Day 55 - Homestead to Chicago - From Paradise to the Polar Vortex

This was the day we had to leave our paradise and go back to Chicago for several weeks.  We have gone 1975 miles so far.  As usual, we cleaned up the boat and reluctantly packed our bags.  It was cloudy and the coolest day we could remember since Apalachicola, a few weeks earlier.  There were 2 men on Trident, working on the steering.  They told us that they had already seen mama raccoon twice that day, looking for her babies.  They had first seen her last August, and from time to time when they came to work on the boat.  Why the owner had not done something to chase mama raccoon away sooner was a mystery.  Finally, the guys told the owner that they would not work on the boat unless he got rid of the raccoons, thus the appearance of raccoon man.  We wondered how mama raccoon got onto the dock in the first place.  Evidently she climbed a Mangrove on shore and managed to step through the barbed wire at the side of the gate.  Sure enough, we saw bits of raccoon fur on the barbed wire as we left.

Chuck picked us up again and we went back to his house for some snacks and a cocktail.  Then he and Pam took us to the Miami Airport for an 8 p.m. flight.  Before we even left their house, the flight was delayed an hour.  Once at the gate, there were more delays until finally at 11 p.m., the flight was cancelled until the next morning.  It seemed that the bad weather throughout the rest of the country had backed everything up and now the captain we were waiting for had too many flight hours to fly any more that day.  Of course now it was midnight and we had to find a hotel to stay in for a few hours.  Maybe it was not so bad though, because we missed the -50 degree wind chills of January 6^th and 7^th.
 

 It was sunny and all of 10 degrees when we got home on the 8^th.  I think we can manage for a few weeks until we fly back to Florida on February 13^th for more adventures.