Three words: Siesta. Key. Beach. Rated the #3 most beautiful beach in the United States for 2008.Just south of Sarasota, it's home to sugar sand, which is incredibly white, soft, and doesn't get hot in the sun, so it's lovely to walk on.
We spent two lovely hours there, enjoying the breezy day, watching the pelicans and gulls nosedive into the surf for fish.
People watching was also good - we saw people building sand castles, flying kites, swimming, fishing (and throwing lots of fish back, causing a small feeding frenzy among the gulls), parasailing, and just generally enjoying themselves.
On the way home, we stopped off (of course) at Nokomis Groves for more citrus ice cream. I had another orange / vanilla; my friend tried the orange / pineapple. (Both received top marks!)
I decided it would be fun to take a walk in the actual groves, to see the fruit trees up close. It was cool until my foot started stinging from dozens of teeny tiny ants biting me furiously!Meanwhile, I did get in a shot of the melon-sized grapefruits. (ED. Found out the next day that this particular species is called Chinese grapefruit, they're really meaty, and delicious!)
Once it was approaching dusk, we headed out again, this time to the Venice Audobon Center Bird Sanctuary to watch the birds come home to roost for the night. I'm coveting a nicer camera about now, one with better zoom, better color filtering, and ability to take photos at dusk.
This one blurry shot was actually quite interesting - a couple of egrets seemed to have a disagreement over a certain branch...There were tons of egrets, blue heron, anhingas and some others I couldn't name. We got some lovely close shots of one great blue heron who really liked a nearby tree. He didn't seem to mind as we snapped photo after photo.
Home again, we're trying to bunk down at a decent time, to get ready for another full day tomorrow!
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