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...