6/13 Beaches, Lighthouses, Museums, Grouper, Blood Red Sunsets and Math Exams

What would the day be without a sunrise picture?

Today was the first day in many with NO RAIN!  The skies were partly cloudy and the temperatures were in the very comfortable mid eighties.  Most of the morning was spent with Renee continuing to study for the mid term exam in one of her online classes.  While she got smart Erik caught up on a few blog posts that we had fallen behind on.  

Shortly afternoon we got on our bikes and went out to explore some sites.  The first stop was about a mile and a half up the road which was a nice easy ride with the only real hill being the bridge over the river.  After that it was a leisurely peddle along the shoreline with beach to the Camp Gordon Johnston WWII Museum.  It was a very well done museum with tons of history on WWII and specifically the part that the Carebelle area played in the training.  We had not realized (neither of us being huge history buffs) that many ships were sunk on and just off the Florida coasts by German U boats during the war.  It was interesting to see the photographs of how large a military presence there was all along the forgotten coast.  Most of those military compounds are totally gone now and you would never know it without seeing the historical photos.  We did encounter a couple of areas while cruising east along the coast where our Navionics actually gave us warnings about potential for un exploded bombs under the water!  We chose not to snorkel in these areas...lol. 

Diorama of troops practicing on the shores of Carabelle for the storming of Normandy 

Exhibit of a typical soldiers belongings

bombs, grenades and other weapons

A room set up to show what the soldiers quarters would have looked like

From the museum we rode another mile or so up the road to the Crooked River Lighthouse.  The original lighthouse/s were built on Dog Island (just of the coast from current location) in 1873 but over an approximately 22 year period the lighthouse was destroyed 3 times by hurricanes.   In 1895 they headed mother natures desires and finally built the one that is standing today a hundred yards or so on shore.  It was in continuous operation until 1995 when it was decommissioned by the Coast Guard.  Shortly after that time plans were made for tearing it down but a group was formed to save it and it now is back to an operational lighthouse.   The climb up to the top was 103 steps of a spiral staircase.   The last 12 or so were incredibly narrow and a bit freaky to go up to the exterior.  The views from the top were excellent.  You could see for many miles out over the gulf as well as back into densely wooded areas mainland Florida.  While in the museum/gift shop we were asked where we were from.  This led to a conversation on our Looping and an older lady chimed in immediately when she overheard us.  She was absolutely ecstatic to talk to us about the Loop since her and her late husband had done parts of it and had dreamed and planned of completing it one day until he passed.  This made us grateful that we are afforded the opportunity to do these adventures while we are still young and reasonably healthy.

Crooked River Lighthouse.  We forgot to take a better picture from back a bit

View straight down from the top after climbing the steps 

View from the top looking out on the bay and Gulf 

From the top looking back to mainland 

Panoramic 

103 steps up a lighthouse and a bike ride will make you hot!  So, our next stop was just back down the road to the public beach.   We had worn our swimsuits and had packed our snorkel gear in a small backpack.   We wanted to try it out since we had not yet utilized it and we are REALLY hoping to do more of it when we get to Steinhatchee and Crystal River.   We are told that area has beautiful waters to snorkel, manatees are plentiful AND scallop season opens on Saturday....Yum!   Erik is intent that he will be grilling up ocean fresh scallops on the back of the boat this weekend.   The water at Carabelle beach was not particularly ideal for snorkeling as it was a bit murky.  We could really only see about one foot in front of our faces.  Part of this may be because of the stormy, rainy weather recently.   However, we did have a good time with it and did verify that the masks worked very well. 

Afterwards we took a stroll down the beach and engaged in a conversation with a couple of guys who were from Kentucky and were fishing from the beach.  They were not having very good luck today but were excited to tell us about the catfish, several large stingray and SHARKS that they had caught over the past few days.   Good thing that we did our snorkeling before we found out about the sharks....probably just babies though and no great whites.

At Carabelle Beach.  The areas between the two islands if you look closely is 'East Pass' where we will exit out of the bay tomorrow and into the Gulf

The Beach

We rode back to the boat and up to the marinas shower house where we cleaned up and headed on foot back down the road a half mile or so to 'The Fishermans Wife' restaurant.   We had heard good things about  this place on the Looper forums that we follow.   It was very tasty!  Renee went with the Philly Steak Wrap while Erik indulged again in seafood; blackened grouper.  The hush puppies were amazing.  Erik did, yet again, talk Renee into trying a bite of the grouper.  She was not a fan. 

Back to the marina and boat Renee was right back at studying hard in preparation for her 7 pm proctored, online mid term exam.  Erik went up to the large deck and sat in rocking chairs chatting it up with the locals and watching them bring in the days yield of fish; red snapper, grouper, flounder, and a few other misc types.  Since no one is allowed in the room/boat while Renee was taking her exam Erik did laundry while waiting for her to complete it.  Over an hour later Renee emerged stating that she was having issues with the computer program and was not able to open a data file that was needed.   She tried on Erik's computer but that also did not work.   She was VERY frustrated because she had specifically scheduled it for this evening in order to have it done prior to our planned departure to cross the Gulf tomorrow.   Ugh.... after some time of emailing back and forth with the professor and the proctoring service at about 9:30 pm she managed to get what was needed up and running.

Beautiful red sunset this evening 

Screw it....if i cannot take my exam I will at least enjoy the scenery!

AGLCA ready to cruise off into the sunset....
or maybe the sunrise tomorrow

So here Erik sits on the aft deck, unable to go inside to get another cup of coffee, blogging about today's activities at 11 pm.   Hoping that Renee is done soon and that she does well on the exam in what she says is the most difficult, confusing class she has taken yet.  Erik keeps reminding her that C's get degrees!    

Well, she's not done so I may as well keep writing...lol.  Plus I forgot to mention our neighbors.  This is truly a small world we live in.  Back in Apalachicola we met David and Chris aboard 'Breath First' a 25 foot Ranger Tug.   They both quit there jobs to do the loop stating that "we can always get another job when we get done".   Must be nice....our mortgage company, fuel bills and savings (or lack thereof) tell us that would not be a good plan for us.  The small world part comes in because after some conversation and looking at their boat closer we noticed that their boat is out of Lorraine Ohio!   Actually, the boat is registered out of Lorraine but they had a house (sold it to start looping) and jobs in Dover Ohio, practically  just up the river systems from us.   They started their loop and have taken almost the identical paths that we have.  They also started on the Ohio and made their way down the rivers taking the 'side trips' up the Cumberland and Tennessee Rivers just like we did last year.   They had left Apalachicola the day before us to make there way here to Carabelle but we caught back up to them a couple day ago and we have since been docked right next to them.  Very nice folks living their dream.  We were a bit jealous to find out that they get almost 5 miles to the gallon of diesel fuel while cruising along at a leisurely 7 knot speed.   Unfortunately our current life situation and schedule is not conducive to that kind of cruising....yet!

David and Chris aboard 'Breath First' 

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