Side Trip to Atlanta

Tuesday, January 26 -   Time to catch  up with our blog!  On January 17, we woke up in Dunedin and planned to leave LeeLoo at 6 a.m. to drive to Atlanta to spend two weeks with Carey's father.  As Carey prepared to get off LeeLoo, he noticed that the extremely high tide left us with at least a five foot climb down from LeeLoo onto the finger pier.  Even the finger pier next to LeeLoo was close to being under water.   It was simply not safe to get off LeeLoo with such a high tide.  So what did we do?  We waited for almost two hours before the tide went down enough for us to get off LeeLoo.  And even then it was quite a jump down.  This is one disadvantage to being at a marina with fixed docks - the tide (and the boat) goes up and down and the dock stays in the same place.  What Nancy would give to have our floating docks back again!  We have since ordered a tall step stool that should help with getting off LeeLoo in an extremely high tide.  We still have a lot to learn about when it comes to dealing tides!

While in Atlanta, we remembered what it is like to have winter!  We have been so fortunate to have beautiful, warm Florida weather for so long.  Yes, Atlanta practically shut down to prepare for the possible snow/ice storm.  As it turned out, most of the snow went north of Atlanta although we did get a dusting of the white stuff.  We did feel bad for the folks along the east coast where the storm really hit.

                 A dusting of snow - enough to make us glad we are not in Chicago!

Our plan is to leave for Dunedin on Sunday, January 31.  Our good friends, Hal and Wendy Gilpin (from Hawk Valley Retreat in Galena) are flying to Atlanta Sunday evening to join us for ten days of cruising on LeeLoo.  We will pick them up at the Atlanta airport, then continue south to Dunedin.   We are really looking forward to their visit as we have cruised with them many times before and they are very familiar with LeeLoo.  By February 3 or so, we should finally be on the move again.  Our destination is Ft. Myers via St. Petersburg, Sarasota, Venice, and Pine Island Sound where we hope to anchor for a two nights.  Time to explore more of Florida!