Living with a Pirate!

Good morning loyal readers:
Tom and I are in fabulous St Augustine Florida where we'll remain for two weeks. For part of that time, I will be in California to visit with my daughter and son-in-law Stephie and Bob Walker, and my son, Tommy Weinert.
On May 2nd Steph and I will be in the audience of American Idol. Watch for us jumping up and down behind Simon, Paula and Randy!
Meanwhile, back on Cloud Nine, we're enjoying the oldest city in North America. If you haven't been here do put it on your itinerary. This is a gorgeous city with great history, beautiful architecture, and lots of stunning scenery. It was founded in 1565, BEFORE the pilgrims landed on Plymouth rock. Now, why don't we study that in school???
St Augustine has a storied past and has been fought over and occupied by the Spanish, English, and French. Many stories abound about the pirates who plundered St Augustines shores. Tom has taken these stories to heart in a big way. He is "morphing" into a pirate before my eyes ! He keeps saying "Arrrr", he has long hair, wears an alligator tooth around his neck and he even has an earring....yes, an earring. I told him if he starts looking like Johnny Depp I will be a happy camper.
The cruise up the intra-coastal has been beautiful. We stayed nearly two weeks in Vero Beach (one of our favorite places). Going past the Kennedy Spoace center was interesting. You can see the huge buildings and launch pad for miles. The space center is surronded by Canaveral National Seashore which provides some of the most dramatic estuarine scenery we've experienced. We boated through vast marshland where we saw Manatees, pods of Dolphins, egrets, shorebirds etc in their natural habitat. I guess the "seashore" was established to protect the space launches because that's the only reason developers would not have "seized" this land. Florida is a beautiful state and we can't understand why their zoning laws are not stricter. Vero Beach has done the best job we've seen...there are NO high rises for about 20 miles in either direction of Vero...a pleasure to see. St Augustine has preserved and restored its gem of a city as well, so there are some good examples of preserving history and the enviornment.
So, "Adieu Mateys" from the Pirate and his...."pirate-ess???? Until next time

New pictures...Palm Beach

We're BA-ack!!!!!!

Dear Loyal Readers
We bid farewell to the Bahama Isles
While we were there we had lots of smiles
The Sechrists and Garrels
cruised along just for pleasure
We had a blast in the windy warm weather
Pam's big 6-0 was spent on a beach
With Stephie and Bob, what a wonderful treat!

Our computer crashed, but it's back as a fixture
Alas and alack we lost ALL our pictures!
We're crossing to Florida, as I write this poem
Back to the states, the intra-coastal we'll roam
On Donner, on Blitzen or just "on Cloud Nine"
Can you tell were having a really GREAT time!

Thanks for indulging my creative burst...we are currently in Vero Beach Florida...a wonderful place that Tom and I have spent lots of time in, because my Mom and Dad made this area their home for 25 years! Suzy and Jack Keating have a condo here so were getting to spend lots of time with them!
On the way here, we came through Palm Beach and saw our first "shadow Boat"...this is a vessel that looks like a small freighter, that carries "toys" for the main yacht...this "shadow Boat" had on board 2 sea- dos, two Boston Whalers, and a ski boat. We took a tour in Palm Beach and enjoyed hearing about the rich industialists and their winter "cottages"...we window shopped along Worth avenue which is really very pretty, and we went for a drink at the fabulous Breakers hotel...this is an old hotel that is huge and very imposing, but somehow they manage to keep it warm feeling inside!
Tom has been taking pictures like mad to make up for the thousands we lost (really)...To all who know Tom and how precise he is (anal) this is the one time he forgot to back up the pictures!We have sent our hard drive to a computer retrieval company (who knew there were such things) and hopefully some of the pictures can be salvaged. I will be updating more often, and thanks for sticking with us...we enjoy getting comments so please leave them when you feel so inclined!