Pictures: Tammy and Heidi in our cockpit; Jessica, Ken and Dave on New Year's Eve; motorcycle visitors to Dania Beach; Tammy and Little Havana regular (He offered us $20 if we could stump him on state capitols, presidents and dates, or World Series winners in the last 80 years. We couldn't!); our view of Coconut Grove, with spoil islands on the left and right
It seems like a good omen to be celebrating the new year in
warm waters, watching the fireworks over Miami and the Chinese candle lanterns
over our anchorage in Coconut Grove! I’m not sure how they do it but the
candles floated up over the harbor and into the night sky before extinguishing.
At the same time the half-moon was setting down over the skyline of high-rise buildings.
We cooked a dinner on our boat for ourselves and Jessica and Dave from KIANDA.
They brought a great potato salad, a salmon appetizer and champagne for
midnight. We both contributed desserts so we ate well!
We’ve had a great holiday week, good weather and a visit
from Tammy for 5 days starting on Christmas Eve. With Tammy we hopped around
from Dania Beach to Miami Beach to Key Biscayne and back. Tammy likes the beach
and bicycling and we did both, as well as swimming off the boat on one hot day.
Tammy also speaks very good Spanish so on a side trip, by bus, to Little Havana
in Miami she was an interpreter.
While in Key Biscayne we met Tammy’s boyfriend Mike Mangan,
his mom and step-dad. They drove down from the Orlando area where Mike was
visiting. We had a good time getting to know them, taking them out for a boat
ride in Biscayne Bay and serving barbequed shrimp and steak kabobs before they
left.
After Tammy left it was a little too quiet and lonely but
the next day we moved back to Oleta River State Park and caught up on
end-of-year paperwork, read our mail (that was delivered by Tammy), and set up
our next plans. We had never been to Coconut Grove and KIANDA was here waiting
for a mechanic to help them with an engine problem. We decided that they could
use moral support. This is a section of Miami – in fact Miami City Hall is
right here on the waterfront in a building Pan-Am Airlines used to use as a
terminal for a major seaplane operation. There are many restaurants, shops and
parks. As we arrived we saw the last small boats being towed in after a
week-long regatta for youth sailors from 23 countries! Just the kind of place
we could explore and enjoy for a couple of days.
Our anchorage is outside of the mooring area, near a spoil
island. The spoil islands are places where they have dredged and left the
material (sand in this case) as a new island. These have been here for a while
and have palm trees, bushes and grasses on them. Signs on them indicate that
they have been recently cleaned up and are being incorporated into the harbor
as recreation areas.
We will hang around Miami and Biscayne Bay for a while; our
son Pete will be visiting in about two weeks with his girlfriend. We don’t mind
cycling from one resort town to another and then to a National Park!
Tying up loose ends: a website for the Thanksgiving Dinner
at St. Mary’s Georgia is at http://cutterloose.com/?p=2049 Ken is standing in the foreground of the
picture of the buffet table with all the food (click on the pic if you don’t
see him); Heidi is sitting in the background of the second picture of people
eating.
No comments:
Post a Comment