Green Turtle Bay...ONE WHOLE WEEK!

When we arrived at Green Turtle Bay Resort (GTBR), we were exhausted, a little cranky, hungry, in need of a potty break (well mostly just Crocket), a looooong hot shower and thrilled to be off the rivers...for now anyway! Although we did not have any problems/issues to speak of, it was an adventure for sure. The rivers are much different from boating on Lake Michigan. Both have their respective aggravations but you become immune to the issues when you are familiar with the water. Obviously, we are not familiar with the rivers which makes for a bit of stress anticipating the worst and hoping for the best! Luck was on our side and gave us all a nice sunny ride with lovely views, but it was a looooong couple of days with a considerable number of barge traffic and hoards of debris (mostly tree stumps). I like moving from place to place everyday but not when we are traveling from sun up to sun down. Moving forward we will average about 40-50 miles at most each day. If we leave early morning we should be able to arrive mid-afternoon and get to see a little bit of each new location.

Upon arriving at GTBR we welcomed their deal, 'pay for 4 nights, get 3 nights free' and planned to enjoy our stay here with our buddy boats before we go our separate ways. They will be heading to the Looper rendezvous while we will be heading north to Nashville for our friends wedding. The plan is to meet back up along the Tenn-Tom Waterway and if that doesn't happen, we pinky swore we would do the Gulf crossing together. So, for now we will enjoy Green Turtle Bay and each others company!

Main office where you can purchase food for the turtles

Slip 8, our home for a week

We've enjoyed both breakfast and lunch here a number of times

We arrived on a Friday evening just in time to have dinner at the Yacht Club located within the resort. This is a dry town (no alcohol anywhere) but you can bring your bottle of booze to the restaurants and they will mix your drink for you. Malibu in hand for me and Tito's for Ben, we enjoyed dinner with our friends Bob and Liz. Took dessert to go and crashed out for the night.

Commonwealth Yacht Club

I wonder why they call this place Green Turtle Bay???? Everyday we saw anywhere from 20-30 turtles.

These turtles are here for the summer and head south for the winter. Crocket and I fed them every day!

We seem to have impeccable timing and happened to be here for a shrimp boil hosted by the Yacht Club. A fellow Looper contacted us a few days before arriving to get our reservations for the event. Thank you Brian from Pearl! Boy were we blown away! Not only was it a shrimp boil with all the fixings of corn, sausage and potatoes but they also had KING CRAB LEGS and snow crab. Let's just say, Ben ate his $25 worth and then some! It was crazy watching everyone crowd around the 2 tables waiting with their tongs, elbows out, grabbing as much food as they could fit on their plates. This went on for a good hour and a half, I started noticing people were looking full yet the food was still coming out. OK! Twist our arms and back in for one more plate! I did hit the dessert table and had my plate of brownies under my arm to take back to the boat.

Bob and Ben threw down on the crab legs

This was a fundraiser, not sure how they made any money with all this crab...YUM!!

Everyone had talked us into going to a local restaurant called Patti's for their HUGE pork chop, so we can now say we did just that! We enjoyed our evening with Chuck and Vicki on Patriot, Bob and Liz on Knot Sew Easy, and Dawn and Colin on Movin' On. There was no shortage of laughs with this group!

Liz and I spoiled ourselves with a pedicure at the spa located on the resort. Ben got himself a hair cut while Bob got beat up with a massage.
We had a great time taking the golf carts into the cute little town for groceries, soft serve ice cream, and some sight-seeing. We came across a local baker, Sugar and Spice, who makes pies to order and even delivers if we want. Bob and Liz shared their pumpkin pie one day and surprisingly Ben shared his strawberry-rhubarb the next!

This resort is beautiful, these deer were not afraid of us at all. Deer here seem much smaller than back in Illinois.

Family golf cart ride!

Dawn and Colin, just returned from a road trip to the Land between the Lakes

A little get together with some Loopers before devouring Ben's ribs and Liz's yummy potato casserole!

My attempts at a car selfie in the dark...didn't work but I love this shot of Chuck. He and his lovely wife, Vicki, don't know it but we will be invading them at their home in Mobile! Hope they were serious about their invite! hehehe!

Our last night together GTBR hosted their 3rd annual Looper Q! We filled our belly's with some pulled pork and had a great time with our friends and called it an early night, actually I might have over served myself (remember its a dry town so I can't blame this one on anyone!) and passed out early...but who's asking!?

I love this shot, we really are blessed to have been able to spend this time with these wonderful people!

Ben and I have decided to stay here another week as we have a lot of time until we need to be in  Nashville.  From here it will only take 4 days at most. SOOOOO...we will stick around this pretty resort, maybe spend some more money at the spa, enjoy meeting all the new wave of Loopers coming through and taking care of some boat maintenance, ordering a new vacuum (ours fell off a shelf and no longer works...OOOPS my fault! Another lesson learned the hard way), waiting for our new guide books to arrive for the next portion of our trip, getting all our laundry done and maybe even an excursion to Paducah or Land between the Lakes!
My goal is to blog daily moving forward, wish me luck and wifi to do this!