St. Augustine Photo Album (April, 2014)

Our month on a St. Augustine mooring has been a mix of local tourist, local resident, doctor visits and traveling. Our first weekend was spent with Ben and family as they will soon be leaving Florida for California. We enjoyed the last run on his awesome flats boat before selling it, and then we helped get their new motorhome ready for traveling cross country. What an exciting time for them! (I'm trying to stay positive about having them 3000+ miles away.)

The next week, Hilary drove down with the babies so we could take a trip to Mobile. We visited friends and family while Ed did one of his work week trips alone. I visited my dentist for a checkup and caught up with some of my former coworkers. It was so good to see family in Mobile. I can't believe all my great nieces and great nephews are so grown. On the way back, we stopped by and visited the babies' other grandparents in Valdosta. When we returned to St. Augustine, Hilary and the boys stayed on the boat for a few days with us. We were able to get out and walk around St. Augustine one day, but the weather turned on us keeping us boat bound for a full day. I do not recommend this boat model for toddlers. Although the 23-month-old learned quickly about all the step-up and step-down, he still took a few tumbles, and his Nana was a wreck. Mom, on the other hand, took it all in stride and made a great boat mom. The baby was happy anywhere his momma was for the most part, and all-in-all, I was happy to have my girl with me again. It is so fun watching your children be such good parents.
Once the kids left, we went back to our work-a-day on a mooring--work for money, perhaps a little boat maintenance, dinghy in for a walk about town, marina showers, water collecting, etc., and then some reading and bed. It's a quiet, easy, very good life we live. We've done little socializing here as most of the folks are coming in and leaving quickly as they traverse back up north for the summer. The St. Augustine Cruisers Net has regular get-togethers, but we have missed all but one--an interesting presentation by the local Sea Tow company.

Last week we drove to Jacksonville several days in a row to visit our new doctors. We decided this is a central location for annual check-ups and a good place to come if we need any procedures (hopefully, we won't). Also, we've not had good luck using just urgent care. We needed doctors we knew that knew our lifestyle that we could call on from out of town. The research I did on the doctors really paid off. We found all to be very interested in helping us stay healthy while we pursue this crazy nomadic life. We were very pleased with them all, especially our new primary care doctor. He settled my vertigo issue in the office. Turns out it was not the wine, but Benign Paroxysmal Positional Vertigo. He told me the wine would aggravate the vertigo but not cause it in my case. I had read about this and tried the procedures found online on my own, but it turns out there are different procedures for different situations. My doctor had me close my eyes, hold out my arms and walk in place for one minute. I turned 20 degrees to the left in doing so indicating to him what side was affected. He told me to hop up on the table and he manipulated my head in certain directions while timing each maneuver. When I sat up finally, I felt as if I was free falling out of the sky, but within minutes, I was nearly back to normal. I can now look up and turn over onto my right side in bed without the world spinning around. Now for a glass of wine....

We saved our sightseeing for the weekends when we had more time. In addition to walks through all the narrow streets of old St. Augustine, we've explored the Dow Museum of Historic Houses, the Castillo de San Marcos (the fort), and the St. Augustine Lighthouse. While the fort and Dow Museum are a short walk away, Saturday, we decided we needed to walk the two miles to the lighthouse, up the winding staircase to the top of one of the tallest U.S. lighthouses, then back two miles to the marina. It was absolutely worth the effort, and we found that the traffic was so heavy and back up from bridge openings, that we made it to the marina before cars we passed near the lighthouse. Not only is this a beautifully restored and working lighthouse, the Lighthouse Archaeological Maritime Program is in residence there with some fascinating information about their work and interesting work-in-progress displays. Yesterday, we actually dropped the mooring line and headed out in the Atlantic for an afternoon sail with friends Eric and Angie. We love visiting with friends along the way, and it was great that the weather allowed for a beautiful, relaxing day sail with them.

We are now waiting on a weather window to sail from St. Augustine directly to Charleston across the Atlantic. Right now, it looks like next Sunday or Monday will be good to go. We will spend a couple of months there to be near more grandchildren. We can visit when we want, then sleep in our own beds at night without cramping the kids' lives with long term visitors. And what better place to live for a while than Charleston. Again, I pinch myself to make sure this is not a dream. We love this nomadic life.