember them from our Nashville trip this past summer. This was our first visit with friends from "back home" since we started the trip. I'm sure there will be more when we hit the keys. Of course we were able to find a dive bar during our visit.

While in Dunedin we were also paid a visit by Jill's cousin Larry and his wife Marge who live in Lakeland FL. It was nice to catch up since we hadn't seen them in several years.

The first Saturday we were here they had their lighted boat parade. There were some pretty impressive entry's. Some of the boats had more lights than the houses around here.

We also to advantage of the car to run over to Tampa and spend an afternoon in Ybor City. This is the home to the old cigar industry section of Tampa and has several nice restaurants and cigar shops. One sign really caught my attention....a couple of these and I'm ready for another gulf crossing!

It was very nice to be in one place for awhile and really relax but after 2 weeks it was time to get moving again. We are now in Punta Gorda on a mooring ball for a few days before heading through Pine Island Sound toward Marco Island and eventually Marathon where we will stay for 2 months. A strong cold front came through last night (only 73 today) and the winds are going to be pretty strong till Monday so we'll just have to rough it out here....shucks. We'll update on the trip from Dunedin south when we have better wifi.

If we don't post before we'd like to wish all of our friends, family and followers a Merry Christmas!!