Thursday May 24: At Anchor on the St. Johns River

Imagine our surprise to arrive at the marina Tuesday morning to find the bottom work completed and the boat in the water! I love this place - not only was the work completed at the quoted price but completed early! We took the opportunity to load a new freezer onto the boat (we thought we were going to have to push it up a ladder). The old one died just before we left the boat for 3 weeks. Imagine what it would have been like if it happened while we were gone - yuck! And off I go to the other marina to spend one more night (Steve drove the car over).

The rest of Tuesday was spent finishing up odds and ends - like grocery shopping - while we had the car for one last day. Checking out of our hotel at which we spent the last 2 nights (instead of trying to stay on the boat while it was out of the water) was the last thing on the agenda. Steve was up early Wednesday morning to get the car back to the airport. The ride back to the boat: cost $0 - senior price to ride the bus system around Jacksonville! This as opposed to the $45 cab ride to GET to the airport. Now we know :-) Anyway, we ended up traveling SOUTH on the St. Johns River instead of continuing north. Everyone says we really need to so this, so we did. First stop: our home town of Green Cove Springs! Nice dock, nice playground and we found the spring from which the town derived it's name. We originally had anchored about 4 miles away but the wind didn't die as forecast, anchor was dragging (twice), so we went with plan B.

The river this morning was flat and travel very pleasant. Spotted a couple of eagles on the waterway markers - guess Alaska has nothing over Florida!

Once at our anchorage near Deep Creek, the dinghy came down. First time since before Steve broke his arm last August so it was fun when it started on the 3rd pull. We were in search of alligators .... and found them! They didn't like us being around though and slinked into the water very quickly.

Trees lining the creek were filled with spanish moss and air ferns - definitely were like out of Jurassic Park! Also spotted (on a different creek) was a spoonbill ?. The only one we have ever seen - quite pink in color although the picture doesn't really show it. Strange clouds were moving in but we think they were so dark because the larger cloud to the west of them was blocking the sun from shining on them.

Back to the boat - a quick swim in the 88 degree water (crazy warm) and grilling on the boat for dinner. Steve did manage to bring up 3 clams in his quest for blue crabs but decided maybe eating them wouldn't be the best thing. Personally, I thought at least one of us shouldn't be deathly sick and was going to decline the feast :-) Sunset.