Friday October 28: Caladisi State Park

Our arrival to the Caladisi state park didn't go quite as we planned - thanks mostly to the wind!

In my mind I knew just what I should do to approach the dock. Starboard tie so the wind would blow us right into the dock. Easy, right? Not so much !

And I should have known -- ALWAYS dock into the wind/current - whichever is stronger. And it is very hard to turn this boat into the wind - which is exactly what we needed to do!

After a few minutes, we were finally in and tied up!

The beach here is a 'natural beach' - definitely not like the beaches of the Ft. Lauderdale type that are smoothed and cleaned every morning!

Lots of shells and birds.










There is a 3 mile nature hike around the island. (The "Island" name is not quite accurate!) - click here.

Steve said it was really fun to see the different variety of trees.

Here'a a sample of the shells Steve found on the beach.

And there were always birds around.


These were Little Blue Heron on the dock next to us.

Gopher tortoise.

The coolest thing Steve found was a Gopher tortoise. When we spent some time near Punta Gorda last year we saw many signs to be aware of the burrow of these tortoises but never saw one! Pretty fun - for more info, click here.

A couple of jobs - touch up the rust spots on my bike (this salt air is a killer for anything that can rust).

And a new bike tire to replace the one Steve wore out!

Sunsets are still beautiful ......












Off tomorrow for St.Petersburg for a few days!