Week 2 @ Pennecamp

Saturday, January 4
 I guess we are getting some winter weather here in the keys. Well maybe not winter but rainy. We have really been lucky with the weather we've had. I had stuff to keep me busy inside, I got busy scrapping those pictures I developed. Jeff went for a ride to check out a kayak launch site. He had been researching the area for spots and thought this one looked interesting. He came back with some movies to watch. To sweeten up the day I made creme brûlée..... Yummy! The day was a long one but so better than up north, they are breaking records. Not complaining...

Sunday,January 5

Again cloudy and rainy. We tried to get the dogs walked but those bugs were super hungry so we cut the walk short. Spent the day inside. The good news, the park is not as busy. It's finally cleared out.

Monday, January 6,

Today is suppose to be a good one. Jeff checked the weather  and it's suppose to be the pick day. Rain might roll in this afternoon. We got our boats loaded up and headed out. We went to garden cove to launch, the spot Jeff had found. There was a wreck about 1 3/4 mile from shore and there's suppose to be lots of fish. We got out on the water about 9 am. The water was extremely flat and the sky was really cloudy. You couldn't tell where the water ended and the sky started. Kinda eerie. We made our way out to the wreck. The wreck was an old concrete barge, I didn't know there was such a thing as a concrete boat. As we got close to the wreck Jeff scared all the birds on the boat and they fluttered away. We circled the wreck as Jeff tried catching some of those fish we could see.
We noticed a terrible stench. It  appears all those birds must live on the wreck, they left evidence.

Garden Cove Wreck

Headed back in towards shore but decided to investigate some of the canals. It was interesting to see the homes and look at what they had parked in there back yards.(boats)  Went back to the campground and since the rain never showed up we walked the dogs. Our boys called and told us it's 40 below zero.... Yikes I'm glad I'm down here.

Tuesday,January 7th
 We got the cold front today that everyone else has been dealing with. It only got up in the 50's today, with some rain and wind. I just decided to do some cleaning, sorting through things and getting rid of what we don't need. We got a call from Todd, at the Hobie shop. He told us they have decided to replace our hulls for a reasonable amount plus shipping. A bonus was we could get the 2014 Sport, which is what we have now  or we could upgrade to the Revelation 11. It's 2 foot longer than our Sports. When we got these kayaks we couldn't get anything bigger then the sport cause we put them in the rig when we traveled. Last summer we bought a roof rack so we could get something longer. After Jeff researched what the differences were and what would work for us he decided to get the Revelations. We called them back and told them. They even let us just take 2 from there inventory instead of waiting for them to ship. Jeff was just tickled with that news. Kudos to Hobie and Florida Bay Outfitters of Key Largo, FL.

New 2014 Hobie Revolution 11

Wednesday, January 8th
 Its another rainy day and we have to remove everything from our boats before we take them in.   We kept waiting for the rain to stop but that wasn't happening. We loaded them up to take them to the outfitters, a lot lighter with all the extras removed. We got our new boats loaded after a seat modification and brought them home. We wanted to really check them out more but the weather wasn't cooperating. We were both happy to have that problem taken care of.

Thursday, January 9th

Another cloudy rainy day. Jeff couldn't wait any longer, he started messing with his boat. He wanted to see where he would put all his stuff. We had to put our seats back in, the rudders back on. Jeff was seeing where he was gonna put the amas. With the different shape and size of theses boats they have to go in a different place. It requires drilling holes we want to make sure before drilling. While Jeff was busy with that I took advantage of the full hookups here and did our laundry. I also finished up all my scrapbooking and cleaned up that mess. I really feel like we got things finished up today.

Friday, January 10th

The suns out!!!! Jeff was happy, we can take out our brand new kayaks....decided to put them in right up the road, it's right by a picnic area here. All we took with us was our coffee. We did some cruising through the mangroves. Both of us really like the boats. We just stayed out a couple hours. Wanted to make sure everything worked ok.  Came back and rinsed the salt off of everything. The sun stayed out so after lunch we rode our bikes up to the beach. It was a good day for that, we had a breeze and Jeff found a spot that was shady. We came back and started picking things up since we move tomorrow. With this weather we thought we should put things away in case it decides to rain again. We decided since we haven't really gone out much and with it being our last night here we would go to a local spot called Shipwrecks. Jeff looked it up and all the reviews were wonderful. We cleaned ourselves up and headed out. As we were leaving our neighbor stopped to let us know our dogs bark. Well that kinda ruined our evening so we ended up cutting it short. It's just too bad that we had to have a great day dampened by a grumpy neighbor. We informed him of the good news... We are leaving tomorrow. I think we were ready to take off. I just wish we could have ended our stay on a better note....