Day 28 SLEEP, oh what beautiful sleep

Sleep came easy last night after the long trip from Carabelle.  The first photo shows Lucky Us happily moored in her slip.

Even the Admiral admits to sleeping in until 7:30 am, which is way late for her. Last night we took our electric scooters and toured the old downtown area, which is very nicely restored. We went to dinner at a nice Mexican restaurant. There was a Publix grocery store in the next block, and amongst other necessities, I got a half gallon of Blue Bell vanilla ice cream.

   Today we launched the dingy and headed over to Clearwater Beach, which is on the barrier island about 1.5  miles to the west. There is another city run marina there with a "free" dingy dock.  The marina is right at the intersection where the bridge from the mainland hits the main road along the barrier island. The sides of the marina that line these two roads are lined with jet ski, fishing, dolphin tour, para-sail, dinner boats, etc. The businesses rent one or two boat slips and set up a sign, table, etc.  We had lunch on the second floor of "Crabby Bill's" restaurant that overlooks all of this activity. Both of us had some variation of Mahi Mahi for lunch while we enjoyed watching the many boats, jet skis, etc coming and going.

     After lunch, we walked across the street to a beautiful white sand beach about 100 yards wide. They have (clearly labelled) crosswalks between the intersections, and it is truly amazing that all traffic stops as you approach the crosswalk.  Wow, if this was Texas, they would speed up.

 The water was in the mid 80s (F) and felt great. Sorry about the graphic image of our toes in the sand, but...

After a few minutes of sitting in the sun, we headed back to the dingy.

We took a longer, more scenic route back to Lucky Us to check out more of the area. We left the dingy in the water tied to the other side of the finger pier along our slip. The marina is not very crowded so they were most cooperative about the dingy.  We plan more adventures on the dingy tomorrow!

At this point, I headed for a nap in the air conditioned comfort of the master stateroom while the Admiral checked out the local birds.
We have been adopted by a friendly Brown Pelican. It seems that most of the local "wildlife" have been trained to expect food, but these guys are not getting any handouts from us... 

The last photo is that of a Great (White) Egret that roams the area as if it owned everything.
     So far, we are really enjoying this part of Florida. Tomorrow, the adventure continues...