March 19, 2020 – Around the Great Loop on the Answer

Week 39: Titusville, FL to New Smyrna Beach, FL

Accomplishing routine tasks in a city is so much easier than in the small towns where we usually stay along the loop. Titusville has a bus system similar to the one we used in Fort Myers. As “seniors” our fares were only $.75 each so a roundtrip cost us the equivalent of what the tip would have been for an Uber or Lyft. The bus took us to a Walmart SuperCenter with a HomeDepot across the street. Definitely a good investment to get what we needed. We took four shopping bags so we could each carry two since the bus stated “only what you could carry” yet we did see people bring shopping carts on the bus. If necessary, we could make another trip before we leave or just take advantage of the local Save A Lot grocery store within walking distance.

The Space View Park and American Space Museum & Walk of Fame were an easy walk from the marina. We enjoying touring both and had hoped that there would be a launch while we were there but the next scheduled launch was a few days after we were scheduled to leave. We decided not to extend our stay to view the launch. If the weather did not cooperate, the launch could have been rescheduled so we might not have been able to see it anyway. The weather was nice, little wind and calm water so we were able to leave as planned and headed to New Smyrna Beach.

Arrived in New Smyrna Beach and after we docked, the dockmaster told us that she had a Manatee years ago. In fact, she had Jim Krogen’s Manatee named Sumo. Told her that our boat had been Skipper Bob’s so we shared a few stories about our “famous” boats.

While we were in New Smyrna Beach, we toured the town, visited the local library and picked up a few books as usual. We didn’t visit the library in Titusville as Peter bought a few books at the Space Museum. New Smyrna Beach is a nice town with a walkable historic district. It seems as though the town has two distinct “downtown” areas – the historic district and the “new” downtown located near the actual beach.

Peter also had a high school friend who now resides permanently in New Smyrna Beach after years of being a “snowbird” so we planned to have dinner together. Also, another friend (who was in our bridal party so many years ago) lived close by and drove up to have dinner with all of us. It was great spending time with Tom and Jeanne, and Frank. Lots of laughs and good conversation. Although we all said we needed to get the waitress to take a picture we were having such a good time that we all forgot….had Tom and Jeanne send us a selfie to post here but since we would be meeting up with Frank again in St Augustine next week we hoped that we would not forget again!