Meant To Be 4 Us: GULFPORT, FT MYERS, MOORE HAVEN

He Said: Heading towards the final 2 weeks. What a journey! We have about 50 weeks behind us and only a couple ahead of us. Our plans are to pull out either late May or the first few days of June. We will keep you posted.

We spent the weekend of May 17 and 18 hanging in Clearwater Beach. We kind of kicked back and watched a few sunsets. We also enjoyed the beautiful beaches of CW Beach. CW Beach has the only 2 story Walgreen’s in the country - hard to believe that’s kind of a big deal. What is going on with our lives??

Sunset on Clearwater Beach

After a couple days in CW it was time to head to Gulfport. We had a great trip to Gulfport. Our good buddies, the Camps, made the trip with us. It was about a 4 hour day on the boat. We anchored out in the waterway and did a great little lunch then finished our cruise in the early afternoon. The 4 of us arrived in mid PM at the marina in Gulfport. It only took a few minutes to throw down a few cold ones with our company. The Camps took us to O’Matty’s Pub - very cool. We had a few cold ones and a few appetizers and away we went. The Camps had dinner plans that eve and a dog that needed relieved so they escaped the bar a little sooner than us. They also left a 2^nd car for the boat trip and had to get it picked up.

The following morning we left for Sarasota. We arrived there in mid afternoon on Tuesday the 20^th. We spent time here with the McDonalds and very much enjoyed it. We spent the nite on a mooring ball which we very close to the marina. We dinghyed in to pay the rent and went to a cute little tiki bar that we went to on our last trip. We only had cocktails and decided to eat on the boat that evening.

Jack at O'Leary's Tiki Bar in Sarasota - a short dinghy ride from the mooring field

By this point in our trip we are traveling a lot of days and spending very few days in a row in any kind of a marina. Having said that, the following morning we headed out to Cape Haze. We had also been here when we came thru last time. This is kind of a laundry, hang out, 1 nite type of stop, and that is what we did. We took a dingy ride to a bar called Rum Bay - very cool. It was about a 30 minute ride with Mr. Dingy. Thank heaven the water was pretty flat and we got back to the marina before dark.

On Thursday morning we prepared ourselves for our trip to Ft. Myers. Earlier in our trip we had been to Ft. Myers Beach - these are 2 very different places. Our trip was about 4 ½ hours and pretty uneventful other than the dolphins putting on a show for us. They have been about the coolest thing to witness the entire year. We never can see enough dolphins. If they only knew the excitement they bring.

Two dolphins swimming alongside MTB

We spent the next 7 days in Ft. Myers at the city marina. What a great location, about a 5 minute walk to the middle of town. We ate in about half the time, found some fun happy hours, a great little Mexican joint, and some other fun places. On Saturday they had a car show in downtown with lots of cool old cars. After a little while looking at the old beautiful cars I ended up at the Mexican place - what a surprise! Pat joined me for a few cold ones. Our other big ordeal was we rented a car for the day to run some errands - we needed to get some stuff to prepare for our boat departure.

Car Show in downtown Ft Myers - check out the brick paver streets

One of the fun cars at the car show in Ft Myers

We had some large heat over the holiday weekend, I believe a 95 then 94 degree day - the 95 was a record. Along with some humidity (80%ish), I don’t need to tell you about the sweat index. For the people down here who think the dry heat is a joke they are fooling themselves. I tell them I detail cars, work in the yard, take my walks, play golf, all of this in the summer and they think I am jiving them, oh well.

Ft Myers sunset from our marina

Also while we were here one of us celebrated number 57 - born in ‘57 and turned 57 - how about that!! We celebrated with our friends, Mike and Lori. They were heading back the following day to Ill. for the summer. We had a blast, and they are great people to hang with.

The sun sets as our year on MTB comes to an end

On Thursday the 29^th we left Ft. Myers and arrived at the RV Park & Marina which is about 1 mile from Glades Boat Storage where we will pull out the boat. Other than a nice golf course the RV Park was nearly a joke. The price was good and location to the boat storage lot was also good, but other than that it had no game. We did HH and dinner on the boat.

We had an appt. to pull the boat out on Friday the 30^th. This place is 14 miles away from ANYTHING. We will keep you posted on how that went. We do know that Meant To Be has earned a 5 month or so rest and maybe so do we. We will keep you posted, Jack

She Said: We spent our final day in Clearwater Beach at the beach. It was a beautiful day and the beach was wonderful. We walked the beach and stopped at a beach bar for happy hour before heading back to MTB for dinner.

