Saturday April 28: Cayo Casta State Park

Wednesday morning and it was finally time to leave St. Petersburg. It is really a nice marina and city - thoroughly enjoyed our time here.

But one last museum yesterday - the Imagine Museum which traces the history of glass as an artistic medium, starting in the 1960's.

Dale Chihuly was one of the early leaders using blown and fused glass in his work. For information on his work and how he makes these glass pieces, click here. It's really quite fascinating!

Set of Baskets - Chihuly

These are just a sampling of the amazing pieces that are done either blown glass, fused glass or a combination of the two. To explore more of the collection, click here.

And of course we had to have one last lunch at our Thai place!


It was a long (for us) travel day of 50 miles (6 1/2 hours) to Blackburn Bay. Longer than we planned on initially but this put us within reach of Cayo Casta State Park.

The waterway travel and the anchorage was very nice. Of course an anchorage along this coast means you turn right or left off of the ICW until you reach a depth of 5 or 6 feet and toss the anchor. Surroundings will vary from mangroves (not so often) to very nice waterway homes (the usual!).

Off early and of course fishing was on the agenda as we were crossing Charlotte Harbor and Steve typically has good luck picking up a mackerel or two.

Nice size - good for several meals. Man, do I love having
fish every day ......

I even agreed to clean it :-)

We were able to just tie to the dock at the park this time as the docks were finally repaired from Irma. $20 a night - can't be beat!

Cayo Casta beach

This gives us access to the park itself which is great - especially since Steve likes to ride on the many paths around the island and over to the ocean side to the beautiful and empty beach!

For our second night here we anchored so we had easier access to the "manatee hole" by kayak.

We followed a mom and her baby ( which of course means it was only 3 feet long!) into the protected area. There were probably another half dozen around. Always fun to see but having so many visit Banana Bay has spoiled us for sure.

It was not an uneventful night as the wind decided NOT to die down so we ended up moving (before dark - we're getting smarter) to an area that was a bit more protected.

Up early Saturday morning. We were due to be pulled out at 2 pm and we were still a 4 or so hours away from the summer home for Yesterday's Dream.

No fish today - but that's ok  :-)

The weather we've had since we left Banana Bay on April 2 has been, for the most part, perfect. A few windy days here and there but overall we could not have asked for better travel days. A total of 450 miles in the last month.