Wednesday, December 20, 2017

A Week of Friends and Music in Jensen Beach

Our last week in Jensen Beach was very busy with doing a few jobs on Opus, checking out new areas and attending a couple music venues. We really like this area and have put it at the top of our possible places to settle down list. The area along the Indian River is true old Florida with many neat locally owned restaurants and shops. Less than five miles away are all the stores for anyone who loves to shop (not me) would want. Even with all this we found several condos that are in our price range. Another requirement we have is warm winter weather and Jensen Beach is far enough south for us. That said, we did have a "cold" snap with highs in the 60's and lows in the 40's that forced me to wear jeans rather than shorts. It was cool for five days but the warm sunny Florida weather we love has returned. We sure hope that means winter in Florida is over.    
We started our last week at the Jupiter Jazz Society's Sunday jam session. This week Leslie Rich was the featured singer for the first hour.
She was followed by several great musicians including Tony Natilo here on guitar who got the place rocking with some fantastic jazz and blues numbers.
While the winter weather scared us away from the Stuart Christmas boat parade we could not miss the Christmas golf cart parade at Ocean Breeze.
The parade had about twenty decorated golf carts that were led by two Jensen Beach police cars. They were even throwing candy.
We had not done the Thursday evening art walk so that was on our list for this week. There were several artisans selling their original works, but there were also a few people selling cheap imported junk. Overall, it was a good variety of art. 
After the art walk we went to Crawdaddy's for some live music......
......and some raw Louisiana oysters. While this place is not as good as the food we get in Abbeville, it is a great local choice.
On Friday we went to the Dolphin Bar and Shrimp House for lunch. This is an interesting place that was part of the Outrigger resort and restaurant. The Outrigger was owned by singer and actress Frances Langford and was the go to place for many rich and famous people in the 1960's. Famous visitors included Bob Hope, Dwight Eisenhower, Jackie Gleason, Richard Nixon, the Prince of Tonga,........
.......Mary Lou Burger, Jim Tidball, Nancy Tidball and Pat Fitzsimmons. We had a great lunch by the water and added the Dolphin Bar to our list of reasons to settle in this area.
On Friday evening we went to a local music venue in Stuart, Terra Fermata. This is a funky outdoor venue that has music seven nights a week. It is not a restaurant, but they serve drinks and there was a food truck parked at the entrance. The opening act was guitarist Joel DaSilva's group who played some great rock and blues. 
The featured act was a local band Big Pine that played a mix of Southern rock and blues. Several evenings a week Terra Fermata has open jam sessions for different genres of music.
On our last last day in Jensen Beach we went back to the Double Roads for the jazz jam session. We usually only get to go twice when we are in this area but going from Jensen Beach we got to go three times this year.
The featured singer this week was Libra Sene whom we met on our first visit. If you are in the Jupiter area and like jazz, add the jazz society's Sunday jam to your to do list. You can find the schedule at this link to their Facebook page.

I do have a report on the new carpet. Nanc said I spilled a beer on it, but from someone who has spilled more than one beer in my life my defense is it was really only a SMALL splash that was easily soaked up. No harm no foul.

We drove 25 miles and are now at Jonathon Dickinson State Park near Jupiter until 2018. We are looking forward to celebrating the holidays and spending time with our friend Mary Lou. This is another favorite area where we always have a great time.