More St. Pete

Days on cruise:  259

Not sure if last night was the official full moon, but if not, it was awfully close. Moon shining in the aft hatch over our bed kept Cathryn awake awhile at bedtime. That’s the kind of sleep disruption we can appreciate.

Are you bored by sunrise photos yet?

Promptly at 8:30 this morning we were out the door with Bill and Joy of “Proud Lady” to walk to the Saturday Farmer’s Market.

The quality of the produce rivaled any we’ve seen at any farmer’s market in any country.

These flowers are for you, Adrienne.

The food vendors had fabulous-smelling cooked wares on offer, but we’d already had breakfast so resisted.

Anyone looking for a method of boosting retirement income? This guy was playing “Blowing in the Wind”. Guess he knows some of his 1960s-era audience?

Bill and Joy rented bicycles at The Pier for 24 hours, we unloaded ours from the guest stateroom, and off we went for the next adventure of the day. St. Pete has some wonderful bicycle lanes separated from the roadway by parking curbs so you’re completely out of traffic. Unfortunately they only got us 25% of the way there; the rest of the time we rode on sidewalks.

Our destination was the Boyd Hill Nature Park 5 miles away on the shore of Lake Maggiore. We rode through the trails, mostly seeing raccoons, squirrels and lots of birds.

A bridge crosses a pretty marsh out to Maggiore Island.

Anyone identify this bird for us?

How about this one? Here's life imitating art!

There was a bird rescue facility in the park, hence the next two raptors.

Wish we could still rotate our necks like this guy!

Several unusual metal art pieces.

Nope. NOT tempted to swim with the alligators.

And then we finally saw two alligators offshore. BIG!

Lots of cormorants, vultures, gulls, egrets, herons and more.

After returning to the marina neighborhood, our reward for biking those miles was lunch at The Moon Under Water where we found delicious pub-style food, good beer choices, good service, and good prices.

If you guessed we took a power nap after that, you know us well or have been following this blog for a while.

Did you notice we both started and ended this post with a moon over water?  How’s that for symmetry.