December 14, 2009
Aboard No Boundaries
Our stay in St. Marys, GA, has been a mixed bag. We love the price, but here’s another truth: you get what you pay for. We can use the wifi service “Waterfront” whenever it is working, and that is anybody’s guess. We can use the showers/restrooms, reliably supplied with hot and cold running water, and not much else. There is no laundry in this marina, and there is only one disintegrating Laundromat in the whole town. Grocery stores are miles away.
There are quite good features, over and above the price. We love the landscape – a river with marshes on the shore. We love the songs of the boat-tailed grackles, but we hate the fact that they flock to sailboat rigging in huge numbers, where they eat juniper berries and leave the trash and etcetera on the boat. We enjoy the solitude of this location compared to a marina in the downtown of a large city. We could do without the insects.
The real delight of this location has been the opportunity to reconnect with friends.
Before we came here, we knew that our Harborview friends Mike and Suzanne Pillola, had moved here recently. They invited us to dinner one evening, and we all caught up on the news. That was only the beginning.
While we were visiting my uncle in Pensacola, we received mail from another Harborview couple, Ed and Karen Cogswell, who were cruising into St. Marys that weekend. They were still here when we returned, so we joined them, along with Mike and Sue, for dinner at Trolley’s on the waterfront Monday evening. It wasn’t Havana, but we had a good time, anyway.
Since we were driving to Pensacola anyway, it was easy to make a side trip to Panama Beach City where we visited with Malcolm and Brenda Ameter. We had a wonderful time, and we enjoyed Malcolm’s birthday party. We won’t tell you the number in this blog, but Brenda was really proud of it, and everyone in a ten-mile range of Panama City probably knows already!
Finally, on Tuesday evening, we (Mike, Suzanne, Larry and I) met Roger and Bonnie Ford and Dave and Annie Levigne for dinner at Chilis near the Jacksonville airport. The talking never stopped as we all tried to share news and get news.
We cruise and see all sorts of great sights, but it is still true that friends and family are the best part. We loved visiting with Ray and Elise in Pensacola. They have many bird feeders and large flocks of birds which we enjoyed watching through their big patio doors. They have some serious health problems, but they have wonderful attitudes. They are enjoying life. They don’t sweat the small stuff!
I don’t know how long we will be here, but it’s been lovely to reconnect with so many old friends.
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