Shells, Pirates and Pizza

Hi Everyone, and welcome to a belated issue of the blog.

It is Thursday, and I am going to recap last weekend's festivities.

Saturday, Glenn had to work in the morning, but we met up for lunch at Crispers in Safety Harbor and went down to the pier afterwards. Surprisingly, the manatees are still hanging out there, and we saw a "Momatee" and her calf...in honor of Mother's Day. (We saw a dad and a couple uncles too!)

The calf was too cute. One nice woman tourist kept saying, "Oh my heart," every time they popped up. :-)

That evening, we planned to return to St. John's Pass to do a little shopping, and were dismayed at an enormous crowd and "event parking" signs when we arrived. Alas, they were having some sort of Pirate Festival, which seems to be happening all the time down here.

There are an inordinate amount of people in Tampa Bay that dress like pirates...and I fear that they do this all the time and not just for festivals.

 

This doesn't really do it justice as there were tons of scarier pirates and wenches about but we didn't want to encourage them by taking their pictures.

There were also pirate ships of course, and a cannon going off every few minutes which isn't good for one's nerves.

So anyway, we only stayed a brief period of time. Pirates are soooo 1600s. Plus we were hungry, and St. John's Pass is not too far from Indian Rocks Beach, which has the most awesome pizza place of all time, Slyce.

After devouring 2 pizzas and listening to some live music, we wandered down to the beach to say hello.

Hello!

On Sunday morning, we decided to return to Pass-A-Grill's marina and take the morning ferry over to Shell Key. For our observant readers, I will note that we went to Shell Key before, but in the late afternoon, and we felt that we may have missed out on the best shelling. Also, we were unprepared for many aspects of being on an undeveloped island for several hours. This time we were better prepared.

Shell Key is very beautiful - very clear, blue/green water, white  sands. We wore our swimsuits this time so we could cool off in the water...although you have to shuffle your feet to make sure you don't step on any stingrays.

Glenn shuffled out into the water and found us a few sand dollars (I still haven't found a whole one!).

There is nothing on the island, but a number of boaters anchor here to go snorkeling or swimming.

We ended up with some nice additions to our shell collection. As usual, I found the most beautiful shell still had a little live creature inside of it, so we put him back in the ocean. It was very hot on the sand and he was not happy. (gasp! help!)

We also collected some sea urchins, which are pretty cool looking once you scrape the spines off of them.

Back at the marina...

You know you've found a snowy egret by his bright yellow feet.
 

Glenn took a pic of me taking a pic of the pelicans.

Here they are!

Do you see the egret photobombing this pic?

So anyway, I think that catches you up. Pedro, the Cuban tree frog that lives in the clock on our porch (aka Clock Frog) says it's time to call it a day. He sounds like a creaky rocking chair and is VERY loud.

Hope you all have had a great week. Stay tuned for more blog updates. Love ya!