Day 48 on the "road" again...

   All good things must come to an end???
 Also, I think that Lucky Us was may be getting a little jealous of all of the big kids on the block (I know that I am)...  -and this is the off season. So, after 2 very intense days of fun, We daparted Longboat Key Club about 10:30 am and continued our journey south. We had an occassionally eventful trip of 42 miles to near Englewood, FL. The forecast for the next 4 days is 60-70% chance of rain with thunder storms, but by heading south we had hope to escape the worst weather... The "plan" almost worked except for 2 very short periods of intense rain and wind gusts.


Lots and lots of bridges, but we only had to have 2 of them open. One of them was this really old looking swing bridge. It was unusual also since the bridge tenders office was off one end of the bridge. After we called, he closed the traffic gates, and then he had to walk to the center of the bridge to man the controls to rotate the bridge.

We arrived at our destination at about 4:15 pm. After checking into the marina and having dinner on board, we had a delightful hour in the pool and hot tub. It was very relaxing but there is a problem since now we need to stay awake for several hours to avoid waking up at 4:00 am.   ...or to be more precise, to avoid having the Admiral wake up at 4:00 am.  I am pretty sure that I would be able to tough it out until at least 8:00 am.

Days 46-47 at Longboat Key Club and Moorings

    Continuing our recent theme of travel one day and takeing several off, we spent the past two full days enjoying the many amenities of the Longboat Key Club.

We took the shuttle across to the Gulf of Mexico and the wonderful white sand beach. Here is the Admiral enjoying the 90F water. The waves were 2-3 feet high so it was a little work getting out to the sand bars just off the shore. Terry found the waves reminescent of her youth when she lived in Hawaii.

I was amazed when they set up our beach umrella as the attendant just pulled out a cordless drill and in seconds he had a clean, deep hole to support the umbrella...

I am standing at the edge of the water and the view is back toward a pool, 5 restaurants, etc. The Admiral is hiding from the Sun under the umbrella just right of center.

The rocks in this picture are part of the breakwater to protect New Pass into Sarasota, and it defines the southern end of Longboat Key. This was a few minute walk along the beach from our umbrella.

If I look like "all business" it is because I am anxiously awaiting my Grilled Grouper Caesar Salad for lunch. That was quite possibly the best Caesar salad (with meat) that I have ever had! -ever!

This is "MOONDANCE". We had met her owners Berwick & Alexis in St. Pete and ran into them again at the pool by the marina. We went out to dinner with them on Day 46. They are from Louisiana but are in the process of staging there boat here so that they can start the Great Loop next January. We had a great time at dinner and promised to meet up again in a year or so somewhere along the Loop.

You might begin to think that all we do is eat... Well, Day 47 was Grandson Will's 3 and a half birthday party. His real Birthday is December 31 so you can see the reason for his "half birthday" party. Obviously we did not attend the party in Houston, but we did meet up with his Great Grandmother, Bobi Sanderson and celebrated in absentia at dinner near St. Armand's Circle. The "Circle" is full of great restaurants and upscale (and off beat) shops. Some of them have labels that read "London, Paris, New York and St. Armands". FORTUNATELY, we did not have time to shop on the way to dinner. We took the following picture to send to Will to celebrate his half birthday. Also joining us for dinner also were long time friends Jim Griffith and Jack Denison along with Jack's daughter in law, Cindy Denison.  Inparticular, I enjoyed trading cruising stories (lies?) with Jack.

I mentioned in the last post that there were 9.5 miles of walk/jog/bike path, which also wanders through the golf courses. I thought that this two-way underpass was really unusual, and it was complete with the sign giving ultimate right of way to walkers...

I thought that I would close with one last picture of Lucky Us (barely visible) through the marina entrance with a restaurant on the left and the ship's store on the right...

Day 45 stop at Moore's Stone Crab Restaurant for lunch and then...

   We started the day with a relaxed departure from Bradenton at 9:30 am. We headed west down the Manatee River to re-join the IntraCoastal Waterway headed south. Unlike any other day so far, we had a scheduled lunch stop at Moore's Stone Crab Restaurant near the north end of Longboat Key.

The restaurant has been run by the Moore Family for many generations, and they have a small fleet of boats that catches/traps much of the seafood that they serve. Let me tell you that even with "lunch size" portions of great broiled shrimp, Mahi Mahi, lobster bisque, etc, it was difficult to stay awake at the helm after lunch...

The second picture is Lucky Us docked at Moore's. The IntraCoastal

runs betwee the two mangrove islands in the background.

