On to Sarasota

Today we packed up all of our stuff, chairs, bike, trike, etc. and headed up the highway to Sarasota. It was a short trip, taking us around the top of San Carlos Bay on Interstate 75. When I opened the door on Toad, I discovered that this cute little lizard had hitched a ride. I tried to catch him, but he jumps a good foot at a time. I finally got him to jump out of Toad and disappear. Then I discovered his big brother had also hitched a ride on our lavender plant!

We are parked behind Bethel Mennonite Church where we will be attending the All Unit Mennonite Disaster Service meeting Friday and Saturday. Bethel Church has a very large piece of property. They have water and fifty amp power for RV hook-ups. There is a large grassy area behind where we are parked (their cemetery is in one corner). When we looked out to that area this afternoon, we saw this lone sandhill crane --

I took these pictures with the telephoto lens on my camera -- it was quite a long ways away. It is unusual to see one of these by themselves; they are usually in couples or family groups.

We saw this hawk fly into the pines on the edge of the church property. The brownish coloring and the two distinct white stripes on its tail make us think it is a Red-Shouldered Hawk.

We got a phone call shortly after we arrived from our friends Darryll and Linda who are also here for the MDS meetings, inviting us to join them for dinner. Gene is also here from Washington. He had rented a van, so we all piled in with him and went to one of the Amish buffets for dinner. (Sarasota is a popular Amish vacation spot.) We all ate too much, but had a great time catching up on all the news from home.

Schooner Appledore V

Our friends Bill and Leslie bought an afternoon cruise on the Schooner Appledore V in Fort Myers through Groupon and didn't get a chance to use it. So they gave us the coupon. When I called the Appledore to make a reservation, they said they weren't doing the two hour cruise the coupon was good for, but we could use it for the three hour "Go Fish Family Cruise."

We were supposed to be at the dock at Salty Sam's Marina fifteen minutes early, but I messed up when I put the address into the GPS... I gave them a call and they waited for us -- we ended up only about five minutes late --

Fortunately when they had sent a confirmation email, they mentioned they left from Dock A, so we were able to go right there --

And there is was, and they were waiting for us --

The schooner had a crew of three who tended to the sails --

They referred to the Appledores (there are five of them) as traditional sailing schooners --

The sails are gaff-rigged. That is they have a wooden boom at the bottom and a wooden gaff at the top of the sail, making the sail a big rectangle.

Part of the uniqueness of their "Go Fish" cruise is dropping a trawl net overboard weighted to skim the bottom of  San Carlos Bay in the Gulf of Mexico. They left it down for fifteen minutes or so.

Then they hauled it in and dumped the contents into some plastic tubs --

This was the first time they had caught a ray --

They very quickly took a look at it and then dumped it back over the side (there are regs about what they can keep on board for a bit.) --

We were able to take a good look at the other critters that the net had brought up. This interesting bottom feeder is called a bat fish --

This is its under-side. It uses those orangey pectoral fins to help propel it across the bottom sand --

This one was called a Lizard Fish. That mouth is something else again!

I think this was the cutest of the critters the net brought up. It's a Spider crab.

There were three anemones in the net as well --

We thoroughly enjoyed our afternoon on the water. We ended up stopping at Big Game Waterfront Grill for a delicious shrimp dinner on the way home.