Life update: same as yesterday, except we had some sunshine yesterday. Still spending most of my day on the couch, coughing continues. but it’s getting warmer and soon i’ll be sitting around outside.
But before all this…we arrived at the Clearwater Beach dock on the afternoon of Sun. Feb. 23rd and quite a few people were milling around. They were headed over to the beach, and lots and lots of cars were everywhere.
We followed the crowd to the pier which seemed quite full of people and looked out over the beach which had way too many people on it for my taste.
It’s rated the second beach in Florida on Trip Advisor. I think the highest-rated places must be rated so high because there are so many people who go there. A lovely little beach like Pass-A-Grille isn’t rated as high because there aren’t enough people to rate it, which is fine with me. It’s ironic that i was complaining in the video about how crowded it was, when a few weeks later Clearwater Beach was all over the news because really stupid college kids were crowded onto the beach during spring break, passing coronavirus around. Whew.
We walked off the pier and started to hunt for a place to eat, ending up at a cute little outdoor place off the main street.
We got back to the beach at about 3:00, and there weren’t quite as many people. I tried to find some chairs and an umbrella; some hotel was renting them. there were rows and rows of chairs and umbrellas, and i think the price for a couple of loungers and an umbrella was around $120. Seriously? The chairs in the rows farther away from the beach were cheaper.
Highway robbery. Beach robbery, anyway.
Nearer the pier, the city offered loungers and umbrellas which were reasonably-priced, but the guy said they were available until 5:00. “what happens after 5?” i asked. he said they came around and took them all away. Oh well, at least we had some time.
I think we got a reduced rate because it was so late in the day.
I took a walk, of course.
I took this video while walking on the beach.
I finally came back and sat on the beach for a little while, and we watched as they started to take the loungers away way down the beach. They got tto us closer to 5:30, so we walked back to the pier. The crowds had really thinned out at that point.
My video from the pier.
A bunch of vendors had set up along the pier, offering lots of crappy souvenirs for sale. We found a good place to sit on a bench outside an ice cream place. I wasn’t in the mood for ice cream because it was getting a bit windy and brisk. Creedence Clearwater Revival’s “Lookin Out my Back Door” blasted out from some speaker and that really made me miss Kevin. Maybe he’ll play that again on his guitar since we have such a lot of free time.
I suddenly realize i have plenty more photos of the rest of our day (although i’ve already done an amazing job of whittling down the number of sunset photos!), so that’ll have to wait til tomorrow.
ok then,
g.h. at home.