The next picture is the view back as we are leaving our lunch stop. Fortunately, our final destination was only about 7 miles away, which is about halfway down Longboat Key. We are staying at the Longboat Key Club Moorings, which is a really upscale place with just about every amenity possible starting with a 18 and 27 hole golf course, several pools, spa, 7+ restaurants, 9.5 mile walk/jog/bike trail, plus endless beach on the Gulf, etc. The next picture shows one of the pools in the foreground. Lucky Us is hidden amongst the much bigger boats in the background...

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Day 44 -relaxing in Bradenton, FL

We had a relaxing morning at the pool. I am not that "efficient" swimming so I prefer fresh water as I "tend" to accidentally swallow some of the water if I am not very diligent... For lunch, we went to "Pier 22", which is right at the mouth of the channel into the marina.

We chose to eat inside, but we did get a table with a great view.  In the background you get a view of how wide the Bradenton River is at this point. We seem to be developing a theme as once again we both had broiled grouper for lunch. We have kept an eye out for manatee, but even though they are quite large, they move very slow and as a result, are hard to locate. However, we have seen plenty of signs. -Sorry, that was a bad attempt at a pun...

     Bradenton has done a wonderful job of fixing up the waterfront along the Manatee River!

They have over a mile of waterfront park, and I even managed to find a comfortable spot. Meanwhile, the Admiral tried to give a speech but her audiance apparently wandered off...

The park was often over a hundred feet deep and contained a number of discovery exhibits such as this "echo chamber".

Tomorrow we are moving on south to the Longboat Key Club Moorings Marina. It is another short trip of only about 26 miles, but we have a lunch stop planned about midway at "Moore's Stone Crab Restaurant". We might even be daring and not have grouper????

Day 43 -a short trip to Bradenton

     We enjoyed our time in St. Pete, but today we cast off and went 26.5 miles to Bradenton, Florida. The weather was perfect with bue skies and a light breeze of 5 to 8 mph. The trip took 4.5 hours so you can see that we went slow to enjoy the day.  Most of the trip was in Tampa Bay. From St. Pete we went south to the Tampa Ship Channel where we headed west toward the Gulf of Mexico.

As you can see, while in the ship channel, we passed under the Sunshine Skyway, which offered many spectacular views. So, the first picture today is one that I took of the Admiral taking a picture of the Skyway. I have been over this bridge and the twin bridges that it replaced many times in the past 60 years, but today was my first time to go under it. So, it was something of a thrill for me, and I must admit that it was more relaxing looking up than going over the bridge and looking 150 feet down...

A few miles after passing under the bridge, we turned to the south (left in this view) to finish crossing Tampa Bay. At that point, we were just a couple of miles from the mouth of the Manatee River and the city of Bradenton just upstream. We used our electric scooters to tour downtown and have dinner at a cozy little Italian restaurant. Tomorrow will include some more touring and some time in the lovely pool at the end of our dock.

P.S. In the post yesterday, I mentioned hearing the thunder inside the dome and seeing the spectacular lightning in the distance outside on the way back to the boat. Tonight we are trying to watch some TV on a Tampa station, and there have been numerous interruptions to report tornado sightings in the Tampa - St. Pete area. So here we are a few miles to the south watching a spectacular "light show" over Tampa Bay and feeling lucky to have moved today...

Day 42 (very) full day in St. Pete

     Today we spent the whole day enjoying some of the many things to do/see in St. Petersburg, Florida. We started with breakfast, including beignets,

 

at an open air cafe along the water side park area in downtown St Pete. Then we walked about 5 blocks along the waterfront to the Salvador Dali Museum. This new building (picture) is a beautiful piece of art in itself, and even the large glass areas are built to withstand hurricane force winds. The beauty of the building is immediately evident on the inside as well. In the center of a huge open area, there is a spiral staircase that appears to go on up infinitely. Perhaps wisely, the exhibits were on the top/third floor where they are safe from storm surge.

  Once we got ack outside, I got to rest (and see some interesting geology) by sitting on some "lovely" algal mats in these huge limestone boulders that were designed as seating.

We then headed back to the boat for lunch, and along the way we passed more of the fun street art. It was at lunch that the Admiral surprised me with tickets to tonight's baseball game between the Tampa Bay Rays and the Toronto Blue Jays.

 The beautiful domed Tropicana Stadium is only about 12 blocks west of downtown, but even better, there is free bus service from downtown to the stadium. Our seats were described as "5 rows behind the Visiting Team's Dugout". What a treat! We got there about an hour before game time. Lots of people were trying to get autographs and pictures. ESPN sportscaster Dick Vitale was also sitting down in the first row, and he was very obliging about posing for photos. In the middle of all of the activity (oh yes, there was also batting practice, etc.), I had my first ballpark foot long hot dog in many years. Hmmmm, with yellow mustard and raw onion, can life get any better? Well, it sorta did 'cause, the popcorn was also pretty good.  

