Nation’s #1 Beach–Bust and more

Monday January 13 & Tuesday January 14, 2014
E G Simmons County Park  Site 64
Ruskin, Florida

 

 

 

MONDAY - A bright sunny day is time to go to the beach.  Right??

 

The predicted high was 80 degrees today in Sarasota.  We had visited but never spent time on what is advertised all over town as the Nation’s #1 Beach, Siesta Key.   So we put on our suits, grabbed our gear and headed out down Florida Route 72 which goes straight from Myakka, through Sarasota and down to the beach.

The road passes within a block of David’s favorite bakery – Jim’s Small Batch Bakery.  But luckily, Jim isn’t open on Mondays.   Since it was Monday, we figured we would be able to score a parking place and were surprised to find how full the enormous lot was at about noon when we arrived.

 

 

 

 

 

The beach is very broad and very flat and the sand actually almost looks like cement it is so fine.   There are lots of what look like truck tire tracks running parallel to the shore from the parking lot to the water.  These come from a trash machine that they run every morning to rake up the trash left on the beach.   Isn’t that just pathetic??    The tire tracks add to the general artificial feel of the beach I thought.  Closer to the water the tracks are not as noticeable because of all the footprints.   There are also no sand dunes which felt somehow ‘not right’.  I guess this beach has municipal protection and doesn’t need the natural protection of the dunes.

 

 

 

The beach is flat in the water as well as on land.  I was what seemed like miles from the shore before the water was above my waist and you all know how short I am.   I wondered if I would even be able to see David if he waded out to his waist which he didn’t.   The water was warm enough I thought but it turned out that the air never got above 68 while we were there. Not David’s kind of swim day.

 

 

The sand is very very fine.  Think popcorn salt fine.   Some say sugar but most of the sugar I’ve seen, even white, is more coarse than this stuff which ultimately made it nearly impossible to get it off of and out of things.   We had to use a stiff brush everything over and over even our towels.  The sand would not shake off. 

 

 

 

I’m the one in the middle, I wonder if I could just walk straight down to Key West.

 

 

 

 

We felt kind of like we had front row seats on the boardwalk as we watched the people parade by.  These aren’t the sort of folks we usually see where we travel and camp since we tend to avoid cities.    And there were a lot of them pretty constantly.

 

 

 

 

Does he look lost?  Or out of place?

 

 

Notice the gloves and face mask.

 

 

 

 

No exposed ankles here

 

 

 

 

 

We soon grew bored and took a walk down the beach hoping to avoid what appear to be flying ants that land on you and bite. I had on long sleeves and my towel over my legs but they were after my neck and my ears as I sat in my chair.  

The walk actually made things worse as apparently they are all over in the sand.  We found that if we walked in the water we could lessen the numbers somewhat.

 

 

 

 

But still, we, and nearly everyone else walking, were swatting them off of our skin and clothing.  Arms up over our heads and along our backs and necks.

 

 

Now you know that I am a SERIOUS beach lover. 
I have never actually met a beach I didn’t love until now. 
After 2 hours we’d both had enough and high tailed it back to the car trying to figure out how in the world this could possibly be America’s #1 Beach.
If it’s your favorite I hope you’ll comment and help me understand what I missed. 
It was a Beach Bust for us.

 

 

The best part of the day was returning home and finding an armadillo snuffling around the grasses across from our site.  Aren’t they just prehistoric looking???

 

 

 

 

One final note which capped off this day.   Apparently for some time now, one of our water hoses has had a bubble in it.  I just found this out today.  I don’t usually hook up the water, so I hadn’t ever seen it. 

David’s attitude, unlike mine, is, if it ain’t broke right now, don’t fix it, it might not ever break.  My attitude is ‘any problem is bound to get worse if left unattended, fix it now’.  So I use my attitude in my sphere of influence and he uses his in his.  

Well, he paid a big price for that view this evening.   This morning we had found that the water hose had split over night and water was spraying water all over.  No idea for how long.  He took the hose off, put on another.  He looked in the basement bin onto which the water had been spraying and only saw that the plastic bag which held his grease gun had some water on it.  No big deal.   We went to the beach. 

 

When we came back earlier than planned, he looked more carefully in the bin and found that the entire bottom was soaked all the way back through all 3 bins in the big slide and so was everything stored in them.  He was out well into the dark taking everything out of the bins, drying them off, using a heater and our bissel carpet shampooer to pull the water out and dry everything out.  He says this is a lesson learned.  But will this incident transfer into the big picture?  My money is not.  But we’ll see.   It is one way to get the bins cleaned and reorganized.   I wouldn’t recommend it though.

 

 

TUESDAY – moving day

 

 

Rain had been predicted for all night Monday and all day Tuesday.  Luckily the weather forecasters are wrong more than 50% of the time we have found.   We were able to get all packed up except for the tire covers and the electric and water when it began to drizzle and then got more serious.  We didn’t get too wet so off we went for a 50 mile drive up to E.G. Simmons County Park in Ruskin, Florida on Tampa Bay.  My kind of driving day.

 

We chose this park because we’d been there before and liked it.  It was close enough to visit the Tampa RV Super Show this week and close to the Moffitt Cancer Center for David’s bone marrow biopsy and bone scan on Friday.

We didn’t bother hooking up the car and it was an easy drive up only spitting rain.   When we pulled up to the gate to go into the park, who should be pulling out but Howard and Linda Payne of RV Dreams.  Back in 2010 they pushed me off the fence about this full timing business with their facts and figures about all aspects of the life.   They continue to do very informative educational rallies and now have 8 years of full timing experience to draw from. 

We knew they were leaving the park today since I follow their blog and we were happy to be able to at least see them on the way out.  We’ll be attending their RV Safety session at the RV Show tomorrow where we will be sure to thank them for leaving us their site, one of our very favorites. 

Sure wish I had ridden my bike over to sunset point to see what was clearly a spectacular sunset.  This was the view out our front window.