July 1, 2008

Day one -

We were off work over the 4th of July, and the kids were off to visit their sister up in Panama City, so we decided to take a few days and run down the coast for some R&R. We departed on July 1st heading for our first stop at Cabbage Key.

Cabbage Key is an old Florida restaurant and inn on an island a little south of Boca Grande, Florida. They are supposed to be famous for their cheeseburgers, but I have never tried one so I don’t know if they are any good or not. It is a much nice place after lunch once all of the tourists from the mainland have gone home.

They claim that their cheeseburger was the inspiration for Jimmy Buffett’s song, but Jimmy claims otherwise, so who knows.

We were underway heading south down the intracoastal near Englewood when we spotted our first dolphin of the trip.




The admiral was watching the pod of dolphins swimming around. This is why I am not a professional photographer – I thought I had a good pic of her dolphin watching but somehow I managed to plant an antenna in her head…



Here is a close-up of the dolphins by the boat…



After watching them for a few minutes, we continued heading south. As we approached Palm Island, we had to slow down for the barge traffic – since they are a lot bigger than me! These are the car ferries that take people over to the resort on Palm Island. It looks like an interesting place to get away from it all.



Once we cleared the barges, we continued heading south, keeping an eye in the thunderstorms to port, over the inland areas. The weather held for us the rest of the day and the storms stayed over land.



Here is an ospry’s nest on top of the marker. I guess the Coast Guard didn’t want to disturb the nest to maintain the light, so there is a can buoy set up next to it.



After that, the waterway opened up as we approached Charlotte Harbor.



Going across the Boca Grande channel at the mouth of Charlotte Harbor, the lighthouse is in the distance. This is one of only two natural deep water inlets on Florida’s West Coast (Egmont Channel at Tampa Bay is the other) and is home to some of the best Tarpon fishing in the state.



Going past Cayo Costa State Park, you can still see where the island was hit by Hurricane Charlie in 2004. The dead trees in the background are the remains of the Australian Pines lost to the storm.



Approaching Cabbage Key at about 1700 hours, we missed the crowds from earlier in the day. They had more than 200 people in for lunch.



Just in case I wasn't sure where I was at...



I should have taken more pictures, but at the time I hadn’t thought of keeping photo log and I hadn’t read Four Sun’s blog. I am still learning about this blog thing…