Florida Beach Walk- Clearwater Beach

In an effort to dispel any negativity associated with our beaches after the BP oil spill, VisitFlorida.com  hosted the Great Visit Florida Beach Walk (Nov. 6).  People could enter to win $5000 by going to their favorite beach, walking a mile, and then taking photos. 

 I thought this was a wonderful idea and had some great photos I had taken just a week before of Clearwater Beach but could not make it to the official beach walk. Plus it was COLD. 

In honor of the Beach Walk, here are my pictures of my favorite beach.  Actually, I don't have a favorite beach because I have still not seen that many of Florida's beaches so here are pictures of one of the few beaches I have been to.  R and I went for his birthday a few weeks ago and there was no evidence as far as I could tell that there had ever been an oil spill.  

 The weather was beautiful but hot as usual.  It seems that this year we will be going from extremely hot to extremely cold once again with no happy temperatures in the middle.  Me being me, I had decided that we would go on this hike I had gone on a few years before, but I couldn't remember exactly how far down the beach the trail was.  We walked, and walked, and sweated, and sweated, AND then R had to go to the bathroom.  So we turned around and walked and sweated back the way we came looking for bathrooms.

 We walked all the way back to our starting point to find the bathrooms.  We were snapping each others heads off and had gone through our entire water supply at this point.  It was clear the 5 mile hike I had planned was not going to happen.  

We then came up with the lovely plan to hike through the neighborhoods instead.  We could look at houses (R's favorite past-time) and we could look at every one's landscaping (my favorite past-time) and we could stay mostly in the shade.  So that is what we did.  We hiked the neighborhoods.  We did have one snooty lady inform us that we were "not in the public area of the beach".   It wasn't as if we were knocking on her door or anything.  We were walking down the sidewalks (OK, so we were taking pictures). 

 

[caption id="attachment_157" align="aligncenter" width="640" caption="This is what October looks like in Florida."][/caption]

 

We walked until we ended up back on the beach again and shuffle-limped our way back to the car.

 

  

 

We walked at least 5 hours so I think we got our hike on even if we didn't find the trail.  Exhausted we looked for food and then the real fun started.  We found Crabby Bill's Seafood (seemed like a fitting place to eat since we had been crabby all morning). 

R had scallops and I had a steamed seafood bucket.  Unfortunately, we were so eager to get food in our hungry and crabby bellies that we forgot the camera in the car.  I really wish I could have got pictures because the food was GOOD! 

With full and happy bellies, we walked a boardwalk and R's eyes immediately fell on the Sea Screamer (the worlds largest speedboat) and I could tell he was in love.  Seconds later, we were aboard the Sea Screamer for a sunset dolphin sighting cruise.  Again, I did not have my camera.  If you find yourself in Clearwater, this is the cruise to go on.  This boat is fast and powerful and it throws up a huge wake that Atlantic Bottlenose Dolphin love to play in.  The other dolphin sighting boats seem to follow this one in order to sight dolphins.  We sat on the very back of the boat and an entire pod of dolphins were leaping almost into our laps.  It was incredible!  I hit myself every minute for not having a camera but at least I got to enjoy it instead of constantly trying to take a picture of it.   There were even little baby dolphins!  Pictures from the Sea Screamer website......

We also saw the sunset before speeding back to Clearwater on dual twin-turbocharged deisel engines.  WoooHooo!  We got home at eleven something that night.  A full day for the two of us.  It was by far the best birthday ever and it wasn't even my birthday (the benefits of hanging out with someone who has far cooler birthdays than me).

What about you?  Have you had an accidental adventure recently?