Sandrobber: Ortega River to St. Augustine

Day #474; Loop Miles to Date = 5,248

Sorry, it's been awhile...we were busy doing stuff while in Jacksonville! We finally left Ortega River on Tuesday, and are now at the Municipal Marina in St. Augustine...one of our favorite stops.

We managed to get a lot of items checked off of our to-do list while at Ortega River. We were there over a month, but it was a great spot for us to crash for a time, and about as close geographically as we get to Atlanta. So, we took advantage of the proximity (still a 6 hour drive though) and became good friends with the folks who work at the Enterprise Car Rental Agency! We made multiple trips to Alpharetta, and were able to visit all of the doctors that we needed to. Plus we managed to get Lola to our "home" vet for a check-in, as she has not been there since the diagnosis of Cushing's disease. All went well on all fronts...we both got clean bills of health, and the vet was very happy with how Lola is doing. It was a lot of driving, and not at all convenient...but it was worth the effort in the end.

And while we were at Ortega, we knocked a number of boat projects off of our list. Among the items we accomplished were:

Replacing all of our sanitation hoses (you don't really want to hear anything more about this one).
Changing the transmission oil
Defrosting the refrigerator
Touch up waxing
Snugged up the packing glands on the rudder seal
Replaced some fuel filters
Rebuilt the fresh water pump...twice. At some point we will replace it (again) but for now, Rob is determined to make this one work the way it is supposed to.
3 or 4 other things we can't remember right now...

We also entertained ourselves at the movies a couple of times, and found a few fun places to eat. Ortega River is a really laid back marina, with a bunch of full-time live aboards, and really nice folks all over the place. Oh...and there are plenty of dogs for Kikie and Lola to bark at on a consistent basis.

So now for some pics...mostly just from the last few days. We travelled from Ortega River Marina to St. Augustine on Tuesday. It was a long trip - 64 miles, so we took a pit stop for the pups at the free dock at Sisters Creek. This split the trip roughly in half, and made it much more manageable for us.

A couple of really large murals that we spotted on some silos as we were coming through the Jacksonville Port area.

Not a great shot, but this is the stadium where the Jacksonville Jaguars play (EverBank Field). You can see the flags in the foreground show that it was a tad breezy this day.

These escape pods always make us think of the movie "Captain Phillips" but usually we just see them mounted on the stern of large container ships. This one happened to be deployed and was docked on the seawall.