It’s summer on the Chesapeake for us! We start with a visit to Smithfield VA on the James River, then spend 4th of July in Hampton before heading up the western side of the Chesapeake to the Potomac River. Colonial and Civil War history abounds, as well as personal history for us, as we make our way along this first leg of our Tour de Chesapeake up to Washington DC.
The cruising lifestyle means getting creative with how to get around on land. But it also opens up lots of opportunities for adventures in what you see and who you meet.
Now that our Loop is done, we head back up the familiar ICW to Norfolk VA to undergo a five week boat and human upkeep period. But the trip is not without some boating drama.
From Ft. Pierce, we planned for a sprint of near-daily travel to get us the final couple hundred miles to our Loop Finish Line in St. Augustine. The route takes us through Eau Gallie, Titusville, Daytona, and Palm Coast before we arrive back where our Loop started, thus crossing our wake. It seemed straightforward, but of course Mother Nature laughs in the face of even the best laid voyage plan.
We start up the east coast of Florida, beginning with crossing Biscayne Bay to get back onto the ICW. Making our way past ridiculously extravagant homes and boats, we stop in Ft. Lauderdale, West Palm Beach, and Stuart before arriving for a month long stay in Ft. Pierce. There we completely slow down, enjoying just living and visits from friends.
We leave the Florida mainland behind and cross over to the Keys, visiting Key West and Bahia Honda before an extended stay in Marathon. Finally, we wrap up our island hopping in Key Largo as we start making our way back to Florida’s east coast.
Now that we’ve slowed our travel pace quite a bit, I have more time to write about some aspects of ‘cruising life.’ No pictures in
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Continuing south down the west coast on the way to the Florida Keys, we start hitting the big cities of classic warm-winter Florida: Clearwater, St. Petersburg, Sarasota, Punta Gorda, and Naples. We wrap up the west coast of Florida by traveling back in time in Everglades City and keeping an eye out for crocodiles at an anchorage in Everglades NP.
Having completed the Inland Rivers, we slow waaayyy down as we enter the Gulf of Mexico starting with a stint in the boatyard ‘on the