Day 116: Saturday, December 29, 2012
Port to Port: Side Trip to Tampa Florida
Underway: 0:00 am Motor Off: 0:00 pm Miles Traveled: 0 Stayed At: Hotel
First Things First: First time for everyone to see manatees up close and personal.
Mile to Mile: Our first stop today was Manatee Park near Fort Myers. The manatee come up the river to hang out in the relatively warm water near the outlet to a power plant. We finally all saw manatee – even Cindy. The water is still pretty dark and they usually just raise the tip of their noses up to breath and then sink back down below the surface so they are still hard to see. Once in a while, though, we got to see a whole body at the surface to appreciate how big these creatures really are. And slow. And gentle. Its amazing more don’t get hit by powerboats. They move extremely slowly and would seem to have a hard time avoiding a fast moving boat (and many actually do get injured and killed every year getting hit by boats and scarred by props). We decided to rent kayaks to actually get up close and personal with them which was an amazing experience. We even had one “sneeze” right by us spraying us with salty water. Now that doesn’t happen everyday. What a blast.
After our manatee adventure, it was time for some after Christmas power-shopping at Target. This has become somewhat of a tradition with us – we have actually hauled bags full of 75% off treasures home from our visits to Target on Christmas trips to Las Vegas – sad but true. Well, we scored some cheap treats and Sarah found a few can’t-live-without-treasures at 50% off including a couple useful Ipad cases and some freeze-your-own shot glass molds. We stashed our bags in the trunk and headed for Tampa by way of Venice beach – again.
The girls had so much fun looking for sharks’ teeth last time that we needed to stop and try again (and I wasn’t complaining either). The wind was roaring this time, though, stirring up the surf, making it hard to see anything. Sarah was so focused on finding more treasures she kept forgetting about the surf breaking on the nearby rocks and she ending up soaking wet from several direct hits – lucky it was at least warm and sunny out since she kept looking for another hour all wet. (I can’t help smiling, thought, when I remember the expression on her face and the water dripping off her hair after the first wave got her). We weren’t as lucky as our last visit but we did score some pretty nice fossils to add to our collections.
After a long drive toward Tampa, we decided to squeeze in one more sunset on the beach – can’t get too many of those can we? So we stopped at St. Petersburg Beach just before the sun starting setting and watched as the sun slowly sank below the waves. A nice end to a wonderful day.
The week has gone way too fast and we don’t want our adventure together to be over. We are incredibly thankful, though, that we had this special and memorable time together. Did I mention how lucky we are?
