Florida-The Last Couple of Days

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On Monday, we rested up and nursed our sunburns after the Steeple Chase. We did a little shopping in town and I gathered up pine needles for a potential basket. Then we had an early supper and went back out to Pine Island for the sunset. It was stupendous. We had a couple of hours to walk the beach and y'all know how I loves me some beach walking! There were lots of little jellies washed up on shore. I asked everyone I saw if they were from the area and knew why the big die off happened. Turns out that no one in Florida is actually FROM there. (And it also turns out that if you point out all of the dead jellyfish, they won't wade with you anymore. Wusses! ) I finally found a guy from the area and it turns out he was a marine biologist! What luck! Not really. He didn't know why they were all dead. Kept saying, "They just got cooked, I guess..." which may be some kind of marine biologist tech speak that I don't know about, but I doubt it.


Gulf of Mexico

Black headed gulls at low tide...

There weren't many shells but there were a lot of fossil rocks. I did find a couple of beautiful shells and picked them up only to be freaked out minutes later when all of these legs, pinchers, antennae and eyeballs shot out....hermit crabs! Once I got over the initial...er...'surprise' [Read: 'she screamed, launched the crab 20 feet straight up in the air, did a bit of a dance and then ran for shore, jellyfish be damned' (which is not easy in 2 1/2 feet if water, I might add) here.] Yeah. Not exactly a Baywatch moment. But I quickly recovered and then started playing with them and using them to terrorize my vacation mate. Heh. Heh. Heh.

The sunset was amazing. Once it gets started it happens so fast:

Going...
Going...
Going...
Gone. Tres romantic...

The last day we went to Weeki Wachi State Park to see the Mermaids swim. It was so neat! Weeki Wachi is another spring (all of the big springs are direct accesses to aquifers). It was crystal clear and had a theater built down into it with a show of girls dressed in mermaid tails and performing completely under water with air hoses. It was very graceful and surreal. There were fish and turtles in there with them and one turtle was bound and determined to be in the the show and kept chasing one of the mermaids. I couldn't get photos because I couldn't turn my flash off. :-(

We saw these beautiful peacocks ...

And took a boat ride down the river from the spring. Saw lots of blue herons and other water birds as well as their nesting sites. Beautiful! Beautiful! Beautiful! Florida. I highly recommend it!
Well, there you have it. More than you ever wanted to know about our vacation! Aren't you glad I was only gone one week!?

Comments

Lisa/knitnzu said…
Oh, I don't think this commentary was "more than I ever wanted to know"! My mom lives in Naples, but any time I've visited, I have been w/ my son and only once with husband, so I never get to go to the beach and watch the sunset or head off to the local nature parks... though one year I dragged the kid to shark valley. Glad you had a great time, and I hope the sunburn isn't too painful... or that you're medicating it in a fun and effective way!
6:14 PM
Kitty Mommy said…
Sounds like it was a GREAT trip! So glad you got to go!
6:39 PM
dale-harriet said…
I can't believe it! I visited Weekee Watchee Springs when I was about 7 years old, and they had the mermaids then! There were also famous glass-bottomed boats, are those still there? I was terrorized on the beach by a rotten foul little hooligan with a horseshoe crab, not at ALL as cute as hermits. We stayed in Naples, too. Fancy that! (My verification word is the one spoken by the hermit crabs: "glogi") heheheee
9:01 PM
MadCityMike said…
You did a superb job of documenting your vacation. Kudos to you! Perhaps Florida should contact you as a "spokesperson"? ;)
6:20 AM
Kathy Kathy Kathy said…
SpokesMODEL is more like it!
5:49 PM
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