Happy Holidays from Fort Lauderdale!

We've parked Neverland in a marina in Fort Lauderdale for a few days while Jim goes to Wilmington DE for Christmas with family and I go to spend a few days with my son Jake in Mexico City. Here's a quick catch up, with mostly photos :-)

After a super cold night (37 degrees!!) on a mooring ball at Titusville and a great breakfast with friends who live there, Murph and Karen, to warm up in the morning, we spent a day at the Kennedy Space Center. Jim liked it a lot, as you can see here.

Then we continued down the waterway, wrapped in several laters of clothes and blankets. Luckily it began to warm up the next day.

We decided to pull into a slip at Cocoa Village Marina to be able to plug in our little heater at night. The best thing in Cocoa is the generations-old Travis Hardware store, a unique institution, I must say, for all things a hardware could ever carry, from massive to tiny. Jim is standing beside a giant wrench (selling for $1,200) and then holding a tack for comparison (69 cents a pound).

This is a photo of the fourth generation Travis to own the store.  I liked the sign about hurricane supplies.

A sunset from where we anchored just off the ICW one night.

Next stop, Vero Beach, where we spent a couple of weeks on a mooring ball at the municipal marina.  Our good friends Sharon and Greg have bought a wonderful house nearby, and it was a real treat to share dinners and movies and walks with them. One photo below is of us having breakfast together in town. Another is of a makes-you-smile mailbox was on the walk from the marina to their place. The neighborhood is lovely, with many ancient live oaks with Spanish moss gracing the properties.

We went to the holiday parade in town with Sharon and Greg and it was a BIG deal.  Everybody was in the parade, even a local cement truck decorated with colored lights.

There was also a parade of lights on the water one night. Almost every boat had music playing and many, many days later I'm unfortunately still stuck with "I Want a Hippopotamus For Christmas" repeating on a loop in my head.

Snoopy took up residence at the marina...

We were on mooring ball #1, which is right beside this beautiful bridge. In addition to being in the perfect spot for the Parade of Lights, we had front row seats for sunsets almost every night, and rowing teams as they glided by.

Lots of cruisers stop here and stay a while - Vero Beach is affectionately known as "Velcro Beach" for that reason.  The dinghy dock is always very busy!

This is one of Greg and Sharon's favorite restaurants and one day as we walked by there was a wedding party going on. Maybe this car was rented for the occasion?

Another cold day on the water. Coats, hats and gloves with morning coffee!

This guy has the right idea - soak up some winter sun while someone else does the holiday shopping.

One of the nights on which we had an excellent dinner at Greg and Sharon's, Greg had made baguettes! They were wonderful and I am SO IMPRESSED!!

Eventually we tore ourselves away from Velcro Beach and continued down the waterway, spending several nights in a row anchored in various convenient spots. The lighthouse below is beside my least favorite bridge on the east coast at Jupiter. The bridge must be very old and it's sort of cranky. I'm never sure if its going to go all the way up or not, which makes me pretty nervous.

The bridges get more and more plentiful as one continues south and the coastal population gets more dense. The bridges are such a pain to get through, usually opening on the hour and half hour, that we usually go "outside" (ie out an inlet, down the coast on the Atlantic ocean, then back in at another inlet) to avoid them. But lately the weather has been iffy and so we've stayed on the ICW. Some of the bridges are very handsome, or even fanciful.

Now we're in Fort Lauderdale. Last night there was a beautiful full moon and I took this photo as we walked along the beach.

That's it for now. Back at ya in 2019 - Happy Holidays!