Our Time in Indian Rocks Beach

Some of the beautiful foliage

Greg could play a mean
guitar!

Outside at Mahuffers

Duh, I'm not sitting on that couch!

No expense too much for
Mahuffer décor!

A really interesting décor here

The best blues we've heard in a long time!

Taking notes for future
decorating ideas

Red Lion Pub

NautiNell looking proud!

Capt' Chappy is quite a carpenter

We’ve had our share of setbacks while we’ve been here in Indian Rocks Beach.  Some I mentioned in my last blog.  Well, they seem to be continuing.  Not all is the fault of the marina but it’s more a combination.  We just keep plugging along.  The way we have to tie up in the slip makes for a difficult time when trying to get on or off the boat.  So Mike built a great “gangplank” that helps. This way we can get off the back “most” of the time.   He’s pretty handy to have around!  Of course that entailed several trips to Lowe’s which turned into trips to the American Legion and the Elks Lodge.  After all, they’re close by to Lowe’s.  We had lunch one day at Widow Brown’s Restaurant.  I like the name.  The place was interesting and the food was good.   Mike’s scooter had a flat so we had to find a scooter shop close by.  It turns out it wasn’t far from the Legion and the Elks either!  Ha!

Indian Rocks Beach is an interesting little beach town.  It has its share of tourists, of course, but everyone is really friendly here.  Here are a few facts that I found interesting.  Indian Rock Beach consists of 1.39 square miles and over 3 miles of beaches.  The population is just a little over 4000.  I guess that’s while you get the “hometown” feeling.  According to legend IRB got its name when a native medicine man healed his chief with the waters from a natural sulfur spring believed to have been located in Kolb Park across from the City Hall.  Early settlers seeing the Indians on their way to the “rock encircled springs would say “The Indians are on their way to the Rocks”.  I can’t seem to find anything about the springs now at the park.  Not sure about what happened to them. Since 4^th of July was approaching y’all would be proud of Mikey.  He put up more flags than ever!  NautiNell was decorated with flags galore along with lots of red, white and blue! 

Mike had a milestone birthday this year – 70th.  This is the 6^th time he’s celebrated his birthday while on NautiNell.  Let’s just say he had a very good day!  First we took a dinghy ride to the American Legion in Madeira Beach that is accessible by water.  We had spent some time there nearly 5 years ago when we were going south on the Loop.  It takes about an hour to get there by dinghy because of all the no wake zones but it was a great ride.  This Legion has the largest membership in the USA.  Pretty cool!  They also had really good wings and cold cheap beer.  Mike’s favorite…..  After that we went about another mile to the Elks Lodge which is also on the water.  They have slips there open to members and we spent 4 days there Christmas 2011 again while on the Loop.  It was our first Christmas away from home then and I remember they treated us like family.  That hasn’t changed much!  So then it was back to the boat for a cocktail and a little time to regroup.  We wanted to check out Mahuffers.  This is a local dive and has great music every night.  On Sunday, it’s jam session.  We weren’t disappointed!  There was nice music outside by one guy who we listened to for a while but then they kicked it up a notch inside with great Blues!  Our favorite!  These guys were fantastic and the others that would step in occasionally added to their sound even more!  Let me tell you, this is a dive though.  You really need to watch where you sit and you might want to take a shower when you get home!  HAHA!  Our friend, Linda said that this would be probably the “diviest” bar we had ever been in.  We questioned that, knowing our history, but I would say it’s rated right up there!  And yes, we’ll go back.  Mike definitely had a good birthday!

July 4 started out a little low key. Yeah, we were taking it a little easy after the day before.  And then wouldn’t you know it – the salon air conditioning decided to quit.  Why do these things always happen on holidays or weekends?  Anyway at least we had the forward/aft one still working.  It couldn’t keep up very well but we were able to be comfortable when we slept.  We spent most of the time out on the sundeck where there was at least a breeze.  Since we had pretty much forgot about cooking Mike’s birthday dinner yesterday, we ended up smoking some country ribs on the grill.  We sat up on the front of the boat and watched fireworks.  It turned out to be a pretty nice evening, after all.  Hopefully we’ll get a repairman here tomorrow.

Okay, the next day the air started working again!  Go figure!  We still want someone to come check out and service it.  He’d be here tomorrow.  We just enjoyed the air for the time being – knowing it probably wouldn’t last.

We were right it was still working but quit just after the repairman got here.  He said the units were running really hot.  He added Freon and told us we needed to flush the lines.  They were possibly plugged up with crud.  He would do it for $450 each – we have two units!  Don’t think so.  So Mike and I worked about 4 hours without air trying to flush out the lines with barnacle buster.  Not an easy task but we got it done – we think.  It started working anyway so we showered and walked up to Crabby Bills for happy hour and shrimp.  It’s Wednesday so it’s shrimp day there!  When we got back the a/c was still working and the boat was slowing cooling down.  We can only hope and pray that did the trick.

On July 7 we decided to take a road trip to Dunedin and Tarpon Springs to check out marinas that we may move to when we get back from our trip home to Joplin.  It looks like Marker 1 in Dunedin will work the best for us.  Right now, if they have a spot for us then, we’ll move there and stay August and September.  That will be a short trip for NautiNell.  It’s only about 15 miles or so!  If for some reason they can’t get us in – we’ll go to Clearwater Beach Marina for a while.

When we got back from our road trip we decided to scooter over to the Red Lion Pub.  We used to have a Red Lion back in Joplin that was the place to go back in the ‘70s.  So we had to check it out.  Mike made a “buddy” there.  Turns out he just got out of prison.   Mike can sure pick them sometimes…

After that we stopped at Jake’s Cantina.  2-4-1 Mexican Pizzas and Coronas!  Nice way to end the day.  Oh yeah, air conditioning still working – but I’m not going to jinx it by bragging……

After a few other issues on NautiNell that I’m not even going to go into – (nothing big – just boat living) things are getting a little better.  One day we drove over to Seminole to go to a Verizon Store.  Yes, we’re having those problems too!  Sheeh! Anyway, we got that taken care of by a very knowledgeable young man at the store.  That was nice for a change!  So since we were out we just happened to ride by another Legion.  Of course we had to go in.  They just have the coldest cheapest beer, you know! 

On Saturday, we hit the Legion again here in IRB (actually Largo).  They have filet dinners on Saturday for only $8.25!  Couldn’t pass that up!  We have a hard time finding a good steak in Florida!  Well, that turned out to be a great idea!  HH cocktails and a good steak!  Too bad the band sucked.  Guess you can’t have anything.

Yesterday we spent most of the day “fixing things” – that seems to becoming the routine.  I’ll be glad when our “MOJO” changes!  We’re going home to Joplin on Tuesday and leaving NautiNell here.   We’ll be gone about 2 ½ weeks.  Maybe that will do it!  Anyway, the next time I blog will probably be after our return from home.  Like I mentioned earlier when we return we plan to move NautiNell to Dunedin around the first of August.  We’ll see!

Till next time!

Admiral “C