Vero to Cocoa to Daytona to St. Augustine

Florida is a lot nicer if you skip lots of bridges.  Coming in at Ft. Pierce cut the number of bridges we had to open by about 10X!  Before I get started on the trip north, I have to post this picture Dan took anchored off Merwin Island near Ft. Myers... it's for the kids.  They always joked about his pictures with a teensy weensy white speck "That's an eagle!"  Well he did good this time.

By Monday morning we were rested, clean and fueled up and the forecast was good so we headed off for Cocoa Beach.  A new stop for us so we were looking forward to seeing a new spot.  We had and easy trip with out any bridges to open and made it the the Cocoa Village Marina just before 3 pm.  We took a slip for two nights due to the forecast ("big front coming through") and decided to take the bus over to Merritt Island to the Publix to get a few fresh things. We waited over 45 minutes for the bus that comes every half hour, but succeeded in getting what we needed and caught he return bus without even a one minute wait!   

Tuesday morning was gray but not rainy so we walked into the historic part of Cocoa Beach and had a lovely breakfast at a yummy French Bakery/Ice Cream parlor, Ossorio's.  Dan headed back, bur I spent the rest of the morning wandering through the artsy boutique-y area of town.

In addition to bakery/breakfast items, they offered brick oven (see flames on the left) pizzas and wine and beer!

The front did come through, but without all that much bluster.  We headed out early Wednesday morning after much discussion about whether to hang in the area to watch the Atlas V launch on Thursday afternoon.  Cocoa is just south of Canaveral.  We decided a daytime launch wasn't going to be as dramatic as a nighttime one.  The trip was a bit cooler as the front had brought strong NW winds, so we put up part of the enclosure to windward.  We opted for another marina, Halifax Harbor in Daytona because Dan wanted to go to the West Marine right on the property.  We learned it had moved right after we were securely tied up!

The trip to Daytona took us past the Ponce de Leon inlet where this colorful lighthouse stands guard.

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 April is noted everywhere in Florida as the time to really watch out for Manatees and we got our first close encounter with them as we entered the narrow channel into Halifax Harbor Marina.  For such lethargic animals, they really kicked up quite a bit!

Another "first encounter" was seeing flamingoes flying and then landing on an island just as we were about to enter the 

Haulover Canal between  the Mosquito Lagoon and the Indian River.

These were taken with the smaller camera and aren't the best, but you get the idea.

Dan had his good camera out today in preparation for the Atlas launch, so he got more pictures than usual, including two favorites, dolphins and great blue herons.

A Great Blue and his cousin the Great White Heron.

The Atlas V launch went off right as scheduled.  We were making our way north, but reversed direction about ten minutes before the launch to try to get a better view...

The top picture we took yesterday when we were about ten miles away from
the launch pad,you can almost make out the scaffolding around the rocket on
the left.  Next is our view before it launched, then off it went into the blue

We toyed with the idea of stopping at Marineland Marina (only 16 miles south of St. Augustine) but as we started to enter their channel the dockmaster told us we would be aground before we got in.  We turned around and headed on toward Camachee Cove Yacht Harbor and arrived just as Jay arrived to deliver a car for us to use while we're here.  ~~~_/)~~~M&D