Monday 17th
[22:26 EDT]
We made a trip up north to Clearwater today. We usually go up there because they have the big speedboat "Sea Screamer" that Linda likes to ride. So we set off for the hour drive.
Part of the trip involves crossing the big Skyway bridge between Bradenton and St. Petersburg.
You can see it in the distance, but once you are up top, it's a long way down.
We got to Clearwater around 12 noon which meant that we spent about 30 minutes looking for somewhere to park. Clearwater is still a partial building site, so parking it at a premium, especially at that time of the day. We'd come up on a Monday, thinking it would be quieter, but we were wrong.
After finding somewhere, we bought our tickets for the Sea Screamer then headed down to the beach. We hired ourselves a little cabana on the beach ($30!) and sat and had lunch there. We then read for a while until it was time to go over to the boat.
We didn't have long to wait before the boat left dock. We were sitting in the middle of the craft this time. Almost straight away, we saw some dolphins which decided to play in our wake.
Once out into the Gulf, however, the dolphins hid from us and we didn't see any more during the trip. Instead, the captain had fun swerving the boat from side to side, sending large amounts of spray over the passengers.
Once back on dock, we packed everything back into the car, paid the parking ($20!!) and left for home.
We were about 10 minutes from home as 18:50 arrived, giving us only 5 or so minutes before sunset, so we parked on the side of the road near one of the main water inlets and took some nice photos of the sunset.
A couple more are in the album below.
Meal tonight was the remains of the deep dish pizza from last night - quite nice it was too!
PHOTO ALBUM : https://goo.gl/photos/Xdm2X6wGBed9v7ct9