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 shade than we could ever use.
We walked the beach south and eventually it gets really rocky which is not great for swimming or stubbed toes, but does make for a very pretty view.
We ate lunch on the beach while Joe tried his best to find shark teeth, it was pretty wavy. He found a really good one and threw it to me like I’m some type of athlete who can catch things. I made my best impression of what it should look like to catch something from 20’ away, but that tooth is lost in the sand forever now. I mostly sat in the shade counting all the airplanes (49 + 3 jets over 4 hours or so) and continued to read the book I started a few days ago (Pachinko).
Around 2 we packed up and I walked north to the Venice Fishing Pier while Joe drove and met me there. It’s maybe a 20 minute walk, through the dog beach again. We met up at the entrance to the pier and walked out, so nice and breezy at the end. I bet this place is packed at sunset.
We knew we were leaving the next day so we stopped and filled up our drinking water and Joe bought a few drinks at Pubix. We got back to camp and I prepped a few things for dinner and then we played some cards. We’ve been obsessed with Five Crowns on this trip, especially the solitaire version but playing against each other is fun too. I think our deck might be ruined after all this humid weather, but hoping our dry-ass house might fix that when we get back home.
We lost track of time and it was after six by the time we headed out for our evening hike. We had to hustle to make it back to the same lake as yesterday before sunset at 6:30. No alligators today, but there was a hardworking spider making a perfect web.
On the way back we saw a few armadillos, one that wouldn’t run away and blocked our trail. We have zero armadillo experience, are these things aggressive and bitey? Or timid like a rabbit? He was wearing some armor so I think he was looking to fight. I scared him (and Joe) with a dead palm that was on the side of the path. We saw a bunch of eagles and osprey up in the trees getting ready for bed.
I got dinner going when we got back, steak salad and a bunch of veggies. We ate, did some dishes, played some more cards. I took one last super-high pressure shower. Joe says it’s too much, it hurts his skin. I say there is no such thing as too much shower pressure. We also debated barefoot showering at a campground (gross, foot fungus!) and putting your clothes directly on the ground in the bathroom (also gross, and wet). The other people at this campground appear to have other opinions.
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