January 7: Still at Caladesi State Park

We are still at Caladesi State Park. It is a beautiful park with a wonderful beach. We got up early and walked the beach. We found a lot of snail shells stranded on the beach due to the tide going out. We tossed all we found back in the water. I also included a picture of barnacles growing on a clam shell. These are the same barnacles that will continually try to grow on the bottom of our boat! Hopefully our new bottom paint will deter them for a while at least. There are so many neat shells it is unbelievable.

We have enjoyed seeing the variety of birds. There are a lot around the marina and they are pretty used to people.

After walking the beach we decided it was time to clean the boat. I did a thorough cleaning of the front cabin and the main cabin while Linda cleaned the stove and tacked some wires up for our television system. After two hours working, we decide that was enough of that and went for a kayak tour of the mangroves. It was nice to finally have a nice warm day that we could enjoy kayaking. We were disappointed in not seeing many fish, although we did see about an 18" mullet jump around, but we saw a lot of neat birds. In all it has been a relaxing and very enjoyable stay. We plan to head out tomorrow to our next location. Linda checked "Active Captain" which is a web site that many cruisers use to share information. She found an interesting place to stay. It is a "Free" dock that a couple owns behind behind their house and offer to cruisers. They said they just enjoy meeting new people and are happy to have someone use their dock. Sounds like fun!