Hampton - We provision and have a party

I have it on good authority that the sign will come down on Sunday!

Well, more rain and cold weather! It did stop raining long enough to get out to the nearest Walmart but we never saw the sun. In the afternoon, people along the dock who we never saw the first day finally came out of their boats, us included. We met several couples and invited them over for wine at 5:00.

We hope to see the IMAX feature here, it's right next door

Hampton has a very nice shopping center, the Peninsula Town Center, which is not enclosed but rather a collection of stores in a planned area. We've found more and more cities doing that. It looks like an old fashioned downtown area with narrow streets and parking on the side but it was all laid out on a draftboard. Ann shopped at Chico's and Talbots while I looked into Barnes & Noble. I've taken to browsing the titles and taking an iPhone snapshot of books that look interesting and then coming back to the boat and looking them up on Amazon. If I'm still interested, I'll download the book to my Kindle. We just do not have any room on a boat for a lot of "dead trees". However, with a hardcover or paperback, you could easily trade with your friends with similar reading habits. That's much harder to do with a Kindle ebook. So on one hand they are generally cheaper (but not by much) but you don't get the advantage of free books by trading them. In the long run I think the publishers make out better with the ebooks.

It's always a pleasure to meet friends along the way, in this case Gail and Laura aboard their Beneteau 423

Sunday is promised to be the first of the warmer days. We are due to see the sun again and the temperature is predicted to be over 80, wow. Next thing you know I'll probably be complaining about the heat. We still plan on leaving Tuesday for the Mill Creek anchorage if the weather holds.