Today was just about as perfect of a day as it gets for me. If I had to Groundhog Day one day, this wouldn’t be a bad one.   We stopped at a car wash for a quick rinse of all the grime that had been building up on our ride.  Still a little rusty, but a lot less dusty.  We got to Caspersen Beach just before 10.  The very first thing we saw was a HUGE dead fish.  I’m not good with guessing weight of dead fish, but this thing was probably 200#.  Someone told us he thought it was a goliath grouper. Not only does the red tide make humans hack and cough, but it also kills sea life sadly.  We have this big canopy that we’ve been hauling to the beach every day but have just been using the umbrella, which creates just enough shade for the two of us and our stuff, but the shade moves all day long so we are constantly moving our chairs around to stay out of the sun.  Today we spent 5 minutes and set up this canopy, such an improvement, more ...

These beach days are all starting to mash together.  Taking pictures and writing these recaps helps me remember.  We started a little later than previous days, about 10, and went to Manasota Key beach.  I don’t know if this is just a popular beach in general or if it was because it was Sunday, but this beach was packed, busier than anywhere else we have been so far.  Excellent place for people watching, maybe not so great for finding treasures in the sand.   The water was warm and fairly calm, and the sky was sunny and cloudless.  It was a beautiful day.  I wasn’t bothered by red tide at all, Joe was just a little bit.   We stopped at a grocery store after the beach, we really could do better at food planning.  We should have enough to get us to Wednesday now. I had some things to mail so we stopped at the post office in downtown Venice.  Since we were there we walked down the main street.  Busy are...

We finally had a great day at the beach!  The air decided to take a break from killing us (mostly) and we spent most of the day at Caspersen Beach.  There was a lot of seaweed in the water, but that didn’t deter Joe from finding a bunch of teeth for his collection.  I mostly sat in the shade under the umbrella and read. North of where we were set up is the dog beach, so many dogs having a great day at the beach.  I missed putting sunscreen on the tops of my feet, dumb.  We ate lunch on the beach. SO MANY AIRPLANES!  The Venice airport is right there and every plane taking off went right over our heads. In the 5 hours we were there I would say no less than 100 planes took off.  Mostly prop planes, but a few at least a dozen jets too.  I try to imagine where they are all going and why.  Probably a lot of hobby pilots just going out for the day, rich people heading back to work for the next week, drug smugglers, maybe a fresh organ h...

We headed out early to the beach.  There are (obviously) beaches down the whole coast line, but Joe wanted to go back to the same one as the day before. I thought we should go to a different (much closer) one in Nokomis.  So, we went to the one in Nokomis.  As soon as we got out to the sand we both could feel the effects of this stupid red tide, coughing and sneezing. I had even taken a benadryl that morning.  We set our stuff down and debated leaving, but eventually set up our umbrella and chairs.  After about 15 minutes we decided it was dumb to stay and feel this way, it was tough to take a deep breath and we were both coughing and sneezing.  On our way out we talked with a lady who walked out to the beach and right back and said that the Venice beach was supposed to be better so we headed there instead.  Good tip lady, even though this beach is only 2 miles south, we could actually breathe here, even though it wasn’t perfect.  This algae is re...

  We have been so lucky to have such great weather so far.  This was our last day at this campground and even though we really enjoyed the quiet and seclusion, it’s been a few days since we’ve had a real shower and it was time.  We stopped at the dumpster on the way out and a park ranger also stopped and yelled at us for boondocking and the other end of the forest road all week and told us we had to pay for camping.  Just a case of mistaken identity, we had gladly paid our $12.24 for the nights we stayed.  Good info though, we could probably get away with sneaking in after the park closes and leaving first thing and no one would know.  Sites are tough to get in Florida in February.   We headed to the beach in Venice.  Since we haven’t had power, we have been using a french press for coffee in the morning.  This morning I put the used (used = still full of grounds and maybe a little super strong brew) pot in our beach cooler and set it on...