Did someone mention ice cream? After our dinner Thursday night at The Moose Lodge, we all headed down the street for some ice cream. Everyone had a tough time making a decision, as you can tell. After dessert Ed and Trude saw us off on our dinghies as we headed back to our boats and they went back to their marina.

Did someone mention free trolley ride? We found it Friday morning and rode up and down Anna Maria Island, seeing the sights. It is a great island community, with no high rise condos. I'm not sure what the driver thought we were doing, but we had fun working it into our busy schedule. After lunch, we returned to the ice cream parlor for a treat in air conditioned comfort and, with the owner's consent, played Hand and Foot for a couple of hours. We had also noticed that later that night The SR 64 Bluegrass Band was playing in an outside venue. After watching the sunset(no green flash), we listened to great music for awhile. The banjo player could really play and had several solo segments in each song.

We pulled our anchors Saturday morning and headed to the Otter Key anchorage at Sarasota. We stayed here several weeks ago on our trip north and is a great place to stop. As expected, there was time for two games of Pegs 'N' Jokers in the afternoon.

Sunday morning will see us go separate ways, at least for the day. Patty and I are taking the ICW route back to Cape Haze, a trip of about seven hours. Tom and Maureen on Cantagree plan to try to go out Big Sarasota Pass and with NOAA's help, go down the Gulf to Boca Grande Pass and then up to Cape Haze, a trip of about nine hours. Because we don't anticipate being up here in the near future, and with the extra time involved, we're taking the "short cut". There will be a third boat waiting for us at Cape Haze and which is providing dinner. It seems like we are always eating. Maybe we are.