A day in St. Pete

The last time I was in St. Petersburg was in 1972 when I was 13. My grandparents retired and moved here, and that was the last time we visited them.

After picking up Beth and Scott's very lively and animated friend, Robin, we headed out for a personal tour of the area, which began at Fort DeSoto. This is one of the top beaches in the US.

We spent some time splashing around in the water, looking for shells, fish, and sting rays. This time of year is shagging (mating) season for them, and we were instructed to shuffle our feet to ensure we didn't accidentally step on them. It was so incredibly hot out there, and the water was so warm and clear.

After wandering around on the beach for awhile, we worked up quite an appetite, and ended up at a local seafood restaurant. After completely stuffing ourselves, we exited the restaurant to discover it pouring down rain. And I am not kidding... it was raining so hard it was difficult to see where we were going.

The rain put a bit of a cramp in our plans, but we found the trolley system in St. Pete kept us pretty dry... we made our way to the pier with the shops and a small aquarium that we wandered around in.

While we were at the pier, we spotted this floating church. Pretty funny. It is a floating chapel that can be rented for weddings. We all think this could be a hit on Lake Coeur d'Alene.

I spoke to my Uncle Frank and got the address of my grandparents house to see if we could find it. I had a lot of happy memories there with both of them. They lived on this large pond that folks used to fish in. I caught my first fish there. There was supposed to be an alligator in it, but I never saw it.

We plugged the address in Maggie, our GPS unit, but apparently the house is gone and nothing looked at all like I remembered it. Sigh...

Tomorrow we travel to the east coast of Florida and the Atlantic Ocean. More beaches... don't you feel sorry for us?