Day 117: Sunday, December 30, 2012

Port to Port: Fort Myers Beach

Underway: 0:00 am      Motor Off: 0:00 pm      Miles Traveled: 0      Stayed At: Marina

Mile to Mile: The week went way too fast. Its’ already time to say goodbye to the girls – we‘ve had an amazing time exploring our little piece of the Suncoast with them. It’s always hard to say goodbye when we don’t know when we’ll be able to see each other again. Maybe we can figure out a way to meet up again on the east coast – how does New York City sound?

I dropped Jess off at the airport early in the morning for her long trip back to San Francisco. We dropped Sarah off a little before lunch but not before another Target run to look for more after-Christmas deals. It was perfect timing because now everything was 75% off and we were able to return some items we bought at 50% off and buy the same items at 75% off. We probably saved another $20+ so it pays to be persistent. And now Sarah was satisfied that she got the best deals possible -until next year at this time at least.

Since we have a car again, we might as well do some exploring. So we headed west toward the beach again and stopped at a huge flea market – they say they have almost 2,000 vendors. You could buy everything from 1970’s stereo equipment to puppies to bicycles. We didn’t find anything that we could live without, though. That is one advantage of living on a small boat – its’ self-limiting how much stuff you can buy and fit onboard and we are already well past that limit. We did put in probably 8,000 steps, though, going up and down the aisles so at least we got some exercise.

We decided a return trip to Dunedin might be fun so we called our friends on Spiritus to see if they wanted to go out to dinner and visit – we were sure they would still be there. Amazingly, after 5+ weeks enjoying their stay at the municipal marina, they had moved on and were anchored out in the anchorage on Longboat Key near Moores’ Stone Crab restaurant where we stopped several weeks ago. And this was on our way home. And they were not busy in the afternoon. And they would love to have us stop by for a BBQ. Sounds like a plan to me.

So, although we were sad to have said goodbye to Jess and Sarah this morning, it was amazing (as always) to visit and laugh and share a great meal with Eddy and Linda on Spiritus just a few hours later – this must be the definition on ying and yang – the good and bad trying to balance their way out each day. We had a blast catching up on our respective adventures and are already making plans to try to meet up again somewhere around Fort Myers Beach later this month. We can’t wait.