Jax, St. Augustine Road Trip

26-27 January 2018

After mostly paperwork on Friday I had a good plan so we went out to dinner at Bennie's Red Barn. They opened in 1954 on St. Simons Island and I'm pretty sure they haven't redecorated or changed their menu since. Think of literally a big barn with kind of a Dirty Dancing era vibe. We had ribeyes (Pittsburgh style) that were good. The huge fireplace was nice on such a cool evening.

On Saturday we headed down to Jacksonville to check out the local boat show and some marinas. We'd like to start moving south from Brunswick, but we may need to park the boat somewhere for at least a couple weeks for a quick trip back to Arizona. The boat show was kind of a bust for us. It was completely powerboats, which was not a surprise, but at least it had a few of the common equipment vendors and potential marinas.

The first marina we hit was our second choice for hiding out during hurricane season. Ortega Landing  was pretty new and very nice. They are just off the St. Johns upriver from downtown Jax. They did surprisingly well during Hurricane Irma.

We still had most of the day left so we decided to head down to St. Augustine. We had heard they were hit pretty hard during Irma. On the way up to Brunswick on the boat last year we had scooted thru the Bridge of Lions after filling up at the fuel dock.

The docks in the foreground were beat pretty bad (or missing) but the other one was okay. The mooring field was open and had room. These big white birds are all over the place.

We had gone to a boating seminar in StA a few years ago. It was a very rainy day so we didn't stray far or stay after. Unbeknownst to us we missed the show. There is a touristy area down by the marina and the fort. Kind of like New Orleans if they dumped a whole lot of money on it combined it with a renaissance festival (or rather on this weekend, a pirate festival).

The narrow, pedestrian friendly streets make it convenient and fun. We could definitely spend a little time here. We had dinner in Jax at a place called Gilberts Social, then coffeed up and headed back to Brunswick.

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Finally Back to the Boat

10 -25 January 2018

After just about exactly two months away we finally got back to the boat. The topsides were very dirty, but other than that everything looked pretty good. Some folks in the marina still had Christmas lights up on their boats.

It was cold and colder in Brunswick, which on the water can be brutal. We're still not well set up for cold weather on the boat. The rear unit in the boat is a heat pump, but other than the back cabin (which we use mostly for storage) it only has one small vent into the back of the galley. So we've never run it for heat only for cooling (really dehumidification). The forward unit we replaced in 2016 and is now just air conditioning. Heat pumps don't work that well at these temperatures, anyway.

What we do have is a little electric ceramic heater, but with much of anything else on the 120v circuit the breaker blows. Heather got me a 12v electric blanket last year which was a lifesaver on a couple of nights. At times I had so many sweats on I felt like I was wearing a sleeping bag. In spite of this, after a few days on the boat I was finally coming out of my cold. Of course, Heather with her teacher's tiger blood never really caught it. While huddled under blankets we schemed on scooting farther south next winter after hurricane season, maybe as far south as Vero Beach. It's about 10 degrees warmer there, but still above the outrageous south Florida docking prices.

Everyone knows the secret to boating is to keep the water on the outside, so the boat is practically waterproof. I was not as familiar with a side effect of this, that any water in the inside of the boat also tends to stay inside. Cooking, boiling water for hot chocolate and tea, even just breathing puts quite a bit of moisture in the air that has to go somewhere. This becomes critical as the boat cools down because the moisture will condense on metal hardware around the hatches and such then rain back down. So what's better than being cold - cold and wet! Fortunately, by the second week we were back the weather started warming up to where what had been the highs were now the lows.

Chelsea has continued to have test and procedures. Some aspects are already a little better, but some symptoms are still keeping her from being anywhere near 100% every day. Not fun. More results should be available after the most recent test completes later this week.

We had bags and bags of mail and other paperwork we had been dragging around for thousands of miles, and we're finally at the point where we just have to get things cleaned up before we can get on the move, much less leave the country for the Bahamas. I started wading through it a little bit each day. Adulting is rarely fun and I'm out of practice.

Please note that the final date for this post matches the publish date - I'm caught up! That just shows how much I really hate paperwork.

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New Year's Day through Tallahassee

01-10 January 2018

We woke up in San Antonio on a very cold New Year's Day. We headed east across Texas again,
zoomed across the Mississippi bridge this time, then had dinner at Parrain's on the Baton Rouge side. It was excellent and a much needed break. Since Heather was taking over driving duties I even had a couple of their specialty drinks - tasty but lethal. I wasn't much help navigating back to the freeway.

Back in the car after dinner, Heather drove on to Biloxi. We stayed at the Palace Casino, which is nice, cheap, and non-smoking (again remembering the nest egg principle). Had a good breakfast in the casino cafe in the morning, then back out into the cold, but with only a half day of driving to Tallahassee ahead.

We got to Tallahassee mid-afternoon and eventually unloaded the last of Chelsea's stuff, plus a couple of suitcases and such we didn't want any more.

The primary concern for this visit was to address the issues that kept Chelsea from traveling over the holidays. They seem to be mostly intestinal issues similar but not identical to those she overcame a few years ago with the help of the Mayo Clinic in Phoenix. A lot changed over a relatively short period of time after she finished her thesis last summer. This was exciting but also stressful to some degree - moving, new places, new people, new food (breaded and deep fried green beans are my new favorite vegetable), and the stress of the new doctoral program. She has been doing the work, but there's questions about her ability to keep their pace. A lot of changes.

