Wednesday April 22: Tarpon Springs

The winds and rain were finally finished so we pushed out of the St. Petersburg harbor Tuesday morning and headed south and then north toward Caladesi State Park - a 45 mile, 6 hour trip.

It was so calm - for about the first 30 minutes! Then the north winds came up - which was actually a good thing. It blew away much of the humidity that was making it uncomfortable warm for the past few days.

The clouds stayed with us most of the travel day but eventually the sun broke through.

The Tampa Bay Bridge (which we traveled under on our way into Tampa Bay) is now to the south of us. Fortunately there was a waterway north of the bridge that we fit under so there was minimal backtracking to make our way north.

Much of our travel was very close to the gulf. Only a small strip of land separating the gulf from the ICW.

When I first saw this porta pot on the crane, I thought they hoisted it up for the day to keep it safe. I'm sure you've seen this kind of thing except usually it's a generator on a trailer or something that would have some monetary value so the porta pot surprised me!

And then I saw the guy on the top floor - guess it makes sense to have the  porta pot where no one has to walk all the way down to use it :-)


Lots of small spoil islands along the waterway - and plenty of folks that enjoy using them! There are even boats (far right) that provide transportation back and forth. We do love our beaches!

It was a really good dolphin day today. Steve went to the front and there was a baby dolphin swimming with it's mother!

So cute.

Steve couldn't resist taking a video also!

We ended up being the only boat at the dock last night - well, it was us and the no-seeums anyway! Made for a warm night as we couldn't open up the boat.

Steve found a nice trail around the island.

Lots of wildlife and there was also some pretty good information about the formation and history of Caladesi Island. Click here for more info: history of island.

Tons of small lizards just about everywhere. There are rattlesnakes as well - I'm thinking this might be a nice snack for a snake, right?













And a gorgeous beach to boot! What's not to like about this place?






This beach actually is now connected to the beach at Clearwater due to a hurricane in the late 1980's.

Doesn't seem like it's possible for a hurricane to change the landscape that much but obviously it can! For more info, click here.

After waiting until after noon for the tide to come in, we headed for our last northern stop: Tarpon Springs.

The route into Caladesi State Park is shown on the charts to be four feet so with an additional couple of feet, high tide gives us plenty of depth.

Once we made the turn north, it was surprising how open the water was. A few small islands to break the waves coming from the northwest across the Gulf but that's about it.

There's another park on the northernmost corner of the picture left that is a very popular (based on the number of boats we saw) spot to spend the day. Once again, there were many tour boats that would take folks to the island for the day (out of Tarpon Springs).

The Anclote River runs a mile or so inland to the port of Tarpon Springs. The last quarter mile is lined with shrimping boats and sponge boats.

This one was full of sponges just collected (not sure how far they have to go to get this many). They were being rinsed at the rear of the boat before being unloaded.

We're here for a couple of days before turning back to put Yesterday's Dream in storage until we return in October.