Saga of the van continues

Woke up Monday to beautiful weather – headed to the mid-60s and sunny – and called Daytona Dodge only to find out there were no deliveries on Mondays and so the earliest the new radio could arrive would be Tuesday.  Checked in for an additional day at Tomoka SP to wait it out and mentioned to the ranger at the desk that we had never seen a manatee. He said they were easily seen at Blue Spring SP on the St. Johns River, only about 25 miles away so off we went. And see them we did. There was a boardwalk along a quiet part of the river and many, many manatees within several feet of the shore.  Young and old, they swam lazily along with schools of fish, munching sea grass and coming up periodically for a breath of air. They are an interesting aquatic mammal, a distant cousin of the elephant. They only eat sea grass and live mainly in warm shallow, brackish rivers and estuaries where that plant is abundant.  Weighing in at about 40-50 pounds at birth they generally reach 10 feet in length and about 800-1200 pounds in adulthood. It was a pleasant afternoon and we stayed a while, warming up leftover carnitas and vegie burritos in the van before heading back to Tomoka SP.

Tuesday morning we felt lazy and were still in bed when Stephen (our service rep) called at 8 to say the radio was arriving via UPS at about noon. We couldn’t wait to get there and arrived just at noon. After waiting a couple of hours for UPS to show up, Stephen and Doug (the service manager) told us regretfully that the wrong radio had been delivered. They were ever so nice and explained the convoluted Chrysler order and delivery process to us but the upshot is they could only find one to fit our van in California, so no radio for a few more days.  We put our heads together and decided the best course of action was to head out and do the southern portion of our Florida tour and circle back to Daytona once the radio arrives.

We had seen a billboard for an Escher exhibit at the Museum of Arts – DeLand on our way to Blue Spring SP and decided that a good museum visit would ease the pain.  It was to be, however, just another disappointing moment.  Our faithful Garmin (courtesy of Jeff) got us to the museum on the Stetson College campus 40 minutes before closing only to find that this special exhibit was at the downtown location, about another 15 minutes along the road.  Deciding it wasn’t worth hurrying to pay the $20 admission for a quick peek, we settled for looking for a good lunch.

We found a good parking spot in downtown DeLand and began the search. After checking the menus in a couple of places, we chose the Brickhouse Grill for turkey burger and chili.  When we sat down to order we noticed the TV above the bar counting down the minutes to the SpaceX Falcon 9-Heavy launch.  As she served our Cokes, our waitress shared her excitement about the imminent event with us.  Turns out she is studying aerospace robotics at Emory-Riddle and couldn’t go to the launch with her classmates because she had to work but thought she would at least be able to see the rocket from where she was a few seconds after it left the pad.  We said we could certainly wait to order our food and we all left the restaurant to see what we could see.  It was indeed clearly visible above the buildings and trees as it rose straight up, thirty seconds after blast off. We watched it go up, then appear to level as it flew above the high clouds.  She pointed out the moment it broke the sound barrier and although we couldn’t hear it, we could see the “wake” trailing behind.  Truly an exciting moment.

Satisfied and happy, disappointments forgotten, we headed northwest a bit to the Ocala National Forest, Juniper Springs campgrounds, for the night. Tomorrow we head south.