Gearing Up For Departure

It's hard to believe, but our summer in St. Paul is just about over and we are planning to depart on September 10 to finish the Great Loop and bring C.A.R.I.B II back to St. Petersburg. Aside from the cool weather of May and early June, everything has gone as well as we could have hoped for. Our dock neighbors at the St. Paul Yacht Club have been awesome, we were able to connect with numerous friends and family members, and we have been able to complete the "bucket list" of things that we wanted to do and see during our time here.

A few memories of the summer:

Friends from our church in the "olden days"--Ascension
Lutheran: Jan and Tim Preble, Dennis Speetzen and wife
Kathy, Pat and Lon.

Meeting Alice Greenan
for breakfast

Russian friend--and former
CONNECT/US-Russia houseguest--
Irina Efremova and Pat on
a morning walk around St. Paul in July

Lon and Pat "selfie" at a
Minnesota Twins baseball game

Heidi Willis, our niece from
California with children Cameron
and Peyton, and Pat's sister Sue

Pat's longtime friend from her forensic science days,
Mecki Prinz. Mecki flew in from NYC for a few days in May
 and we biked by historic Fort Snelling

Lon's younger brother Guy, Lon, and Pat share the "Nelson's Ice
Cream Experience." Guy and his wife Jody introduced us to this
delicious ice cream, but the serving sizes were ridiculous: we are
all eating the child size

Pat's mom--Beverly Clausen--celebrates her 90th birthday
with great-grandkids Peyton (l) and Cameron (r)

Long-time friends Daryl Deneen and Joan Brustad with
Pat on CARIB II in August

Not everything was fun and games. On the Sunday evening of the Independence Day weekend a drunk driver decided to make a "Honda sandwich" out of our CRV and two other vehicles in the parking lot at the marina.

Our Honda is second from the right. The SUV at the far left came over
the curb and crashed into the car parked on our right, pushing it into our CRV,
and then pushing us into the car parked on our driver's side.

Given its age and the fact that we were crunched on both sides, the vehicle was considered a total loss by our insurance company. We now have a 2014 Ford Escape that we will store in Minnesota for the fall while we are cruising. We will retrieve it at Christmas time and drive it back to Florida.

We are now in the final stages of prep for departure: maintenance checks, cleaning, and stocking up. In the midst of that we still have a few things to do with family and friends. The blog postings will start up again after we begin cruising on the 10th.