We spent Sunday relaxing and getting settled in. We decided to explore a little bit on foot and quickly discovered it was not easy to cross over to the other side of the road that runs in front of the hotel that’s connected to the marina. Turns out it’s the only major road on the island – US 1 that runs all the way from the mainland to Key West. We managed to get across to West Marine, a nationwide chain that caters to boaters, and get a chart book that I wanted, but we won’t be crossing that road on foot again!

We bought three strands of tiny white lights to string along the rails for the holidays but had not gotten it done yet, so we managed to get them strung in the afternoon and set on a timer. We figured they would be festive for the new year. We were happy to see that the timer worked and they lit like they were supposed to – we would have been very upset if we spent all that time fastening them to the rail and then they didn’t work.

There are docktails every day at 5 on the deck by the lighthouse. On Sunday it was an ice cream social, with one of the boaters making ice cream in a big electric ice cream maker. Everyone brought toppings to share and amazingly there were no duplicates in toppings. We had eaten a late lunch and then had a lot of ice cream, so it was another night with no dinner. Eating fewer meals seems like a good way to lose some weight, but not when the meals you eat include massive amounts of ice cream with crushed Oreo cookies on top.

Monday was spent enjoying the sun and warm weather. There were a lot of people wandering around looking at all the boats and getting ready to celebrate the New Year. We went to the restaurant here during happy hour, which started at 3:00 (what’s not to like about a happy hour that goes from 3-6!), had a late lunch, and met several other Loopers. We ordered extra food so we would have some leftovers that we could eat later. If we were going to stay up until midnight, we would need some nourishment later in the evening!

They put a big wooden anchor at the top of the lighthouse to drop at midnight. We watched them for a while in the daytime jas they worked at getting it to the top – the wind seemed to create some problems, but eventually they got it to the top.

There was music blasting at the restaurant and tons of people around as midnight approached. Midnight arrived and the anchor didn’t come down right away – not sure what clock they were using, but it wasn’t very accurate!

Happy New Year!