Warmer

 1/24-Vero Beach

   We’ve had a couple of busy days. Yesterday we met up with our friend Deb who had rented a car and went to the McKee Botanical Gardens. Talk about amazing plants! This place was great. There were all kinds of exotic plants. This was an old tourist trap that has since been modernized and taken over by a botanical group. What was once a 80 acre park with monkeys and animals is now a well groomed 18 acre place where they can do research on plants. The best thing though was the world’s largest board. This is a piece of old growth mahogany that is 35’ long 5’ wide and 5” thick. 


   Today we went in and played pickleball. A guy here has a portable net and in the parking lot next door they have a court marked out. We had about 6 people interested in playing so we set it up and had some fun. This was our first time playing pickleball. I had thought it was a game that geezers could play without getting too worked up. I was wrong. Some of these folks are pretty cutthroat. 

   We did have a diver come today and reattach our zinc anode. I had dived under the boat yesterday to check on it and discovered it was gone. So I called the diver and he came today and put one on for $10!! He did it when we were out and he left me a cryptic message on my phone that I think got garbled by auto correct. When I saw him and asked about it he just said it was all good. 

   Anyway it’s finally warm enough to actually jump in the water. There’s still some critters that hang out around here that make me look over my shoulder and not stay in too long. 

   We met up with some friends from way long ago back in Oriental NC who pulled in today. That’s what’s great about this trip. You meet people and then you hop by them then they buzz by you and you meet in the strangest places. We have come across people we met back in Connecticut here. 

   I have a sweatshirt that my niece Emily gave us which features the submarine “Vermont”. Because of this sweatshirt I have met one of the project managers and the other day one of the other engineers who had worked on the boat recognized the sweatshirt. Thanks Em I finally found out what PCU stands for!

   We are inching closer to leaving here as I am now paying for our mooring by the day instead of 4 or 5 days. The wind is lightening up a bit and we are getting kind of anxious to move again. We have enjoyed our stay and have found why they call this Velcro Beach. 

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