Adventures in Florida: The Callihans Take Tampa: Tampa Bay Rays & More!

Hi Everyone!

Hope you are all enjoying the springtime and that you are doing well.

I recently got a Fitbit, which has given us a little more motivation to be a little more active, although we normally take a lot of walks anyway.

I recently told Glenn that I was curious as to whether it was possible for me to ride my bike to work. I discovered that the Courtney Campbell Trail goes the whole way to Cypress Point Park, which is next door to my office. (That is the park I walk at during lunch every day.)

I wanted to do a test ride on a weekend, but I didn't want to ride both ways. Glenn kindly agreed to accompany me on another madcap adventure. So we drove both cars to the one end of the bridge, locked up our bikes, drove both cars to Cypress Point and parked the truck, and then drove the car back to our bikes to cycle across the Causeway.

Here we are at the start of our journey.

As you can see, it was a beautiful sunny day to ride across the bridge.

At about the 4-mile mark, the bridge rises high up over the bay -- a man-made version of a hill. Glenn and I switched bikes because his has gears and mine doesn't. Even though I thought it might kill me, I made it to the top.

Once at the highest point of the bridge, we were rewarded with an amazing site. Thousands and thousands of rays swimming in the bay below.

These people in the fishing boat had no idea this huge school of rays was coming right towards them.

I did some research and these were Cow-Nosed Rays. If you look at the first pic, you'll see they have a square nose in front instead of just being round like a dinner plate. They were probably about 2 or 3 feet wide.

Pretty cool, right?

So that was worth the ride. We took some other pics along the way,