After nearly two months of being “tied” to this delightful historic downtown next to the City of Fort Myers Yacht Basin, we are back on the water. It feels good! We will miss our time with marina friends, road trips in our own car, city walks to the Lee County Library, walks on the beach, Goodwill Boutique, and Scoops on First, festivals, parades and the Farmer’s Market... and on and on.
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| Visiting with Wally's sister April in Naples |
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| Night on the town at "Scoops on First" |
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| Docktails at Patty and Jack's |
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| Early morning at Ft Myers Beach |
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| A reunion with long-time RV friends Robert and Betsy |
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| Snow in the NC Mountains |
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| The animals at The Black Mountain Home |
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| Tom and Cheryl Campbell celebrate 35 yrs of giving to children |
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| Downtown celebration of St Patrick's Day |
We are working our way through the Everglades to Marathon in the Florida Keys, dropping the hook each night. It’s like living on your own island. Our first night was spent in Smokehouse Bay... a very metropolitan anchorage. We were 2 stones throw away from the shops of the Esplanade with lively music emanating from CJ’s and Mango’s Bistro. (After 30 minutes of non-stop dancing, we were contented to stand back and watch the fancy footwork on the patio!) Mansion-sized homes surrounded us the rest of the way around the basin. A short dingy-ride away, Winn-Dixie offered us a huge marketplace for completing our provisioning.
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| Mother Osprey and chicks |
For Days 2 and 3 we positioned ourselves further along in the Marco Island waterway. This allowed us to join the throngs of people who gathered on the last Sunday of March in the tiny town of Goodland, Florida to celebrate the “Dance to the Music” season at Stan’s Idle Hour as it drew to a close for 2016-2017. We attemped a bit of dancing after we each enjoyed a savory “cheeseburger in paradise” and an ice-cold beer. Fun!
Today we had to wait until mid-morning to pull up our anchor due to the skinny water that we’ll be cruising in. On a rising tide, we’ll be seeing 3 1/2 feet of water at 8 am become 7 1/2 feet by 1 pm. We have a shallow draft boat. Summertime draws only 3 1/2 feet, so we can proceed through water that some deeper draft boats can’t. Today is a perfect sub-tropical day... 80 degrees, blue skies with puffy clouds, a light wind from the SE, a riffle of water on the Gulf. Nobody is in sight but us and a few small fishing boats. When we arrived at our Russell Pass anchorage, two jaunty sailboats were already there. No dinghies were in evidence. Our assumption was that those aboard had made their way up to Everglades City. Tide plays a big part in whether a boat should (could) make the run from Russell Pass through Indian Key Pass to Everglades City. Two years ago we anchored here in Russell Pass and dinghied the 4 mile channel to the Rod and Gun Club for a delicious lunch on their veranda. Today we planned to replicate that event. It was not to be. Our 15 year old 8 hpr Yamaha outboard motor resisted operating at high speed. This unresponsive behavior had occurred a year ago just as we were about to begin The Great Loop. A repair shop in Fort Myers solved the problem; we replaced the original gas tank and filled it with fresh fuel. It worked superbly in Canada’s Bad River in late July as we bucked the rush of inland water flowing into Georgian Bay. But now, the past 6 months of little or no use caused carburetor failure. Wally removed the carburetor from the engine and spent more than an hour fine-tuning it on our back porch table top... to no avail. We took our requisite nap, I got a little tear-y about missing the moment, then we made a special pasta dish with our friend Tricia’s homemade pesto for dinner. Every bit as delicious as the Rod and Gun Club dinner, no doubt! Around 7 o’clock, just before dusk, the two couples from the sailboats returned. With 2 hpr motors, they had made the run up the channel with the incoming tide, and made the run down the channel with the outgoing tide. They stopped by to say “hello”. They were Canadians, well familiar with the North Channel. To our delight, one couple serenaded us with Big Band music as they played clarinet and keyboard from their sailboat’s cockpit. We applauded each song and even went up to our upper deck and danced next to the dinghy for some numbers. The hour-long performance ended with “Lullaby and Goodnight”... how great is that! At 8 o’clock we returned to our back porch and ate the apple-peach dump cake that had been baking in the oven during the musical interlude. Yum yum. All’s well that ends well.
Created By Darcy O. Campbell
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