It has been freezing in Virginia!  The heater in our little trailer has mostly kept up with the cold, but has been drinking up the propane far faster than I’d imagined possible.  Saturday night it started getting cold inside, and we realized we were completely out of propane.  I was afraid it would be hard to get bottles filled on a Sat night, dark and cold, in the middle of nowhere… no problem – the first gas station we came to had bottles to exchange, so we gave up our brand new (but empty) ones for older (but fine) bottles that had the promise of warmth inside!  That night was forecast for snow, but instead we got an ice storm.  In the morning, everything had a slick coating of ice, and with the wind blowing it really felt cold!

We spent most of our time this week inside Grace. It was slightly warmer in the boat, which is in the shed, than it is outside, but still really cold. At least we were out of the wind!  We packed up things, organized what would be left on board, and cleaned everything up.  She is looking very nice inside… the outside is still dusty from the work going on in the shed.  Tuesday afternoon we picked up a small U-haul truck, and loaded up all the stuff that will not fit in our little trailer, but that we will want later.  Wednesday we started driving south – we are tired of the cold, and want to store our stuff in a warmer place!  So we drove a long time Thursday as well, and quit driving in Jacksonville, Florida.  We checked into an RV Park, and unloaded the truck into a storage unit. (I made sure this storage unit did not obstruct the view of any awesome dental practices!)

This is me trying to look as tired as I felt after stowing all our junk!

Castaway Island

So just as I thought I’d have nothing of beauty to post pictures of, we found the Castaway Island Preservation Project.  It is a little area of salt marsh that has been set aside for preservation, right outside of Jacksonville.  The nice walking trail had animal prints tattooed on the walkway, so you could try to figure out what animal was represented before you’d get to the interpretive sign and read all about it.  Many were surprising!

Know what this animal is?

An opossum!  I might have guessed a raccoon if we hadn’t just seen his prints earlier.

Topless in the Marsh

Another rather interesting feature was the abundance of topless trees!  The trunks of palm trees stuck up out of the marsh all over, looking a bit forlorn with out their tops! Many of them were repurposed as bird houses, giving some opportunistic birds great rooms with a view!

So now we have our stuff pretty much sorted out, and are reveling in the 70 something degree weather instead of ice!