Out Of The cold, Temporarily.

A sharp contrast to the weather we had last week in MN!  Last Saturday, we flew to Tampa for a vacation.  I'm not real sure you call it a vacation when you aren't taking time off from work to do it?  We traveled with our friends, Bob and Debbie Engh.  They have made this trip several times over the past few years, and had already booked a house to accommodate us on Anna Maria Island.

 Up at the top of the pictures is a view of the Gulf of Mexico at sunset on our first night here.  We had to walk a block from the house to get to the beach.  Below it is a daytime view of the Gulf from the restaurant table that shows the 4 of us together.  On the bottom right, we are waiting for dinner at Tide Tables, a place right down on the docks.  That was in Cortez, an old fishing village on the mainland, and commercial fishing still operates there.  Anna Maria Island is a great place to vacation.  It's a long skinny island that has been developed incredibly since about 1800.  There are still many wide open beaches and parks.  There are multi-million dollar homes on the waterfront, very fun to look at as we walk the beach.  The beach is plenty wide for kids to play, walkers to step right along and the people who do not have my skin type to bask in the sun!  We had one day of cloudy, foggy, misty weather, but the rest have been perfect!  Today it reached 77, which felt fine with the ocean air sweeping in to us.

We had a very fun experience one afternoon on a guided kayak tour with Liquid Blue Outfitters.  Even though Debbie had never been in a kayak before, she ended up enjoying it after quite a bit of hesitancy when we started!  Congrats to Debbie!

Tomorrow we find our way back to Minneapolis, which we know has had nasty wintery weather while we have been away.  Our driveway has an uphill slope, and we will probably end up parking on the street and getting the snow blown out of the way.  Then we will see just how much ice is underneath!  It's back to the tundra for us!  This has been a wonderful break, we learned that our foursome travels well together and that yes, Bob can eat seafood every day without duplications!  There could be another trip in the future for us!