Dali

Days on cruise: 258

Salvador Dali was brilliant, odd and a creative genius. It seems even people who don’t love his work find it fascinating, and we both fall into that camp. His brain was wired differently than most!

Today we spent several hours at St. Petersburg’s Dali Museum which owns the largest collection of Dali paintings anywhere in the world outside of Spain. This collection was donated by private collectors Reynolds and Eleanor Morse and includes 96 paintings spanning Dali’s entire career from 1904-1989.

The museum is a beautiful structure, a work of art in itself, and only opened in January 2011.

 

Dali was fascinated by science and incorporated elements and themes from science in many of his artworks. This staircase was designed to resemble the double-helix of a DNA strand, a representation he sometimes used in his paintings.

The amazing painting below appears to be one subject when viewed close at hand, but becomes a portrait of Abraham Lincoln when viewed from 60+ feet away. Really! Many of Dali’s paintings contain pictures within pictures.

Hours spent in this museum made us feel insufficiently “cultured” in the world of art.

The photo above was taken from the third floor atrium looking towards the St. Petersburg boat harbor. This photo is not retouched. Bob is happy with the outcome!

St. Petersburg is a gorgeous city, and we’re loving our time here. We had planned to stay only 2 nights, but have more things we’re interested in doing so have signed up for a third night. Who knows when we’ll really leave?

St. Petersburg, FL

Days on cruise: 257

Distance traveled: 23.0 miles

Travel time: 2 hrs, 43 mins

Total trip odometer:  5,663 statute miles

We got a slow start this morning, Thursday, but didn’t have far to go, so still arrived at our destination before 2pm. Back in “slow speed; minimum wake” or “idle speed; no wake” territory, for which Florida is famous, we’re finding our travel speeds are slower than they’ve been in a long time. Those of you who do mental calculations of our distance and travel time date already know this.

Yesterday afternoon, Wednesday, we took a walk on the spectacular white sand beach of Madeira, Beach, FL adjacent to John’s Pass. There were very few people, and if not for the wind, it would have been sunny and warm. Alas, not warm, but still beautiful.

Someone spent some time building a castle!

The view out the back of our boat from the marina.

View from the bridge next to our marina crossing to Madeira Beach from Treasure Island. Note: no people!

Today’s journey on the ICW again took us under many bridges, but none of them required us to call for an opening, and conditions remained calm and easy, if always shallow.

Coming into St. Petersburg, The Pier is visible from along way away. Its’ inverted structure is dated and schedule for demolition and redevelopment.

St. Petersburg has condos and high-rises like lots of other Florida shoreline, but it manages to be prettier than most, with architectural interest and none of the bland 1960s and 1970s block-style condos.

As usual, public art is fun.

This place almost looked church-like, but the street level was typical commercial development. Wonder as to the history?

An electric boat on the right, with an electric-powered paddle boat on the left. Wave of the future???

Lots of pink buildings, which manage not to look funny here in Florida like they would at home in the Pacific Northwest, and soothing palm trees.

We were pleased to see on arrival that they had us park behind “Proud Lady”, Bill and Joy, from our group of Gulf Crossing Buddy Boats! We enjoyed cocktail hour together, and it’s great to see them again.

With almost a full moon tonight, sunset is gorgeous.

Treasure (?) Island: Not Today

Days on cruise:  255

Distance traveled:  23.7 miles

Travel time:  3 hours, 1 minute

Total trip odometer:  5,640 statute miles

Being back in the land of palm trees, shallow waters, pelicans and dolphins feels familiar, much like last winter and spring when we took a “shake down” cruise on Next To Me from Fort Pierce to the Keys and back, then headed north on the Intracoastal Waterway to Georgia. What’s different this time is the weather is unseasonably chilly. We’ve had a few warm days (70s) but mostly since our return to the boat January 3, daily high temps have been in the 50s and 60s, with lows in the 30s, 40s or 50s. And it’s been windy!

Today’s journey was mostly in the narrow, dredged ICW channel with very shallow water just outside the channel, requiring constant attention to the red and green marks. We’re pretty relaxed about this kind of travel now, unlike when we were first trained by Captains Chris and Alyse Caldwell exactly a year ago.

We passed under a number of bridges including Clearwater Bridge below, and all were high enough we didn’t need to call for an opening.

Considering the temperature and wind, we saw more boat traffic than we expected . . .

. . . . and mile after mile after mile of both high-rise and low-rise condominiums.

We don’t understand what the tall hardware on this boat is for; it doesn’t look like a typical fishing or crabbing boat.

And there were zillions of cheek-by-jowl houses in the 5,000 to 15,000 square foot range. WHERE does all that money come from?

And an occasional “old Florida” house with lots of color and character.

