We awoke bright (actually dark) and early. Renee spent a couple of hours finishing up studying for her midterm exam scheduled for 8:10am. Erik spent the cool morning hours doing a couple of boat preps to have it ready for transfer to the new owner; removing our chart plotter and installing power to the old one that will be staying.
A little before 8 as Renee was logging on for her exam Erik and Riva set out on the bicycle to explore the island for a couple of hours. They just barely made it out of “The Plantation” which is the gated community containing 4500 homes. Beautiful area with bike trails winding throughout the entire community many of which are through shaded areas. However, it is very odd and almost sterile feeling. Not exactly our cup of tea.
After Renee’s test and Erik’s ride we took off again on the bikes to ride about 3 miles to ‘Dolphin Beach’ which was a private beach still within The Plantation. The beach was fairly small but very pretty and natural looking with driftwood, dunes and marshes behind it. It was mid tide and falling so the exposed areas of much of the beach had muddy/shell covered sections. There were many nice shells but they all were moving along with live hermit crabs occupying them. After swimming in the saltwater Riva decided to plow her head down into the dune and cover herself completely in sand.....including in her face and eyes. What a dork!
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| Riva loves her beach |
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| Hermit crab central |
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| Renee and Riva love their beach |
After the ride back to the bot in the hot afternoon sun (it was 93 degrees) we were all exhausted. We showered up and took short naps before heading out for dinner. Back onto our bikes we headed out the back gates of the plantation and to ‘Hudson’s Seafood’ which had been recommended to us. We thought we were going fairly early but by the time we arrived it turned out to be almost 6:30pm and VERY busy. They had a 1.5-2 hr wait. There are three popular restaurants all in a row so we walked over to ‘The Boathouse’ and out our name in there as well (they stated an approximately 2 hr wait). Fortunately, while we waited there was an area outside of the restaurants that was set up with chairs in the shade, cot hole boards, ping pong tables and other such activities. We chose to laze in the Adirondack chairs in the shade. The dinner was a bit pricey for Lambert blood but also very good. Erik chose stuffed flounder (stuffed with crab meat) and Renee had a huge portion of chicken Parmesan. The nice part about having had to wait for dinner was that we sat outside and the timing allowed things to cool off and we were able to enjoy a nice sunset. We were too full for desert at the restaurant but not too full to bring some peanut butter pie and bread pudding back to the bot with us to enjoy later (or the next day as it would turn out).
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| 1.5 hour wait for dinner at Hudson's Seafood, but at least in a comfy chair in the shade |
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| Hudson's shrimp boat |
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| The wait for dinner at least gave us a nice sunset dining experience |
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| sunset behind the shrimp boat |
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| full bellies and ready to ride home to bed |
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