Thursday 20th
[07:03 EDT]
This morning's plan is to call up the dolphin boat ride place again this morning. We tried them last week and after they cancelled, we were given a 2 for 1 ticket. This time we want to be sure they are going to sail before we drive down to Sarasota again.
[16:45 EDT]
So we called them around about 9:40 and, yes they were going to do sailings today. Great! "Oh, we start boarding at 10:30am". I look at the clock and it's 9:45am and we're both still in nightware!
Fast shower, change and drive down to Sarasota (about 30 minutes) sees us arrive at 10:50am. Fortunately, we are not the last to arrive. So off we go.
We motor out into Sarasota bay on the lookout for dolphins and manatee. It's not long before we find some of the former.
We watch them from a safe distance until they swim off. All the time there's a marine biologist talking about the wildlife about us.
We are out for two hours, seeing a couple more dolphin, but sadly no manatee.
We also get to see some great looking houses along the bay.
Once we dock again, we stopped at a nearby picnic area and ate some food which wed brought with us.
Then it was on to the nearby botanical gardens (also on the bay). We went there last year and thought it would be nice to walk back through the place again.
It's highlight is the orchid greenhouse.
and
and
and... you get the idea.
The gardens also have different sub areas high-lighting plants from around the world.
We sat at the end of the garden overlooking Sarasota bay for a while.
Then returned to the main house.
Once back in the car and driving home, as predicted the car started reporting low on fuel. Indeed it had a range of "----" as I pulled into the nearby petrol station. Gulp.
$20 more fuel in the car now sees the range back up to 320 miles - more than enough to get us back to the airport I think. Google Maps reports the distance as 125 miles back to Orlando Airport. So we should be fine.
PHOTO ALBUM : https://goo.gl/photos/38dSjSSsSdLSrpAR9