Well…we didn’t make it to the beach til mid-afternoon on that first day, Jan. 22nd. First of all, Amy and I took a little walk because I was trying to find a nearby nature place called the Lemon Bay Conservancy and I’m looking it up on google maps right now and people have posted pictures of it, with a pond or something and suddenly I can’t find the pictures anymore and when you zoom into the address it’s just a building with a sign that says “lemon Bay Conservancy,” which is maybe why I couldn’t find it.
Anyway it wasn’t a long walk from our place, and then we took a trip to the nearby Walmart because what’s a day without Walmart? It was very busy and we got many sandwich makings plus chips and other things that we couldn’t live without. Amy and I went by ourselves and when we started self checking out, quickly working together to scan the stuff and put it in bags that Amy had brought, a worker came up and was flabbergasted and highly suspicious of how fast we were moving. She clearly thought we were shoplifting, but she was apologetic and said they had a lot of shoplifting there. I’m glad I don’t work at Walmart, even in sunny Florida.
We went back and fixed lunch and packed it up and loaded the car and it all took such a long time that I’m pretty sure we didn’t leave until two in the afternoon. We thought we’d go to Englewood Beach because it was the closest, only a six-minute drive.
But it wasn’t meant to be; there were no parking spots anywhere. So we drove up the road a while and got to Blind Pass Beach, which had lots of parking and we finally found a spot pretty far away from the beach, but at least we had arrived.
We pulled our little beach cart which had the tent, towels, chairs, and all the food in it. It was pretty dang heavy. We set up the tent pretty quickly and then realized the Fatal Tent Flaw – we were facing the water which was to the West, where the sun was going to set, and the sun was over in the west…so there was no shade in the tent. Oops.
At least it was a very nice tent and not too hard to set up, plus we found that if we sat way way back at the back of the tent we’d be shaded a little bit.
By four in the afternoon the beach was pretty deserted. There’s out little tent back there.
A good time was had by all. As you can see, Mom is wearing earrings because she’s alway fashionable even if she’s at the beach. I didn’t even bring any jewelry on our trip, so Amy and Mom lent me earrings sometimes, but I feel like it didn’t matter if I was wearing earrings or not.
The sky was so beautiful near sunset, and here’s a pelican swimming y and a heron.
We stayed until sunset because I wanted to, and then we loaded the stuff up into the cart and had to pull it up a little sand hill. I did the pulling and it was incredibly super duper heavy. The next day I realized i’d pulled a muscle or a tendon on the top of my foot because of it, so no running on the beach for me. But that was OK.
Our VRBO host recommended a few restaurants to us and we picked Farlow’s on the Water because it looked good plus it was about a five minute drive from our place.
I ordered some kind of milkashakey “mocktail” which was delicious. But really, mocktails are really just different kinds of yummy shakes. Except I could pretend it was a Pina Colada.
A guy was playing music which was great except a little loud. Before our food came I walked out to the wraparound deckand saw a couple with a good dog, which I stopped to pet.
They were locals, and lived in Nokomis, the little town north of Venice where we’d stayed last year. So you figure the restaurant has to be good for locals to make the drive.
A satisfying first day.
Ok then,
G.H.