Home again!

While we docked after 11:00pm last night, we were up until 1:00am, straightening up the boat a bit, taking out all the garbage, storing dive gear, washing dishes, tearing down Mamaw and Paps bed, and enjoying our first REAL shower in five days :)  We knocked ourselves out with some Tylenol pm's, and enjoyed the best sleep ever.

Willis was enjoying his best sleep ever, too. The boat was safely tied to
the dock at Banana Bay and was no longer rocking.  This is how I found
him when I got out of bed this morning.  Oh, that Willis.

Today was a chore day.  I straightened up the boat some more; the deep cleaning will happen tomorrow. Donnie made a run to Home Depot for some supplies, and stopped at the bank for more quarters (for me only...Willis is banned from my laundry money).  I gathered up three loads of laundry, and with laptop in hand, spent the better part of the afternoon doing laundry and catching up the blogs.  Donnie brought me the mail later on, and we met up at Cabanas for a late lunch, the cheeseburger in paradise special :)  After lunch, I continued with the laundry, bill paying, and blogging, while Donnie returned to the boat to give the hull and topsides a good bath.  Marquesa was crusty with salt after our trip to the Dry Tortugas.  While in the middle of folding clothes, I got a phone call from Donnie, telling me to grab my camera and come back to the boat.

The spray from the garden hose must have attracted a manatee...
he was looking for a free drink, so Donnie obliged.

They are so ugly, they are cute!  They have the sweetest eyes...

Naturally, Donnie jumped in for a closer look.  Since he already broke
one rule, he may as well break another. He was patting him on the
head like a big puppy dog.  He seemed to enjoy a good back scratch, too.

Such a big and docile creature...you don't get to do THIS everyday :)

We enjoyed a beautiful sunset (no green flash), but it didn't seem the
same without Dan and Biddi.  They are now up in the Ft. Lauderdale area.
We're missing them already. We really became good boat buddies.

After sunset, Paps picked us up and bought us dinner at McDonald's. 
Donnie and I were both craving a salad, and I didn't make it to the grocery
today.  I desperately needed to color my hair (an aging woman's BFF-
hair dye!)  Note the clothes pins I used to hold my hair up, while the
color set...classic.  We also watched the season premiere of Deadliest
Catch.  Bryan, Donnie's guitar buddy, used to live in Kodiak, Alaska,
and worked on many of the boats still in the crab fishing fleet. Very cool.
Bryan saw his old condo in the opening scene of the show.
All in all, I've got to say, it's great to be back at Banana Bay.