Summer is Coming to a Close!

It amazes me how fast Summer has flown by! Tell tale signs are everywhere. The leaves are starting to fall, the nights are cooler and the kids are getting ready to go back to school. In fact they start Wednesday of next week.

Many events have transpired since we arrived in mid June. We have been on two vacations and visited with many of our family and friends. It is a bitter sweet end of summer for us. We look forward to traveling again and seeing our cruising friends and visiting the Bahamas but feel somewhat sad to say good bye to everyone up North. Yet again cruising is all about compromise. You work it out to have a little of the best of both worlds.

Today we are on the boat and the only errand we did was to go by dinghy for gas for the outboard. I am actually on highspeed internet inside the boat. I'm using our external antenna and connected with about 47% strength. It's the first time all summer that we have been successful. The sky is clear today and I tried another window for exposure. It worked!

We had a wonderful two week vacation with our grandsons. They wanted to stay in every port or anchorage an extra day. Each place lent itself to a different attraction for them. In some places they could swim, some they could fish, some had a playground and some we did siteseeing. We decided we need no less than three weeks next year to fit it all in. We meaning Grandma and Papa also decided that we could handle one more, so we invited cousin Kira for next year.

The picture is of Larry and his Dad taking a dinghy ride to check out the lake. Mom and Dad were up here for a visit and we attempted to go for a sail on several occasions but the wind and waves just would not cooperate. We never did get to go for a sail but we had several good visits.

Last week we closed another door in our lives, we sold our pickup truck. When we left last year we did not have time to think about what we would do with it and we needed some place to store the few belongings we kept. After we arrived back we disposed of most of what we did store and felt it wasn't necessary to keep a large vehicle especially with the cost of fuel. We plan to replace it with a small car but haven't found the great deal yet. Time is passing quickly and it may not happen till next year. One less thing to put in storage! We have been getting around on the motorcycle in the mean time. It's time to provision the boat for the trip South and the Bahamas so we may be forced to rent a car for a few days. It won't be bad but we won't be able to do it at our leisure. We need to have complete and comprehensive lists, so nothing gets forgotten. We have been reading up on what we can and can't get in the Bahamas.