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.