Florida Getaway

Oh, St. Pete Beach, how you do me good, but your rain is atrocious!  Yes, I know August in Florida is rainy, but I wanted three days of sun.  I got one.  I guess I should cut my loses and thank my Father for a break from routine, regardless of the weather, and I do.

I should've known the majority of the trip would be more than I bargained for when our flight was 2 1/2 hours late on Wednesday night.  Oh well.  More time to read.  We made it to the hotel about 1:30 am and determined to sleep in, which was oh so nice!

Thursday was sunny and absolutely beautiful.  Crystal clear waters, fluffy white clouds, warm sun rays, super soft, velvety sand...my perfect day.  Isaac and I decided to take the little ferry boat from Passe-a-Grille to Shell Key.  It's a small, uninhabited island full of sea turtle nests and native birds.  Shell Key is also home to millions and millions of sea shells no longer hosting a sea creature.  We saw more green, purple, pink, white, tan, and yellow shells of all kinds than we could possible find use for.  Most people stay near the ferry site, but we walked down around a couple of points to snorkel for sand dollars.  In the fall and winter, it's easy to find still living sand dollars, but this time of year, it's most ones that have already died that have yet to wash up on shore.  We snorkeled for about 30 minutes and filled two grocery bags full of sand dollars.  I need to bleach them this week so they'll stay white and shiny.  We then headed to Ft. DeSoto, my favorite beach in America (Bahamas has my two favorites...Piggy Beach and Warderick Wells).  It was too late in the day to rent kayaks, but so we went on out to the beach.  I think there were six people as far as the eye could see, and the surf was perfect for floating on a raft and relaxing.  May I please do this every day?  After cleaning up, we went to Crabby Bills, one of our local chain favorites, for some awesome grilled Mahi and shrimp.  Yum.  We walked on the beach until we were too tired to move.  It made me miss my Mama (great-grandmother) because she and my mom adored St. Pete Beach. 

Waiting for the ferry

Shell Key

Our little spit of paradish

St. Pete Beach

Friday dawned cloudy, cool, and grey.  The plan had been to drive to my favorite zoo in the world, Brevard Zoo, but the long drive with so much rain all over made us decide to stay closer to the west coast.  Big mistake.  Brevard Zoo had zero rain all day and we fought it.  I tried to stay happy...we really did do some cool things.  We went to the Tampa Zoo which is beautiful, but not in the rain.  The baby rhino girl is precious, as are the two little orangutans.  They played hide and seek with a blankie; their mommas didn't seem too amused.  The rain got to be too bad, so we headed to the Clearwater Marine Aquarium and Hospital, which is more hospital than aquarium.  It's obvious they are still adjusting to their fame from the movie DolphinTale which stars their most famous resident, Winter the taleless dolphin.  Winter is absolutely incredible.  We watched one of her therapy sessions, met her friends Hope, Panama, and Nicholas, saw surgery on a turtle, and thoroughly enjoyed seeing an aquarium that is more about helping animals than making a profit.  The rain seemed to be slacking, so we headed back to the zoo.  I wanted to feed a giraffe so bad, which is a guaranteed event at Brevard.  Tampa Zoo never opened the giraffe feeding for the day because of the threat of rain, so I was honestly pretty disappointed.  Here at home, all that's allowed is feeding, no touching.  At Brevard and Tampa, touching, petting, scratching snouts is all encouraged.  Um, hello, giraffes are on my pjs!  I'm obsessed with these lanky, gangly, long necked beauties.  However, I did have some amazing eye contact with a couple of their giraffes, so that helped.  We then decided to get on the safari ride around the Africa exhibit, but just before we were to get on the path, a sink hole opened up and that was the end of that.  Seriously?!  Off to the manatee exhibit we went, where it happened to be dinner time, and we were blessed with lot of activity.  Their 1 month old manatee put on quite the show.  Dinner was back at St. Pete Beach at the Sloppy Pelican.  The photo below speaks for itself.  Amazing.  We followed that goodness with ice cream on the beach. 

Winter, Panama, and a therapist/trainer

 Saturday was out last day, and we had scheduled jet ski tours of Shell Key and Egmont Key along with kayaking in the afternoon so we could find more manatee friends.  Yet, God decided He wanted us to drive in the rain, storm chasing all day.  The radar indicated that if we went south, we'd escape the rain. We drove around Ft. DeSoto just to see some of our favorite places, then headed south, but we never did get away from rain.  We did see some pretty towns south of St. Pete Beach that I had yet to see, but I have still yet to ride a jet ski.  Considering where I live, that's beyond pathetic.  The day wasn't a total wash because the rain cleared in time for our sail boat cruise of the inland waters around St. Pete Beach to actually set sail.  We were able to sit on the very front of the boat so my feet could dangle for two hours.  The whole evening brought up absolutely delightful memories of a week in the Bahamas with some amazing friends nine years ago.  What a treat!  The sunset was beautiful, and God thrilled me with two dolphins and a munching manatee.

Shell Key

Don Ce'sar...one of my mom's favorite hotels

We made it home today, just in time for professional development for school to start tomorrow.  I wish I had seen more sun, but the break was nice.  I said on Wednesday that I knew a trip wouldn't fix any of life's problems, but it was good to see more of what God has made beyond my little life at the moment.  There's a bigger picture out there, and God is constantly weaving it for His Glory.  It's a beautiful thing.