Tuesday, Jan. 22 – Friday Jan. 25, 2019

(Another long one, but the next couple will be short. 😎)

After a four foot drop in the tide overnight, we left Tarpons Springs on a cool, sunny morning around 9AM. Knowing that we’d have some low bridges to get under, Brian took down the dinghy crane the day before. The first low bridge was only 20 ft at the center, which is fine with the crane down except for the antennas (or is it antennae?) which are too high but can be brought down fairly easily. Oh but silly us, just as we started under the bridge, we remembered the antennas (antennae?) were still up – big oops! After a few loud bangs on the bottom of the bridge we were lucky to discover that only the taller one had hit and it had enough flexibility to bend and re-straighten, plus it still worked! Whew! Before the next low bridge, Brian lowered both tall antennas. Bo was quite surprised by the overhead noise from the antenna bangs plus the traffic and now tries to hide behind Sue when we go under bridges and there is any kind of traffic noise overhead. We know he’ll recover from this scare, it may just take a little time.

OK, so Sue had to look it up, antennas or antennae? When referring to our “metallic apparatus for sending or receiving electromagnetic signals” as above, antennas is correct! However, if we’d been referring to “the flexible sensory appendages on insects and other animals” (…really? … just call it a bug’s feelers on its head), then the plural of antenna is antennae. Now we know! Grammar lesson complete. (https://grammarist.com/usage/antennae-antennas/)

When the tide is out, how shallow is too shallow? Well, we actually saw a man walking in the water between his open-bow fishing boat and a towboat that came to get him unstuck. The water came up to about his knees – apparently that’s too shallow for his little boat. He was taking the line from the towboat to attach to his boat so the tow could pull him out of the too shallow water. Thankfully we were in the channel at about 7.5 ft deep and we were very careful to stay in the channel.

We arrived at St. Petersburg Municipal Marina a couple hours before sunset. The marina is undergoing major renovations and the construction site removed our easy access to the park next door. Though the walk to get Bo to grass was long, he was rewarded by getting to see grass, many trees and of course – squirrels aplenty! Barking ensued and a woman sitting nearby laughed and told Sue that the squirrels were taunting Bo. We’re not sure if she was laughing at Bo and the squirrels, or Sue’s attempt to keep Bo from dragging her off after them! Everywhere we walked with Bo had numerous trees and the squirrels that love them. One thing is certain - these Florida squirrels are definitely dog-taunters!

The Chihuly Collection of blown glass art is based in St. Pete. We were able to go see the magnificent displays of David Chihuly’s glasswork, several films about his artwork exhibits all over the world, as well as his planning and demonstration of technique. Very extraordinary!

The St. Pete History Museum, next to the marina, had a photographic exhibit chronicling “The Forgotten War: Korea 1950” which provided a passionate impression of the Korean people through that period of time. There were also exhibits of St. Pete’s history as well as the marina and legendary dock that are currently being replaced.

Alyssa Marie is our daughter’s name and we were surprised to see an art gallery also by that name. Sue went inside to take a look and was impressed with the quality of the paintings. Not only did she meet Alyssa, the 28 year old painter, but learned that she has family in Gurnee, IL, which is a couple of suburbs away from our hometown, Mundelein. It’s a small world after all! (No Disney singing, please!)

We believe we’ve reached our limit for transporting groceries with our bicycles. We had both bikes’ saddle bags packed, plus 2 backpacks and a couple of extra bags tied on to the backpacks. We made the ½ mile trek without incident, but will not try to transport that much by bike again.

Lastly, we were approached by a sailboater from the marina, David, who is looking at trawlers to live on. He’d have loved to look at ours and even offered to possibly buy it when we are done with the loop. Since every boat is for sale given the right price, we were just waiting for the offer, but it never came. That’s fine since we’d have been stuck in St. Pete… though there are worse places to be stuck! (Like off the channel in the sand in 1.5 feet of water!)