Departing St Pete Beach

While we still have 1 more day in Tampa, we left the Plaza Beach Hotel this morning, but not before I captured this parting view of the beach from the hotel. You can see just how wide the beach is in this picture. We had a beautiful, sunny (but cooler) day today, but by 11:00 it had warmed up so jackets were no longer needed.
I just might have to make this picture my screensaver at work...

Suncoast Bird Sanctuary

While at the Suncoast Bird Sanctuary last Saturday three baby blue herons had just left their nest. I caught this video which shows one of them on top of a roof chirping away and thought you might enjoy seeing and hearing it. It was very noisy and I pity the worker who had to sit at the table under this tree, welcoming new guests. .
They have many other birds there and this brown necked pelican was nice enough to pose for me. This is a very nice bird sanctuary that does a lot of bird rescues (no paid admission but free will offerings accepted) so I encourage you to visit it next time you are in the area.

Sunset and Waves

What's a beach visit without a sunset picture? Last night we had clear skies so we thought we'd get a good sunset picture. Well, there were low clouds on the horizon so this is as good as it got.

Today we had strong winds and some nice waves so I took a walk on the beach (after some showers had passed) and got this shot.
We had lots of wind surfers out today and they were fun to watch. Mary got some sun and the Red Wings are on NBC this afternoon so it's a very nice day....

More Florida

Our first stop yesterday was a Manatee Viewing Center at Tampa Electric's Big Bend power plant. The manatees gather here in winter due to the warm water in the power plant discharge. Here you can see one of them surfacing to breath. There were several dozen manatees in the discharge channel, but they did not show up well on film. Fortunately, this one swam near the viewing area so I got a good picture.

After the Manatee center, we visited Sarasota and had a great lunch at Yoder's restaurant, an Amish restaurant that Mary heard about on Man vs. Food on the Travel Channel. They have excellent main courses and even better pies. Their "customer favorite" is peanut butter cream, but when I saw they had chocolate peanut butter cream (which used chocolate instead of vanilla pudding) I had to go for that. Mary went for Carmel Custard which was also excellent. By the way, we also had main entrees of Pot Roast and Turkey with amish noodles as our side dish. Sure wish I had thought to take a picture of those pies!
This morning we slept in, then took an hour long walk on the beach. It was a bit overcast so pictures did not turn out well. This afternoon we're planning to head north up Gulf Coast Drive to visit the Suncoast Seabird Sanctuary and maybe some other sites.
Alli n all, a relaxing, sunny Florida day (with rain forecast for tomorrow...)

Enjoying St Pete Beach

We arrived at St Pete Beach very late last night after our flight to Tampa was delayed. But we are here and after "crashing" last night, took a walk on the beach this morning. It's a beautiful, wide, white sand beach (as you can see) and walking the beach and listening to the water is so very, very relaxing.

We are staying at this beach front hotel (where we have stayed before). It's a old style, family run hotel with good service and nice rates. My parents found this place many years ago, have stayed here several times, and my sister has stayed her as well on visits to this area. It's a great location and the beach is super!

We went grocery shopping this morning for breakfast and lunch fixings and will hang around here today. We plan trips south to the Sarasota area on one of the future days and plan to visit some other area attractions. But beyond that no definite plans. Just relaxing and getting warm before heading back for the end of a Michigan winter.