Day 81-82 still in New Smyrna -having fun!

Okay, so I got "lazy" and did not post yesterday...

Our original plan was to spend 2 nights in New Smyrna, but we are about to spend our fourth night here since the town has worked out so well for us. Yesterday we went to new Smyrna Beach in the morning to do grocery shopping, but as luck would have it, the Admiral got her nails done and new sandals as well. We also had a really nice lunch. I had a really good Caesar salad with grilled Mahi Mahi. I made out pretty good on the whole deal as I got a really nice nap. We also had a couple of hours to recharge the scooters before our next adventure.

Then it was off to the movie theater to see "2 Guns". Very good movie although it definitely had a lot more violence than the "Smurfs 2" that we saw the day before. Most of the route to the movie theater was along Riverside Drive, which has some pretty nice older homes along it.

Guess what? Today is Saturday, and there was a (small) Farmers Market in the park across the street from the marina. In all honesty, this is hear-say since I was still sleeping while the Admiral went and also took this picture.

Then we took the dingy and went about 2 miles north along the Waterway to do some bottom cleaning. The "plan" was to clean some barnacles off the bottom of the dingy. Way back in Clearwater we had left the dingy in the water for two weeks and barnacles started to grow on the bottom. The dingy is a rigid (fiberglass bottom) inflatable (the tubes along the sides). So, using a metal paint scrapper is not a good option. I bought a cheap tarp that we pulled under the dingy without a lot of water between the tarp and the hull. Then I poured in a gallon of vinegar hoping that it would desolve the calcite.

No luck, but I had also purchased 2 gallons of muriatic acid (40% hydrochloric acid), and I guess that there was too much water to dilute it since it didn't work either.  So, we went to a sand bar at low tide and "scoured" off most of the barnacles by hand.

We beached the dingy so that we could lie down in the water and reach under the boat to scrub.

Here is a photo of the Admiral working hard - No, wait a minute...  She had declared that it was break time for Admirals... Seriously, it was hard work at very odd angles when lying on your back and reaching under the boat pushing up to scrub...  The bottom line is that we got most of the barnacles off. My arms from the elbow to the finger tips were litterally shaking when we finished.

For dinner on our last night in New Smyrna, we went back out across the bridge to New Smyrna Beach. After exiting onto the barrier island from the bridge, you pass this sign on the second corner...  Yep, that is what it says. What it actually means is that this is the thrift store for the Coronado Methodist Church... Not what you expected, eh?

The last picture is of the "happy couple" at dinner. We had a view of the bascule bridge between the mainland and the barrier island from our table. The sign says that draft beers are $0.25 when the bridge is up. However, it did not go up while we had dinner so I guess that we will never know for sure... In spite of this crazy sign, we had the best dinner since at least Ft. Meyers about 4 weeks ago! I had a large, broiled filet of Mahi Mahi covered with a home made sauce (?) of fresh pineapple, mango and tomato that was outstanding! After dinner, it turned out that our timing was bad. Even though it is Saturday night, all of the (interesting) stores were closed by 7:00 pm.

Somewhat sadly, tomorrow morning we will be headed off to the southern edge of Daytona Beach just 12 miles to the north. More adventures are awaiting...