Beach Hopping

We went to Fort DeSoto's North Beach yesterday. The water is really clear, which makes it a great place to go snorkeling. It's one of our favorite beaches. In the past you had to wade through a little bay that had lots of stingrays. You had to be careful and shuffle your feet to avoid getting stung. I never got stung, or witnessed anybody getting hurt, and the beach on the other side was so great that it was worth the crossing. They filled that little bay partly in by sand, so we didn't have to wade through the stingrays! Yippee!

Fort DeSoto Park:
http://www.pinellascounty.org/park/05_Ft_DeSoto.htm

The sand is white and the water is so clear. There was a soft, cool breeze that made us not want to leave. It was refreshing after a week of muggy weather and smokey air.

We got a lot of smoke from the forest fires that were at the Georgia/Florida border this week. Here's an amazing satellite photo. The fires where hundreds of miles away.

Weather.com Blog
http://www.weather.com/blog/weather/8_12513.html?from=wxcenter_news

Today we went to a place in Ruskin called Simmons Park. It is on Tampa Bay. We went there after taking Grandma Apple out to lunch for Mother's Day. We didn't intend to go in the water, but just to check it out. What a difference the bay water is compared to the Gulf water. The beach had more rocks and the water had a lot of debris in it. The debris was mostly chopped up leaves and twigs. Alfonze said that it looked and smelled just as he remembered it 20 years ago. Yet there were still a lot of people having fun, despite the dark water.

As we were leaving Simmons Park we noticed huge birds nests on top of telephone poles. They were built on top of wooden pallets that were attached to the tops of the telephone poles. If you've ever seen those kinds of pallets up close, you know those nests have to be big. I don't know what kind of bird was up there. Here's a photo of a bird peaking out of its nest.