It was finally time to leave Clearwater Beach. Our friends, Janet and Mark Camp, met us in Clearwater Beach and traveled with us 25 miles to Gulfport. We had a really fun day. Mark and Janet packed a picnic lunch so we dropped the anchor and had lunch along the way. Mark and Janet live in Treasure Island and they knew the area we were cruising through. It was fun for us to get a local narration of the area and it was fun for them to see familiar sights from the water side. Once we got to Gulfport, we decided to grab a bite to eat at McMaddie’s. We had a really nice time and hated the day to end, but Mark and Janet had to pick-up their dog, Gracie.

We left Gulfport the next day and traveled 38 miles to Sarasota. This is the first time we returned to a city we had previously visited. It took a lot of the stress out of the arrival when we knew exactly what to expect. In this case, it was a mooring ball. We pulled right in, grabbed the ball and dropped the dinghy. After registering, we walked into town and grabbed some groceries (we knew right where the grocery store was). We took the dinghy to happy hour at O’Leary’s before having dinner on MTB.

The sun is almost gone - from the mooring field at Marina Jack, Sarasota

It was a short trip back to Cape Haze (another repeat marina). We liked this marina because it had great fuel prices and a pool. We didn’t, however, like the location of the fuel pump. So needless to say, Jack was worrying about docking at the fuel pump for most of the day. As we arrived at the marina, we knew enough to ask if there was room for us at the fuel pump – and good thing we did, because there wasn’t! Instead, we had to pull into our slip and wait until the pump became available. We eventually got our fuel and Jack did a great job navigating the difficult approach and more challenging departure. After settling in we took the dinghy to happy hour at Rumbay on Palm Island – a small, private island across the ICW from our marina. We were back on MTB for dinner and an early evening.

We were up and on our way early the next morning because we had a 55 mile trip to Ft. Myers. As you know, we’ve been intrigued with dolphins and get excited whenever we see them. And although we’ve seen tons of dolphins up close and personal, we’ve never had dolphins swim with us alongside MTB. On this day that changed. We were told that when we see dolphins we should speed up and head right into them, so we did. On two separate occasions this day we had dolphins swim alongside with us. They got in our wake and were jumping out of the water. Sometimes they would make graceful leaps and other times they would do big belly/slide flops. It’s as if they were playing with us! We were traveling at about 12 MPH and they would swim just under the surface of the water and poke their heads up. It was the most amazing thing to experience.

The dolphins playing in our wake

Watching the dolphins jump our wakes was the best birthday present!

After a difficult arrival in Ft. Myers (I missed grabbing the most important pylon) we finally docked. Then we got a text from friends who have a condo in Ft. Myers saying they think they saw us cruise past their condo (how crazy is that?). So needless to say we got together with them that night. It was really nice because they knew their way around town and took us to all of their favorite places. Did I mention that it was my birthday? What an exceptional day! It’s a birthday I’ll never forget.

Happy birthday to me - at Firestone's rooftop bar

Downtown Ft. Myers is very cute and compact. Thomas Edison, Henry Ford and Harvey Firestone all spent time here. A lot of the downtown area is dedicated to them. You can visit their homes, but we didn’t get around to that - maybe next year. There are shops and lots of restaurants within a very easy walk. The only problem was that it was really, really hot. Record setting hot – 95 temp and humidity. We had the A/C running constantly. The marina didn’t have a pool and there were no beaches nearby - it was miserable. We rented a car our first day in town – we had lots of errands to run before taking the boat out of the water. While in Ft. Myers we celebrated our one year anniversary on the boat, walked around a classic car show, and attended a Memorial Day ceremony. Our original plan was to stay here for 10 days, but we decided to leave after 7 days.

Ford, Firestone and Edison statue

Memorial Day Observation - as a wreath was set afloat there was a helicopter fly over

Our final travel day was 45 miles up the Caloosahatchee River toward Lake Okeechobee to the town of Moore Haven. Along the river, it didn’t feel like we were in Florida anymore. No more palm trees and sand, instead lots of cattle and open spaces. We had two locks to transit – the first one was only a 3 foot change, but the second one was about a 15 foot change. The real challenge was docking in Moore Haven. There was only one spot available. It was a 45 foot spot along a face dock, between two boats. That meant we were going to have to “parallel park” MTB’s 42 feet in a 45 foot spot AND we had to do it in the wind. The dockmaster was there to catch our lines and we made it on our second try – pretty impressive. The marina was part of an RV Resort, but there was very little that was “resort-ish” about this place. We had no choice but to eat on MTB. This would be our last night on MTB for five months!