We Hate to Leave!

Tonight is our last night here at Sebastian Inlet and I think Dave and I are both having separation anxiety already. It's so funny -we've both always said we're not really "ocean" people - that we prefer inland lakes and rivers. But being right on the ocean for the past six weeks has kind of changed our minds. We spent two weeks on Pine Island, then two weeks at Jonathon Dickinson, and now two weeks here - and I have to say these six weeks have been just great! We haven't been literally ON the ocean, but within a few miles of it, and it definitely has some "pluses". There are just SUCH cool places within a few minutes drive. And we had one of our favorites on Saturday - our day at Cocoa Beach. Actually Saturday was just a GREAT day from beginning to end. We drove up to Cocoa Beach, which was a very easy run - maybe 30 or 35 miles - so I could do my AVA walk. Dave took his bike along and rode on the beach for miles and miles while I did my walk. The walk itself was really nice - about half of it was along the beach (gorgeous!) and the other half was along a combination of commercial businesses on A1A and a little bit of residential areas. But, my God, what a pretty beach! It is very wide - much wider than the beach down here (although I have NO idea why that would be!) and we deliberately went there on Saturday because we like the beaches when there are a lot of people to look at. It was a beautiful day - mid-80's - and the beaches were packed, so we both really enjoyed our individual time. When we met back at the car, Dave asked me if I had gone out onto the Cocoa Beach Pier. When I told him I had not, and he told me how much he liked it, we got my bike off the rack (we had brought my bike along this time because I've been having a little trouble with my hip and thought I'd ride if I couldn't walk) and we rode to the Pier together. What a COOL place. It's this old wooden pier with a number of bars and stuff along the length of it. It's absolutely impossible to describe, but it was just a WONDERFUL place to get a drink and sit and watch the people on the beach and then go out and watch the fishermen and the surfers. We had a GREAT time. (I'm bummed because I didn't bring my camera along, but, as with many places, pictures probably wouldn't have captured the "spirit" of the place anyway!)

After we left the beach, we headed home because there was a free concert in the park that night. The concert was right outside, under a full moon, from 7:00 to 9:00. The band was called The Night People and we got SUCH a kick out of them - there were 4 guys and a girl and (other than the girl, who actually was very good) they were kind of a bunch of burned out old hippies. The "leader" of the band hardly rose out his stupor during the first half of the "concert" (and I use that term VERY loosely!) but somehow (by magic....?!) he was totally re-charged for the second half. Dave INSISTS he partook of "something" during the break - after that he was all like-ZZTOP! In fact, at 9:00 the girl singer had to sort of force him to stop, because he was ready to "rock and roll all night". What fun - Dave and I even went out once and danced on the grass "dance floor" by ourselves. Overall, a really fun, fun day.

Sunday and Monday were just our last two sort of "goof off" days. I did some walking, made some reservations for next year, went into town, etc. Dave did some biking and fishing and then we loaded up the kayaks on top of the car and made one last run up to our favorite little bar - The Sebastian Beach Inn. I've attached a couple pictures of the SBI just for fun, although they really don't do it justice.

As I mentioned, I've already made reservations for the last two weeks of February 2012 at Long Point park, which is a GREAT county park about two miles up the road from the state park. I HOPE to make reservations back here again for the first half of February, but I can only make those eleven months in advance (as opposed to one year in advance for the county park). Hopefully it will all work out, but otherwise I'll just fill in the blanks any way I can. I was amazed when I made the reservations today - out of about 200 sites at this county park, there were only about 10 left for the timeframe that I'm looking at - and this is a FULL YEAR out into the future. This is SUCH a popular area - and the more snowbirds who decide to come this far south for the winter, the worse it's going to get! You definitely need to plan WAY in advance if you want to get into some of these areas, that's for sure.

So tomorrow we head up north about 100 miles, to Blue Springs (which is just north of Orlando). We were there last year and we know we like the park a lot, but both of would probably be very happy to stay down here for another few weeks! I'm throwing a few more pictures of the park onto this blog, but once again, none of them really can convey how nice it is down here. God - we are SO lucky to have these wonderful experiences - we are so very grateful. Next blog - Blue Springs!