Friday October 12th
[08:50+1]
Early in the morning we were watching the local news (actually, ALL news seems to be local) and their traffic report showed a long tail-back on the northbound approach to the Skybridge. That was at 8am. By 10am we were in the traffic ourselves as we were heading north once again.Fortunately it wasn't too much of a jam and we were through the congestion in 10 minutes.
We were heading up to Clearwater on the coast. It's a place we've been too many times in the past but it is the home of the Sea Screamer - a 71ft long speed boat that does dolphin trips out into the Gulf.
We got there just after noon (it's was a two hour drive as we went via the slower coast route) and it was burning hot. The beach was almost blinding.
The time meant that there wasn't much time before the Sea Screamer left port, so we bought out tickets and sat nearby in the shade. The boat had about a dozen on it, much emptier than some of the times we've driven this before (I think it's our 5th time on the Screamer). Linda likes this ride as you get a lot of sea spray from over the side so we'd come prepared with swim suits and waterproof bags for the camera and wallets.
This time they really did gun it when in the open sea. So much so that the sea was hitting the back of the boat (where we were sitting) with some force as shown below!
Right in the kisser! Actually, it was at this point we think, that Linda lost one of her contact lenses. Throughout the day she was apparently wondering why things were blurry but it wasn't until later that she discovered her left contact has disappeared.
The boat ride was OK - but it wasn't until we were nearly back before we spotted some Atlantic bottle-nose dolphins. Two or three in a group I think. The Captain did his normal thing of getting everyone to the back of the boat and he produces a froth of wake from the back of the boat that the dolphins jump through. They seem to enjoy it and it gets some great photos.
After the trip, we walked over to the blinding sand and sat there for a couple of hours to dry off and have a bite to eat (we'd brought the cooler box today). Later, I popped over to a local ice cream shop and bought back a fast melting pot of ice cream.
We left the beach and drove back via the interstate roads, which knocked a half hour from the drive. We also caught the sunset as we crossed over the Skybridge.
We stopped off at a local-ish IHOP for a quick bite before returning home.
It's odd - for a day where we'd not done much really, we were both dog tired by the evening!