Cruising the ICW

Today marked a significant day in our adventure, for me anyway.  Today we crossed the Florida Georgia border.  This is meaningful for me in a number of ways.  First, is that in all my travels in the US, I never was in Georgia.  Not even through Atlanta, where the old joke is that you have to go thru if you're going to Heaven. More importantly though, is that after traveling ~450 miles from Key West we leave a state that I have felt relatively familiar with.  The reality is that it is only the section from Miami to Fort Lauderdale, but still, it is Florida.  Today takes us into uncharted waters for us and an affirmation that our Grand Adventure is solidly underway. We delivered Wendy and Craig from our stop at Amelia Island to Jacksonville Airport yesterday, courtesy of a loaner car from the marina.  That is a nice perk of some of the marinas here that they provide courtesy cars.  Normally used for provisioning runs, but useful for other tasks like airport runs as well. We had a

What a cool place! Certainly a unique part of Florida. St Augustine was the first European settlement in the US, dating from 1565.  Considering the attention that Plymouth gets, with the Pilgrims arriving in 1620, it is very surprising to us that St Aug doesn't get more recognition. As a Spanish settlement, it has a very strong Spanish theme of course, and with our love of Spain, we felt very at home here. We arrived Saint Augustine Monday, the day before Judy's sister Wendy and spouse Craig were due to arrive.  Allowed for a good clean up day and getting prepared for guests for a week.  Wendy and Craig arrived Tuesday late afternoon, with a cool front that had arrived in Northern Florida.  We awoke Wednesday morning to 34F (2C), which was very poor timing for the forward cabin AC/heating unit to give up.  Dealt with that over the next few days but required some extra blankets for a couple of nights. First visits were to scope out the Ponce de Leon hotel, and secure tick