Happy New Year - time for a ride....

We haven't published much in the past couple of weeks.   The weather leveled out and became more tolerable but still often cool and windy.  

We made a trip home to Michigan for Christmas and returned just before new year.  

Now that we are settling back in we are getting out more to explore.   We have our boat stationed in Cortez for the full month of January and we are venturing out via dinghy or ebike to see what we can see. 


Yesterday I rode the ebike across to Anna Maria Island (AMI), up to Holmes Beach, back across the bridge on Gulf Drive to the multiple preserves on the north end of  Palma Sola Bay.  

First there was a trail (bikeable) in Perico Preserve followed by many more trails in The Robinson Preserve.  

Robinson Preserve goes all of the way to the bay (Tampa Bay) and is filled with kayak routes one can explore. 

When I reached Tampa Bay the birds were feeding off a shoal not far from shore.  Hundreds of them diving into the water to grab fish. 
It was a beautiful day and the view of the 275 skyway bridge was spectacular from shore. 
All in all I think I rode about 25 miles (had to switch batteries to make it back to the boat).  

We are having some new zippered windows made for our boat while we are here so we can open them and see through them.  The old ones were cracked and scratched making it a bit problematic to cruise with the windows closed.   Canvas isn't cheap.  We will do the full set when home but it became necessary to replace three panels because we were looking through windows that were taped up or scratched up causing frustration. 

This is the area biked yesterday (plus a mandatory stop for ice cream east of the boat at the beginning of the ride).  60s is not warm - or at least as warm as we would like ..  but it's tolerable with a light jacket and sweat pants...

It's supposed to rain six of the next 10 days here.   Rain isn't great when you don't have canvas windows and transit is a bike.... But it's not snowing!  We've also both been fighting colds all week.   Joy. 

Happy New Year to everyone.   May your 2024 be enjoyable and blessed. I suspect it will have challenges we don't forsee... Every year seems to bring with it a new set of "opportunities" in our increasingly dysfunctional world...

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Orillia ON to Severn Falls ON

Image
We are within sight of the last lock of our trip!    Today we left Orillia early under grey skies and wind. At least it wasn't raining.  We made our way to the north end of Lake Couchiching (Water with Many Winds in the native language) and into the narrows of the canal.   We soon came up on a railroad bridge.  And the sign (which is a new thing for us) said the next opening would be between 11am and 11:30am.   But it was just a little after 10am.   Ouch.  Trying to keep the boat in the middle of the channel for an hour with 20mph winds.... Not easy.  Fortunately there were trees and the trains blocked more while we waited.   We dropped anchor and used the engines to keep the boat reasonably straight in the channel (and off the huge rocks lining both sides).  Eventually the long trains stopped and they opened the bridge for us.   We've had it with locks and bridges ...  (We ...
Read more

Youngs Point ON to Fenelon Falls ON

Image
We left Youngs Point lock wall this morning about 8am with two hours of cruising to get to our first lock.   What a beautiful day.   We had two lakes to cross.  Clear Lake (which is clear)...   And Stoney Lake which is.... Granite.  The beaches are done and the navigation is critical.  It's a common thing to have solid granite just a few inches below the surface on both sides of the boat just 10-20 feet away.  As long as we are in the designated channel it's fine....   But prop repair and replacement is a big business here... Still... Driving past this kind of scenery all day would never get old... (Until it froze).  Eventually we journeyed through four locks today... And up to a fifth.    Lock 28, 30, 31, 32... And sitting just under lock 33.   Yes we are aware 29 is missing.  28 and 29 used to be a set of two (a flight lock) but in the 1960s they automated it (hydraulic controls rathe...
Read more

Ludington MI to Grand Haven MI - and Gold Looper Status!

Image
We are back at North Shore Marina!   The place we started and the place our boat calls home.  We have a new slip (next to where we were last year) and we have a port tie which is best for our boat.   How we tie up here will take some getting used to... We left Ludington today and it was a bit breezy (15-20 knot winds).  It was our best day to get home in the next five though so we went.   You can't see it but the waves were coming up high enough to splash us all the way on the top deck.   Lumpy for the first 30 miles.  Until we reached silver lake sand dunes.  Then we could turn about 30 degrees and quarter the waves a little.  The white caps died down also.  It was kind of foggy today so we couldn't see very far.  More of a haze as it didn't affect navigation but made pictures difficult.  That's the light house at Little Sab...
Read more