I'm just going to summarize the two days between the Everglades evening and this morning. We drove a lot of state highways, staying away from the interstates. We drove from Florida City to Ocala on Wednesday, passing through St Petersburg and Tampa, then from Ocala to Panama City Beach on Thursday.
Along the way we passed lots of farms-corn, squash, vegetables, nuts, avocados-workers were picking tomatoes in huge fields. There are lots of very large cattle farms in Florida and we also passed several thoroughbred racing operations...some even had regulation tracks on the premises! The many, varied sights throughout the drive kept our interest for both days.
After we got set up at Raccoon River RV park in Panama City Beach we walked down a lane to the rear of the park, across a street, and we were on the most beautiful beach either of us have ever seen. We walked on the beach for a bit then came back and changed our stay from one night to two...gotta love the flexibility of retirement!
This morning we went to the beach and spent two hours in the water and then some time on the beach watching the Bluntnose Stingrays...oh yeah. The water is clear, no big seaweed or kelp beds like at beaches in other parts of the country. It was also a perfect temperature, not even a bracing chill when we first went in. We had been told that unusually large numbers of stingrays have been seen for the past week. The first group that we saw swam within a couple of feet of me; Rich was standing on the beach and saw them approaching so I yelled "Grab the camera, get some pictures!" You know me, fearless whenever faced with a photo opp.
We still cannot believe our luck; we watched them swim back and forth across the beach for a long time. They are not dangerous if left alone so people were still swimming as though they were not even there. It was a magnificent experience!
By the way, Rich took this video about 9:30 this morning...just to get the stingrays you know...breakfast of champions? There is another video that is fabulous of the beach and the surf sound but I had zoomed in too close to the stingrays so this one is the best to show you this school as they swam past. This video took an hour and a half to upload and the other one is much longer but I may link it some other time.
We had such a perfect day...we're having so many of those! Tomorrow we are on the road again. We're headed to Arkansas over the next couple of days. Rich has never been there; this will be his 49th state and maybe his last since he has no interest in going to Hawaii.
Such an awesome experience to see soooooo many sting rays up so close! How Cool!
ReplyDeleteSee ya in a few days!