Her boyfriend Travis has been doing everything to take care of her. He has a new job now so it's tough to juggle with Chelsea's medical appointments. After we arrived she had had one major procedure and was doing a little better, with solid plans for some additional tests and procedures to try and lock down what's going on in her gut.

I had been flirting with a cold since San Antonio and I finally went down after a few days in Tally. In spite of that, after about a week there we headed back to Brunswick to see the boat for the first time in two months.

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Between Christmas and New Year's Day

26-31 December 2017

We picked up Madi's boyfriend Koji at the El Paso airport on the 26th. He works for UPS, so there is no taking a break until Xmas is over. He brought on the plane several Japanese cakes and other deserts for us to try. Koji in turn was re-introduced to the wonders of green chili. We had another stocking opening that night.

After a few more days of eating and visiting we had to take Madi and Koji back to the El Paso airport on the 30th. I had to take them in Chris' car because the Land Cruiser was stuffed with Chelsea's makeup table and bench, an office chair, a small trampoline, and as Steve Martin would say, some dumb stuff too. At least it wasn't in our storage unit anymore. To make it all fit I had to remove the third row seats, perhaps permanently. I could only see out a small sliver of the back window, but that was still better than a trailer.

Having just driven Chris' car to El Paso then immediately back to Las Cruces, we left Las Cruces for the second time that morning, this time headed a little farther east to San Antonio. Heather and my sister Rebecca were both born at the Lackland AFB hospital a few years apart. I hadn't been back to San Antonio since the 60s and had very few memories of the area, and none of the Riverwalk. It's been on my list for a while to get back. The plan was to stay for a couple of days so we could be at the Riverwalk for New Year's Eve.

Poor planning on our part in a couple of ways. First of all, before we arrived we were unaware that this was also a tricentennial celebration. I'm glad we had made hotel reservations some time ago. On the other hand, we didn't make any dinner reservations, and it was damn cold. After wandering into a couple packed restaurants and shown the door we ended up at the Hyatt Regency bar, which worked out just fine. We shared a table with a couple of interesting locals celebrating some cancer victories.

As a longer term note, after living 15 minutes from a major hub for a few decades, being up to an hour away from a secondary airport was not awesome. Not a dealbreaker, but I think that goes on our list of issues when we're looking to land somewhere more permanently.

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Up to Christmas Day

17-25 December 2017

We got back to Las Cruces late afternoon on the 17th, having been gone only a little more than 30 hours on our Roswell/Carlsbad loop. We got back to Xmas preparations as shipping deadlines loomed. Chelsea ended up staying in Tallahassee because she wasn't feeling well.

We picked up Madi late on the 23rd at the El Paso airport, not getting back into the house until after midnight. After catching up for a couple hours I had to get to bed. Everyone else didn't give up until about 4a, just before my alarm started going off. I had a long day planned for Xmas Eve.

My family's mostly in Prescott, and this is the first time in decades Heather and I haven't had a base of operations between there and Las Cruces. I was going to make this trip with Chelsea, but she was back in Tallahassee.

It was still dark and cold as I gassed and coffeed up on the way out of town. I was approaching Lordsburg NM when the sun came up. I hit Mesa late morning with picture a little stuff to drop off at the storage unit, and to load the last of Chelsea's stuff to take back east with us after the holidays.  I caught some lunch then headed to north Phoenix and checked into a hotel. I cleaned up a little but despite my best intentions didn't have enough time left for a nap because I wanted to be in Prescott by 4p. Up the hill I went.

Chelly and Chad have been gracious in hosting Xmas Eve for the last few years.

After things were winding down Chad was kind enough to make some of his nuclear coffee to help me get back down the hill to my hotel room. I wanted a head start so on Xmas day I could be back to Las Cruces by mid day. Six hundred  miles so far in about 18 hours, all on 3 hours sleep.

I didn't set an alarm because I wanted to get all the sleep I needed to do it again in the morning. I hit the road about 9a, gassed up south of Phoenix at the casino, and didn't stop again until McDs breakfast again in Benson. One last fillup and I was back in Cruces early afternoon. Counting returning to LC from the ElP airport about 1100 miles in a little more than 30 hours. We had a great Christmas dinner then opened presents and stockings. Merry Christmas! Hope everyone had a good holiday.

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Carlsbad Caverns

17 December 2017

We drove thru the town of Carlsbad, which has a little more than half the population of Roswell. We got to the caverns via the winding, two-lane entrance road. The caverns really are in the middle of nowhere.

The entrance is pretty dramatic. In the third shot below shot there is mist rising up towards the light.

Once below I took way too many pictures. A couple below will have to do.

Not bad for an iPhone 7 with a little post processing. If you're anywhere near here, you need to go.

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To Carlsbad

17 December 2017

In the morning we had breakfast at the Cowboy Cafe. They had good food and the kind of atmosphere I remember growing up in Prescott.

On the way out of Roswell we hit McDonalds for some drinks. Even they were in on the UFO theme.

We headed south to Carlsbad.

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