Brookgreen Gardens, South Carolina

Ernie and I were looking for someplace to see Christmas lights and decorations and lo and behold we came across Brookgreen Gardens Nights of a Thousand Candles. Sounded like just the right idea.

Friends Cynthia and Byron joined us for the trip down from Little River SC. Only an hours drive.
What a fantastic day!

It turns out the 6000 acre estate has a portion with bronze and marble statues galore. The collection
contains over 1400 works by 350 artists. Amazingly beautiful pieces of art. And for 3 weekends, they add 4500 candle lights, 2200 luminaries, 1000 pillar candles, and 500 floating candles. With volunteers keeping them lit for each event nights. There are also approx 1,000,000 LED lights of which 72K are on the holiday tree, and 65K hang in Live Oak Alley. They have 5 miles of extension cords. Live music all night in 3 forums, and bag pipes
wandering throughout as well. Oh my!

The result is just spectacular. and our photography doesn't do it justice.

New forever friends Cynthia and Byron:

Ernie with Bronze Bear:

Live oak alley before the nightfall.

 

Live Oak Alley at dusk; gets even better after dark.

 Ernie's favorite named "The Reacher"

 Bette's favorite bronze sculpture:

5 bronze sculptures in the pond below with lights reflected in the pond.

Check out the Gardens in persons, or take a tour on-line.

https://www.brookgreen.org/NightsofaThousandCandles.html

Christmas decorations

It's sad to see the Christmas decorations come down. But it's that time.

Ernie's outside lights helped us find the boat on many a night.
Loved his tree:

Even though we didn't make way for a Xmas tree- where to store that on a boat? -we did have a festive quasi-tree in the salon that morphed from a hanging basket. Wool felt christmas balls,
birds, stars,  reindeer, and more, were all hand created by women in Nepal.

Our lowly 3-tiered hanging basket once again went back to being just that today-
a food and snack basket.

Now that that's done, it's time for a bike ride!! 

Roast pork and Sauerkraut

Yes, the old family German receipt is alive and cooking aboard Iemanja tonight....thanks ma. You too dad...you mashed the potatoes! Merry Christmas to you and to all our friends .

Falcon 9 Liftoff from Cape Canaveral 12/21/2015

Do we stay or do we go.....

We pulled in tonight here in Titusville FL. Great news that we've been following all day is that tonight was to be the launch of the Falcon 9 Rocket from Cape Canaveral.....15 miles SE of our current anchored position. The low ceiling has postponed the launch for 24 hours. Hmmmmm ......do we stay to see the launch tomorrow night which would be really cool or do we move on. We have lots of time to get to Vero by xmas so a lay day tomorrow could be fine.......hmmmm.

Daytona

So it's been a few days since we last checked in....sorry about that. I know that you guys in Vermont are living even more vicariously with us this year since the snow has yet to come.....so we will keep the blogs coming.

A few days of motoring behind us now has us staged to reach Vero Beach in time to settle in for Christmas. A great place to shuttle around, chat with fellow cruisers and chill. It looks like.....fingers crossed.....a nice window over to West End on Grand Bahama Island might open up early next week. It's much to early to count on but the timing would be very nice indeed.

So another day of engine power today and onward. It's nice to have a mast that is less than 65' so that we have the option to stay inside when the weather is nasty outside. 

19 jet contrails

Just counted 19 contrails heading north and south! We are off and heading for Brunswick Ga. Flat day with not much wind so we've been giving the engine a good workout. Looks like itll b thus way for the next 24 hoirs or so.  We expect to hit Brunswick early Saturday morning.