Roseate Spoonbills and a ROCKET LAUNCH!

As usual, we left in the morning way too early - at "Civil twilight".  That translates into 20 minutes before dawn - the sky is light enough to do things outside without artifical light, but not daylight yet.  That would be about 6:50 a.m. these days.....  But, as a plus, Luke caught this beautiful shot of sunrise just outside of St. Augustine.

Our 60 mile run from St. Augustine to New Smyrna Beach was mostly a long day of motoring and a few rain showers.  Houses along this part of the ICW run the gamut from RV's and single-wides, to monster mansions that you can't believe.  We pass through Daytona on this leg of our trip.  Daytona is a busy place - lots of those monster mansions and high rise condos.  It's busy enough that there are 4 bridges crossing the waterway.  2 of those bridges are high enough that we just cruise on under them.  2 require a request for an opening. The second of those bridges was having some slight technical difficulties....they could only get one of the two opening sections of the bridge to raise.  After some waiting, the nice bridgekeeper told us that if we wanted to go through the half opening, we could do so.  We did!  It was a bit tense, but Luke did a great job of putting Latitudes in just the right place to slip through perfectly.  For perspective, that bridge is only 25 feet high when closed.  We require 60 feet clearance.

Unfortunately, our friends that we intended to visit in New Smyrna were both ill and we had to postpone our visit until our trip back. 

Todoay, we again left at civil twilight and motored on to the Haulover Canal, a short little canal with an opening bridge that worked!  The other side of the canal, where the water widens again, is the site of many spoil islands, little islands that dot the waterway.  These islands always have the most white pelicans that we've ever seen.  They are just hundreds of them, all clustered together on these tiny islands.

But this year we saw something new.  A fellow cruiser alerted us to the fact that pink Roseate Spoonbill birds share these islands, at least the islands with trees.  This isn't a clear picture, but you can see the pink flutter of the spoonbill.  There were dozens of them sitting in the trees.

These big birds look like a cross between the pink flamingos and the ugy wood storks.  Here is a picture of one, borrowed from the web.

Next along our route today was Cape Canaveral.  With NASA's big cutbacks, it was sad to pass the  building, American flag hanging proudly, but apparently sitting empty and quiet along the waterway.  As Luke said "the twilight of the gods and their chariots of fire" is here.



But, NO!  At dinner tonight (local pizza joint, yum!) we talked with other cruisers.  We can always spot each other....  anyway, they told us about an unmaned rocket launch tonight from Cape Canaveral!  Our anchorage tonight is in Cocoa, a mere 20 miles from the launch site.  Not far at all in terms of seeing the launch.  Sure enough, to the minute, we saw the huge ball of light rising in the sky, curving into orbit, dropping red bits of debris in it's path.  WOW!

This certainly isn't a good night picture, but will give you an idea of the size of the rocket glow over the lights of the nearby bridge.  A few minutes after we began seeing the rocket, the rumbling sound reached us.  Amazing.

Tomorrow, again at civil twilight, we leave to make our way to Vero Beach.  Friends Marina and Dave are there - we'll be glad to see them.  We will stay a few days to visit, provision for our crossing to the Bahamas, and enjoy Vero.