Monday April 20: Last Day at St. Petersburg

It's been a nice last couple of days here. This is an extremely bike friendly downtown - a dedicated bike lane totally separated from traffic!

Sadly we only discovered it today :-)

We ended up spending one more day here than planned due to the storms rolling around the Florida area.

Last night's lightening and thunder show was the closest we've seen in a while. It almost seemed as thought the lightening was hitting some of the high rises around the downtown area - the flash and the thunder were almost simultaneous.

The museums are all done! The history museum right across the road from the marina was small but interesting.

It presented both the history of Florida itself as well as the history of the development of St. Petersburg.

Best? There was a movie :-) Highlights of the movie focused on the first 'for hire' flight: from St. Petersburg to Tampa - a short 20 minute flight compared to the hours travel by either railway or car. Huge signed baseball collection as well.

This is one of the boats that went out yesterday for the Poker Run. Think this might just be the truck that hauls it??

Crazy huge with 3 doors - and a parking ticket! Oops .....

Today was the Holocaust Museum. Truly sad and amazing that anything like that could have actually happened. One of the goals of the museum was to tell the story from the eyes of people from the area who actually were there.

Very well done.

The last few days we've also ridden around The Pier. A structure built in 1973 that I'm sure in its heyday rivaled the Navy Pier in Chicago. Sadly it has been closed for some time due to structural issues. Now it's just sitting there - although it is still open to anyone that wants to walk, bike or fish around it.

And so it is definitely time to go. We've overstayed but weather will do that to you sometimes. Tomorrow there is still some chance of thunderstorms but we'll be in very protected waters and should be able to be to Caladesi State Park before more rain is coming through.