More Gulf sites from the Western shore of Florida

Well, sorry that we have not been posting a lot.  Here is a couple of the nature shots.  One of the sky with a light filtering through the clouds, the other is of a beautiful sunset at Pelican Bay in Cayo Costa State Park.

We took a week to enjoy the company of our old cruising pals, Tom and Sheryl.  We met with them in Palmetto and cruised around the area for a week or so.  I guess we were on vacation along with them as we did not take any pictures.  Here is a picture of our buddies on one of the other trips we took with them.

It was fun going back to some of the places that we cruised with the two of them several years ago.  We were on their boat at that time.  It is a sailboat, but we don't hold that against them as we used to be sailors.  We cruised around Longboat Key, Anna Marie Island, St. Petersburg, and Palmetto.  It was great to catch up with them on family and all.

We dropped them back at Palmetto and then decided to cruise toward the southern part of the Gulf.  We will be making our way to the Florida Keys over the next week or so weather permitting as we will be traveling the Gulf part of the trip and will wait for good seas.

Here is a couple of pics of the Sunshine Bridge.  One is of a freighter quite a distance away from our boat, the other is of a full size semi on top of the Sunshine Bridge.  This is a view that not all of the tourists see.

We traveled to Ft. Meyers beach and Estero Island.  Here is a picture of the mooring field.  Basically it is an anchorage but has these mooring balls that you rent and hook the boat onto.  There are over 70 mooring balls and so it is a busy place.

Here is a picture of the mooring field, Solitude on the mooring ball, and an interesting pirate ship which takes the tourists on a cruise a couple of times a day.  It looks quite different than the boats we are used to seeing.

We took the dinghy over to shore and walked over to the times square at Ft. Meyers Beach.  It was cooler and there was not as many people there as usual.

Here is a shot of the pier at the beach, as you can see by the waves, it was quite a windy day at the beach.

Doesn't take much to amuse the two of us as we have been on the boat awhile.  Here is a one man band performing at the square.  Check out the apparatus hooked on his feet to work the drum and a washboard on his back.  If nothing else you got to be entertained by the sheer work going into this!