A couple visits to New Smyrna Beach, and visiting with friends

I had gotten a facebook message from our friends from home, Nancy and Andy, that they were going to be in Daytona Beach for a week and wanted to get together.  We made plans to meet at the Ponce Inlet Lighthouse, and then go to dinner somewhere in New Smyrna Beach.

On our way the Ponce Inlet, Tom and I took a side trip through New Smyrna Beach to check it out. 

At the south end of the island is the continuation of Canaveral National Seashore – more beautiful beach.

We continued up the coast, and soon arrived at Ponce Inlet.  We met up with Andy and Nancy and walked around the park at the lighthouse.

Nobody was interested in climbing to the top or going in any of the museums, so we just took a few pictures outside.

Tom and Andy were more interested in the boats!

The guys were getting hungry, so we returned to New Smyrna Beach for some dinner at Breakers on the beach.

It was a nice day at the beach, and the sun was just started to set as we were eating dinner.

We had an amazing view of the sunset as we crossed the causeway from the beach.

We had a nice dinner and enjoyed catching up.  They are in town for the Rolex 24 race at Daytona, and Nancy wasn’t really excited about spending three days at the track.  She suggested that Tom might want to go one of the days to enjoy the action and keep Andy company.  Anything car related will interest Tom, so he made plans to meet Andy in Daytona on Thursday for the qualifying day.

He was up bright and early on Thursday, and met Andy at Daytona Speedway before 9am.

They had infield passes and garage passes, and Tom really enjoyed walking around the garages.  They got to see the cars up close – Ford and GM were well represented

as well as the European race cars.

They got to see the race teams in action,

and even sit in the driver’s seat – real and virtual!

Tom said they both had a good time, and he was glad he went.

So while he was off having fun, I was working, but I got my payback . . . on Saturday, I made him go back to New Smyrna Beach for the Art Fair.

We didn’t think it would be too big (not that big of a town!), but it was a pretty good show.

We didn’t find anything we needed to buy, but enjoyed walking through the booths and several of the downtown shops.

Spotted this little guy waiting for his owners – too cute!

After the Art Fair, we had an early dinner in a treehouse – that was interesting!

After dinner, we took a drive back down to the beach.  It was a totally different beach on this windy overcast day . . . also high tide!

New Smyrna Beach is a cute little town – with the typical beach shops, bars and restaurants . . . and a pretty nice beach.

There was a “Wine Walk” going on, so there were lots of people in town –

many of them walking from one bar/restaurant/wine shop to another with their wine glasses in hand!  It was a pretty interesting concept – $20 per person, and it looked like they had a good 10-12 places to stop for wine.

We did not participate, but several of the shops were getting in on the act by offering complimentary wine samples and snacks . . . for free! 

Another enjoyable afternoon!

Getting back to the Jeep, I couldn’t resist taking a picture – it looks good!