A few weeks ago…
April planned a “Choose Your Own Adventure” day and took me on a date. It started with Krispy Kreme doughnuts, so from the get-go I knew it was going to be a great day. From there, she had a list of options for things to do and places to visit, and I got to pick as we went. It was awesome.
We visited a couple of parks and scouted spots for a longer hike or a future photo expedition. One place in Dania Beach, FL, has wild monkeys living right in town! They’re African green monkeys whose ancestors escaped from a roadside chimp attraction back in 1948, and they’ve been hanging out next to the Fort Lauderdale airport ever since. From what I hear, travelers spot them in the airport parking lots. Imagine landing after a long flight and getting a monkey welcome committee on the way to your car. Because they’re not native, Florida could label them invasive and have them removed, and we all know what “removed” means. That’s where the Dania Beach Vervet Project comes in. This nonprofit works to keep the troop living free, and when a monkey gets hurt or lands in danger, they take it in at their sanctuary. If you love these little guys and would like to help, you can donate here: https://vervetproject.org/products/make-a-donation-to-support-our-mission. We didn’t see any, but it’s on the list of places to come back to with a camera.
I’ve had a particular sailing store pinned in Apple Maps for years. Without knowing that, April put it on my list of options. Of course we went. We actually went there TWICE that day!
The sailing section felt like a much smaller version of Bacon’s in Annapolis, but far more organized. I love those kinds of stores, so it was a great stop. April and I have been collecting old sailing and travel magazines for a future date night. We’re going to make a huge collage of the places and scenes we’ll be chasing down when we push off the dock in 2027. I headed out to the car while she was at the checkout with an armful of old paper treasures. As we drove away, I mentioned a book I probably should have bought.
We were miles away when she told me the books didn’t have price tags, so the cashier had charged her $1 each for any book older than a certain number of years.
I started counting back the years to the book I wanted. I could have bought it for ONE DOLLAR.
By the way, none of what I’ve written so far is the treasure I’m hinting at in the headline.
Our day continued at an absolutely fantastic family-owned diner that’s been around for over 100 years. It was packed, and the food was great. It wasn’t even on our list. We’d driven to another pick across the street that turned out not to be our style. As we were leaving, I spotted a huge “Homemade Ice Cream” sign, took a hard left across traffic, parked behind the ice cream shop, and that’s where we found the diner. It was so good I’m not sure we ever had ice cream that day.
Moving on…
As we got back on the road, I brought up that book again. April reminded me she’d gotten all her old books for $1, so I immediately pointed the car back toward the sailing store. The plan was for April to go in, find the book, find the same cashier, explain that she’d forgotten one she’d seen earlier, and hope for the $1 deal again.
Well, that cashier wasn’t there. April asked someone else for help. After they found the book, and he heard she’d spent money there that morning, he told her to “Just take it.”
Again, this isn’t the treasure from the headline. But she did get me a treasure, even if it was free. The book is The Great Book of Anchorages: The Chesapeake Bay, Including the Potomac River, by Susan Landry and Charles Baier (Beach House Publications, 2014). It’s the original 2014 first edition, and as far as I can tell it was never revised. It was written by a couple who sailed the Chesapeake Bay for more than 30 years and documented about 250 anchorages and free docks, all the way from Havre de Grace and Chesapeake City down to Cape Charles and Lynnhaven Inlet. Each one comes with a description and a little chartlet with basic NOAA markings. Today we’d use an updated chart plotter, of course, but it’s so cool to have a list of spots we’d probably never think to explore. The cover price is $25. We paid $0. We’ll be spending the summer of 2027 in the Bay, and that book is going to pay off, even though it was free.
On to the treasure.
Oh wait. April also had a bookstore on the list, and at the end of the day I rerouted us there. I’m not sure how to explain it. It was incredible, and then it got more incredible.
More than 50 years ago, a man started a used bookstore. We found it. Hand-built shelves ran from the floor to the ceiling, 20+ feet up, on three walls. In the center was an island of books, mostly behind glass, that also went nearly to the ceiling. The place looked like it should smell of old books. It didn’t. It was tidy, and it was PACKED with customers. If you wanted a book up top (and I don’t know how you’d know what was up there, because it was too high to read the spines), you asked one of the two employees, one of whom was the owner, to climb the ladder and get it for you. This was not a discount bookstore, by the way.
At some point, April was consumed by a stack of about half a dozen books, and I needed to find the little boys’ room. I asked, and the owner walked me outside to the storefront next door, unlocked it, and told me to go left and all the way to the back. Guess what. It was ANOTHER bookstore, not yet open to the public! His son was there. He told me he wasn’t really into books but was getting used to it. He said his dad had been using this space, as big as the original store if not bigger, to sort the books he bought before moving them next door. They had just finished building shelves around the walls and down the middle, so the store could expand and customers would have room to see everything.
It was truly amazing.
Out front, there were shelves on the sidewalk under a roof big enough to keep the weather off. I spent most of my time out there, and none of the books looked water-damaged. There was no way those books moved inside every night. Almost everything outside was $2, and next to the door was an honor-system box. You could come by after hours, grab a book or a few, put your cash in an envelope, and drop it through the mail slot.
I found so many books for our sailing and travel date night!
So… a few weeks later. Well, long enough to crave HOT Krispy Kreme doughnuts again. I found a treasure from that bookstore.
On Sunday, I was flipping through my $2 stash and came across a thick 1985 Annapolis Boat Show guide. I was tearing out yellowed pages one after another when I hit the middle and realized the rest of the book was nothing but sales flyers for the boats at that year’s show. It was probably 100 pages of them, so I thumbed through quickly. I got from A to about S in the builders’ ads, then stopped and thought…
What if Liberty Boats was in here? I’d flipped right past it.
I flipped back, and there she was… the Liberty 38! That’s Avemar! Well, not exactly Avemar. It’s her big sister, Hull #1, Tyee.
The crazy part is that only 6 Liberty 38s were ever built, and Avemar is Hull #6, the baby of the family. The crazier part, besides finding a 1985 ad for her big sister in 2026, is that Avemar is sitting in Indiantown, Florida, right now, only a 30-minute drive from where she was built in Riviera Beach, Florida. In fact, as I type this, April is at school about 2 miles from where Avemar was splashed.
And Tyee? She’s still out there. She sails under the name Voyager now, out of Wilmington, Delaware. That’s not far from the Chesapeake, where we’ll be spending next summer. So maybe that free anchorage book will lead us to a family reunion.
How crazy is it that the last Liberty 38 ever built found the very first one posing in an ad, in a boat show guide, in a stack of $2 books, on the porch of a not-so-cheap bookstore, on a “Choose Your Own Adventure” date?
Thank you, April!
A special day, indeed.