Monday: Siesta Key
We had our own stretch of private beach available to us at the resort in Siesta Key. As you can imagine, this was a terrible hardship.
I woke up early, went out for a walk, and then sat on the beach reading for a while. Chels and I then went across the street from our hotel and rented bikes for the day. Turns out the sand on the beach at Siesta Key is firm enough to accommodate bike riding on the beach, which was a new idea to us. We rode down the length of the island on roads to get to breakfast, and then made our way back to the hotel on the beach:
As you can see, there were long stretches of the beach that were virtually empty. We would then come on spots where the beach was crowded, making the ride a bit of an adventure. I skidded out at one point to avoid crashing into a little guy who was ferrying seawater up the beach to his sand castles.
There were also a few places where tons of seagulls were congregating:
Creatures of all kinds seemed to want to clump together on Siesta Key.
In the afternoon we took a drive down to Venice Beach, about 15 miles to the south, looking for sharks' teeth. The walk out to the beach from the parking lot was very promising:
But the beach itself turned out to be a bit of a bust for our purposes. Venice Beach has recently been "renourished" with a huge transplant of new sand, meaning that the beach has a cliff-like steep dropoff to the waterline, and the surf is strangely choppy and unsettled, with small but energetic waves crashing about every twenty seconds. It's not often that I think of Jersey beaches as being tranquil, but if the wave action in Sea Isle City is like a calm lullaby, Venice was a punk rock concert.
The renourishment had also buried the sharks' teeth under several feet of new sand, so the pickings were mighty slim. We also waded out to a sandbar in a fruitless search for sand dollars. The Hitchcockian bird presence was the same as in Siesta Key, though:
Late in the afternoon we headed back to our hotel to clean up for dinner at our beloved Sweet Tomatoes, which had an outpost right over the bridge from our hotel. We briefly contemplated going out to a movie, and then decided to crash for the night instead. We knew we had a very early start ahead of us for...
Tuesday: Up to Orlando!
I woke up early, went out for a walk, and then sat on the beach reading for a while. Chels and I then went across the street from our hotel and rented bikes for the day. Turns out the sand on the beach at Siesta Key is firm enough to accommodate bike riding on the beach, which was a new idea to us. We rode down the length of the island on roads to get to breakfast, and then made our way back to the hotel on the beach:
As you can see, there were long stretches of the beach that were virtually empty. We would then come on spots where the beach was crowded, making the ride a bit of an adventure. I skidded out at one point to avoid crashing into a little guy who was ferrying seawater up the beach to his sand castles.
There were also a few places where tons of seagulls were congregating:
Creatures of all kinds seemed to want to clump together on Siesta Key.
In the afternoon we took a drive down to Venice Beach, about 15 miles to the south, looking for sharks' teeth. The walk out to the beach from the parking lot was very promising:
But the beach itself turned out to be a bit of a bust for our purposes. Venice Beach has recently been "renourished" with a huge transplant of new sand, meaning that the beach has a cliff-like steep dropoff to the waterline, and the surf is strangely choppy and unsettled, with small but energetic waves crashing about every twenty seconds. It's not often that I think of Jersey beaches as being tranquil, but if the wave action in Sea Isle City is like a calm lullaby, Venice was a punk rock concert.
The renourishment had also buried the sharks' teeth under several feet of new sand, so the pickings were mighty slim. We also waded out to a sandbar in a fruitless search for sand dollars. The Hitchcockian bird presence was the same as in Siesta Key, though:
Late in the afternoon we headed back to our hotel to clean up for dinner at our beloved Sweet Tomatoes, which had an outpost right over the bridge from our hotel. We briefly contemplated going out to a movie, and then decided to crash for the night instead. We knew we had a very early start ahead of us for...
Tuesday: Up to Orlando!