The final picture is pretty much the view that we had of the game, and just for the record, the Rays were ahead 4-0 when we left in the top of the 8th inning (4-1 was the final score). We might have stayed longer, but the thunder outside was also pretty loud inside... We only had a 100 yard walk from the exit to our bus back downtown. Thankfully, the thunder/lightning were all in the distance, and we only had a few drops of rain during the short walk back to Lucky Us. Another amazing day on our trip!

Day 41 Clearwater to St. Pete

We left Clearwater, Florida this morning after a (much needed) pump out of the holding tank. So far, Florida does the best job of providing pump out facilities. We are all in favor of not polluting, but several states that we passed through made little or no effort to enforce the laws...
     The trip went south along the Intracoastal Waterway between St. Petersburg Beach and St Petersburg to Tampa Bay where we turned east and north along the side of the bay to get to downtown St. Pete.

We went slower than usual to enjoy the scenery and the absolutely fantastic weather. I lost count of the number of bridges that we went under. As you can see from this picture, the clearance was often not more than 3 or 4 feet, but fortunately, we made it under all of them without having to wait for a scheduled opening of the bridge. Thus, the trip of only 36.4 miles took just over 5 hours. We are staying at the St. Pete City Marina right downtown.  The instructions from the marina said to enter on the south side of the "inverted pyramid" and that it would be easy to see/recognize.

.. and yes, they were right.  The building is at the end of what is known locally as "The Pier", and it contained five stories of shops, restaurants, bars, etc. until a month ago when it was closed and scheduled for demolition. It is scheduled to be replaced by another piece of art that would also include stores, entertainment, etc.  While in Clearwater, this building and its somewhat controversial replacement were in the news alot.

The fate will now be decided by a voters referendum. Can anybody spell "political football"??? That aside, we are on the edge of the downtown/waterfront area, which seems quite busy with restaurants, small stores and several very good museums. Just as a teaser, tomorrow morning we are going to the Dali Museum and then...

   Well after the beautiful, very relaxing cruise, of course, it was nap time... As luck would have it, when we got up, we discovered that there is a 20 screen movie theater just two blocks from the waterfront. We treated our movie withdrawal with "Monsters University". I quite enjoyed it, but the ending seemed quite lacking (?).

The final picture for today shows the Admiral posing with some street art outside the natural history musem, which is just outside the front gate of our marina. So far, we have plenty of things to do here tomorrow on our one full day.

Day 40 Beach - beautiful beach, warm water

For part of our last full day in Clearwater, we decided to take the dingy over to Clearwater Beach on the barrier island for lunch, sun and swimming.

Once again we had lunch at Crabby Bill's overlooking the marina. Just for the record, for once we both agreed and had broiled Grouper for lunch. Obviously, the trolley stops here as well. The scene at Noon was very busy with sightseeing, fishing, parasail and dive boats returning from the morning's adventures. After lunch, we walked across the street (to the right in the photo) to the beach.

The last that I heard the Gulf of Mexico here was at 89F, which makes it very easy to enter the water... The really warm water brought back memories of swimming in the Persian Gulf when we were in Qatar last Fall.  We went into the water twice with about 20 minutes of "sun time" in between.  VERY RELAXING! So relaxing in fact that the Admiral announced that she thought that it was "nap time". So, it was a short walk back to the dingy for our final ride across the bay to our dock on the mainland.

Our dock is just past the bridge on the far side. The old downtown for Clearwater is just to the left of the tall building.

Just one final picture with a little "local color". This floating bait store shows up on the weekends. They anchor in the shade under the big bridge, and the two guys fish very intensely. I have never actually seen them sell any bait so it might just be one really unique way of making your hobby of fishing be tax deductible??? 

We finished the day by loading the dingy back onto the swim platform and then taking the electric scooters to the local Publix supermarket for supplies as we are departing tomorrow for St. Petersburg, which is only 4 1/2 hours away at our speed.

Day 39 Sponge docks at Tarpon Springs

     We are still enjoying this area, and today we took the "Trolley" to the sponge docks in Tarpon Springs about 20 miles to the north.

 We got day passes as we had a full agenda planned for the day. The trolley stop was "at least" 100 feet from the end of our dock. Tarpon Springs is like two towns over with an old, southern style downtown area and the sponge docks with a huge Greek influence. There were many shops, restaurant and water activities available.

