Labor Day weekend at the Beach! This weekend finds us enjoying an extra day at one of our favorite campgrounds, North Beach Campground in St. Augustine. We were last here a little over a year ago. At the time it was only our second outing with The Island Time. We realize as we visit this time how much we have learned since the original visit.

North Beach Campground is unique because nestled back in the Florida natural woods is a campground with the Atlantic Ocean on one end and the Intracoastal on the other end. We are in campsite #95 which is only about 100 yards from the entrance and the Atlantic side. Going the other way about the same distance is the Intracoastal with a fishing dock and beach.

Our campsite is a back-in (which with perfect direction from Jeannie) we backed into perfectly on the first time. The site is a little small length-wise but the width is just right. There is barely room to get the ML out of the road, but it is all working out great.

It is so nice to have the extra day this weekend. While it is not really a problem to setup and break camp, the reality of being able to sleep-in and just enjoy the setting for two days in a row is a real treat.

This weekend is the debut of our new cooker; the Cobb. While browsing my favorite Airstream blogs and bemoaning not being able to cook on the Big Green Egg, I cam across a posting for the Cobb cooker. The Cobb appeared to be the perfect blend of flexible cooker and portability. Needless to say, after a little research I put that Amazon Prime membership to use and we received the Cobb on Friday, just in time to pack for the weekend.

My first learning experience with the Cobb was to cook some mahi mahi in a foil pouch. The fish came out great in about 25 minutes. I learned a great deal about temperature control while cooking the fish and am now ready for something more involved.

Sunday evening I am planning on cooking some country style ribs “low and slow” on the cooker. I am planning on using nine briquettes for this cook, which should take about 2 hours to complete. I am going to cook them dry, with a dry rub, but beer in the lower tray to help keep them moist. I hope they are good! I think it will be so cool to be able to put a roast or ribs or other large cut on the grill and slow cook it for several hours without having to give constant attention to the cook. We will see how it goes.

Somewhat of a concern this weekend is that Sailor seems to have developed an anxiety about being here, much like he gets from gun shots or fireworks. We have given him a small amount of Benadryl to help calm him down, but it does not seem to be helping much. Hopefully, he will work his way out of it.

I have been having fun with my camping technology. I could not get my router/repeater to connect here. The park admits that they do not have great wi-fi coverage. However, there is an access point next to our campsite, but it is cycling on and off every nine seconds. Unfortunately, I can not reach any of the other access points so we are having to rely on our cellular data. Cellular coverage here is not that great in this area so I guess we are really “roughing it” this weekend. iPads and iPhones are getting through when outside. I am also playing Ham Radio this weekend. I have the Yaesu FT857d on VHF and seem to be able to raise the local repeaters, but not much traffic.

That just leaves me with the blog. We are having a great and relaxing time. It is much needed as our lives seem overly stressful at the moment for some reason. Perhaps this will give us just the time we need to regain our perspective and enjoy the journey. We are having fun.

Thanks,

Captain Skip