The trip bringing the boat back from DeLand was also my sister Kathy's retirement cruise. That makes 2 retirement cruises in 1 year. Either we're on to a great idea or it's just that all our friends and family are getting older...not sure. Anyway, all the pictures in this post were taken by Kathy except the first and last. The first is mine because I have the longest arms.....
We left DeLand on Labor day weekend but the St. John's river had pretty light boat traffic except around the few towns along the way. This is cruising "Old Florida" and really back to nature until one gets closer to Jacksonville. The scenery along the way is fantastic but we never did get that gator picture, plenty of birds though! Like this eagle....
And plenty of Osprey.
Along with the elusive Rosetta Spoonbill. One of only 2 pink birds found in Florida (can you guess the other?)
It only took 2 days travel to arrive back in civilization and Jacksonville. We stayed again at The Marina at Ortega Landing, we really enjoy the area. It's located on the Ortega River just a bit off the St John's and a few miles from downtown. You have to pass though a very narrow draw bridge on the way and the day we left they were doing some work and could only open 1 side. It's a heck of a way to get your blood pumping in the morning!
Once past downtown the river is pretty industrial with many shipping terminals along the way as well as some really well done graffiti.
We timed our departure with the outgoing tide and it was an easy run downriver to the ICW. It was good timing as shortly after turning south we heard a "securite" call in a very proper British accent announcing the arrival of the HMS Queen Elizabeth in the St. Johns river. I've never encountered an aircraft carrier in a passing situation and didn't want to start now...it would have been cool though!
We mostly took our time heading south and spent more than one night at the towns we stopped at. Our goal was shorter travel days and more sightseeing. Most of the towns we stopped at you've seen before in this blog so I won't bore you with repeat pictures. We did get some shots of interesting things we hadn't seen before. The first was an odd thing at sunset in Daytona. While watching and photographing the sunset....
If we turned 180 degrees and looked toward the East the light made a strange "V" in the sky.
Anyone seen this before? No, it's not coming up from land, it definitely tied into the sunset and was gone when the sun was gone. Please chime in with a comment below if you know what causes this. In all our travels and all our sunset pics we've never seen it before.
The next odd thing we saw was in Titusville. We had gone to dinner and come back after sunset. It was dark as we approached the boat and were astounded to see the 4 A/C discharges exiting the boat were glowing neon blue!! It took a few seconds to realize we were looking at Bioluminescence
We had heard about it before but had never seen it. We quickly moved to the bow of the boat and you could see fish glowing blue as they swam. I took an unused dock-line and tossed one end in the water...it looked like a glowing blue snake as I pulled it back in...amazing!! We tried many ways to get a good picture without much success. Kathy was able to get one from inside the boat, ingenious!! Click on it to get a better view.
As we got close to Stuart we decided we were having too much fun to head home and continued south to spend a few days at Ft. Lauderdale. After the brief detour we headed back to Stuart and turned west toward Lake Okeechobee and home. The scenery was soon rural again and a big change from the hi-rises we had seen along the coast.
And passing the Fort Denaud swing bridge on the last day.
It was a great trip and hopefully Kathy had as much fun as we did!! We did make it home in time for the grand opening of Southern Latitudes and have been taking friends and family there ever since. If you ever get a chance to visit Naples and enjoy good beer & wine be sure to check them out!
Soooooo that's where we are for now. Been busy visiting friends and going to boat shows (just looking). In a few weeks we're having Chasing 80 hauled out for a bottom cleaning and a few other projects. Our next trip is back to the Keys for a month or so starting in early February. After that....who knows... The blog should be pretty quiet until then unless something cool happens.
Until next time...Merry Christmas!!! And remember, down here even the skinny squirrels get into the Christmas spirit....Ho, Ho, Ho...