We had fresh seafood (shrimp and Grouper) for lunch at Rusty Bellies overlooking part of the harbor. After lunch we got serious about sight seeing, and oh yes, one of us, whose name will go unmentioned, bought herself a really great looking shirt. Thanks to grand kids we had plenty of other excuses to shop. Of course, sponges of all sizes and shapes were available.

In this picture I am standing beside a fake dory from a sponge boat. The location is inside a shopping area called "the Sponge Exchange", which by itself had 35 clothing and souvenir shops as well as a couple of restaurants.

After a quick tour along the harbor to see some actual working sponge boats, we boarded the trolley for "home". We deposited our loot in Lucky Us and headed to the bus station to go see "World War Z". I enjoyed the movie, but my judgement might have been enhanced by the fact that the popcorn was really great!

     It was a fun day, and the visit to Tarpon Springs was definitely worth the visit. I suppose that the only down side was a lot of time spent on the trolley/bus, but we did get to see more of a really interesting area. We are making plans to "move on" soon, but tomorrow is going to include some beach time as well as stocking up on food for the journey south.

Day 38 - The Admiral is Back

The admiral is back after spending a week in Oklahoma for a family reunion.  Here are a few pictures from her adventures:

The Gould Clan!

Terry and her sister, Christy.  According to Terry, she is the Good sister (see T-shirt)!
 



Beautiful Sunrise on Terry's last morning in Oklahoma!



 

While the Admiral was out playing the Captain slaved away on boat projects.  But I did manage to get to a few movies.  In fact the day after Terry returned we had an easy day that included seeing the movie "Internship."  My second viewing and it was still great! 

 

Today we visited the Clearwater Marine Aquarium and Winter's Dolphin Tale Adventure. It included a Trolley shuttle between locations and a boat shuttle to return.  The boat shuttle stop is very close to our boat so we have been watching the tourists go back and forth for over a week now and finally decided we should check it out.  The Aquarium is the home of Winter who is the star of the movie Dolphin Tale.  One interesting tidbit learned today was that the prosthetic industry was changed as a result of creating a tail for Winter.  They had to protect Winter's skin and so created a gel cover that would protect the skin while still providing a surface that the apparatus could be attached.  This same gel material has been used for humans with great results! 

Trolley ride





Dolphin show at the aquarium



View of Lucky Us as we return on the boat shuttle. 

Day 30 -Last post for a week (?)

   The Admiral left for Oklahoma this morning when the airport shuttle picked her up at 6:39 am. It was unbelieveably a few minutes early. THEN, I went back to bed and slept in until a much, much more reasonable hour. She is there to visit her sister and to attend a family reunion over the weekend in the panhandle of Oklahoma.

    As for me, I will be busy with some repairs, clean up, fix up, make right jobs while she is gone.

The one and only picture for today is of part of the hand rail on the fly bridge. I put the first coat of varnish on it today. This is really exciting, isn't it.  Well, one of the reasons for taking a week off from the blog is that I hope (?) to put 5 more coats of varnish on this rail while the Admiral is gone. Now wouldn't it be exciting to see pictures of coats 2,...6?  Actually, I think NOT!

Stay tuned! We should be back continuing the adventure beginning Wednesday, June 19...

Day 29 fun day in Clearwater

Really fun but also a relaxing day in Clearwater, FL. We started out in the dingy late morning to have a picnic lunch . We chose an island (Key?) about a mile and a half away.  
It is a pretty spot with one lone palm and some sea grape bushes (?), and it was only about 300 yards around. When we arrived there was a couple walking a small dog, but we chased them off so that we could have it all to ourselves. The sky in the photo is about two thirds black, which quickly turned out to be threatening and loud (thunder). So, we waded some and finally decided to load our lunch back up and head to the shelter of Lucky Us...

 This photo of the Admiral is in the opposite direction as the first, and you can see a friendlier sky back toward Lucky Us, which is docked near the tall building on the right. After lunch on board, we walked downtown to the Post Office to send some mail - don't get your hopes up unless your name is Sarah, Will or Katie Spang (our Grandkids). Well after all that exercise, it was time for       -you guessed it- a nap...

The last picture of the day is of a Black Skimmer. The marina is all floating docks so the tide flows through it keeping the water quite clean, which definitely helps the bird count as they find lots of small baitfish swimming around. So, Great Egrets walk the docks and catch fish while the pelicans fly up and down the channels between the long piers. The Admiral is a "birder" in the sense that she likes to identify the birds, but while I don't care about the names, I definitely enjoy watching them!

For dinner we followed the well worn path back to the old downtown for dinner at a nice local pizzeria/Italian restaurant.