The blue circle with a blue dot in the middle shows tonight’s marina on Treasure Island, just east of John’s Pass, the inlet that leads to the Gulf of Mexico from the ICW. This shows, too, the beautiful, white sand beaches and shallow water.

More condos, and the marina (yellow fuel dock and office building) where we’re tied up for tonight. Mostly empty.

There could be LOTS of cold, bored folks sitting inside their condos with binoculars trained on our boat for entertainment, for all we know! We’ll be sure to close the blinds and curtains after dark.

We spent the afternoon wandering the John’s Pass boardwalk. This place is full of colorful, silly kitsch. The Gators (football team) are big here, so this entire restaurant is devoted to them.

A pet store invites you (not us, as we have no pets) to buy fashionable items for your dog.

All in all, we found the John’s Pass tourist area not very interesting. Maybe on a sunny, warm day when lots of people are out and about, sitting on decks drinking margaritas and listening to music, it might be fun. Today it just looked sorta sad. But the beach looks gorgeous, and we’ll check that out tomorrow if the wind dies down.

Spot Check-in message Treasure Island FL

Latitude:27.78348
Longitude:-82.77979
GPS location Date/Time:01/22/2013 10:08:09 PST

Caladesi Island III

Days on cruise: 254

While home for the holidays we got back into exercising regularly, with Bob running and lifting weights, and friend Phebe and sister-in-law Lynn dragging Cathryn off to yoga classes several times a week, interspersed with aerobic work. We’re trying to keep the trend going now that we have shorter and less frequent travel days for the next two months. We need to put a dent in some of the damage the last year has done to the fit of our clothes! So this morning found us doing a 3-mile jog on the island trails.

After showers, saying goodbye to Gulf Crossing friends Buddy and Phyllis on Sea-N-Red who left for Clearwater, and lunch, we took off for a leisurely walk of the 2.5-mile trail around the island. Wildlife abounds, including some of the variety we were happy NOT to see!

The Nature Trail is mostly sand, hard-packed dirt and some broken shell. It has interpretive signage along the way and varied landscape.

Sabal (cabbage) palm, saw palmetto and wax myrtle are common along the first half.

We saw three armadillos foraging for bugs in the ground, and loads of birds, all too far off or too quick for our camera.

The Hammock Loop is shaded with live oak trees dripping with Spanish moss. The “Twin Pine” or “Harp Tree” is unusual because of its’ double trunk. There’s a photographic record of this tree dating back to the 1800s.

The necklace pod tree has yellow blossoms and distinctive seed cases that resemble strings of beads.

Crossing a bridge through a mangrove creek leads past Cat’s Eye Pond and then to the beach on the Gulf side of the island where a one-mile walk takes you back to the marina.

The State Park even has beach wheelchairs with balloon tires for use by folks who can’t walk in sand, and we saw two in use.

Mid-afternoon saw us back at the boat where late Monday finds us as one of only five boats in the marina, two of which are occupied by Park Volunteers for the winter.

We love this place!

Caladesi Island, Day 2

Days on cruise:  253

Friends Jim and Sharon on “Blue Angel”, two time Loopers and full-time cruisers we met in the Florida Keys a year ago and have seen several times on our Loop, first encouraged us to come to Caladesi, telling us it’s one of their all-time favorite places. We understand why they feel that way.

We’d heard this marina, close to metropolitan areas like Clearwater, Tampa, Sarasota and others, is very busy on weekends. Maybe it’s the unseasonably cool weather, but it was never more than half-full this weekend. Now, Sunday night, it’s down to only 8 boats, two of which are Volunteers who help out in the Park and spend the whole winter here.

Caladesi is served by a ferry from nearby Honeymoon Island, a 20-minute ride away, which arrives hourly during  winter months. There’s no access to Caladesi except by boat. The ferry plies it’s way past our slip, only 25 feet off our bow, but fortunately doesn’t begin service  until 10am and quits at 5pm. It’s nice to see happy people coming to comb the beach, and they all leave with the last ferry, as there’s no camping or overnight accommodations here except on private boats like ours.

We spent the afternoon walking the beach to the far north point of the island. We saw lots of shore birds, other animals including a raccoon, snails and crabs, and some people, but not many. The beach is so littered with shells that it’s impossible to walk without stepping on them at times.

A long stretch of the beach has benches every 200 yards, so we sat on a bench for our picnic lunch and to watch the boat traffic passing by, including Jet Skis, pontoon boats, a commercial Dive Boat, larger cruising motor boats in the distance, and some airplanes and helicopters overhead.

Near sunset we plopped into beach chairs, and shortly Phyllis and Buddy from Sea-N-Red appeared to share the view, coming from the south end of the beach where they’d been on a walk.

We’re so charmed by this place, its’ beauty, peace and quiet, that we’ve decided to stay another night after tomorrow.