Ken and I left the CG at 7:15, made stops for drinks and at Michaels for paint, arriving at Dave and Sharon's around 9:45. It was so good to see them again. After sometime "catching up" on life, we changed into our bathing suits, the 4 of us got on their boat, along with their dog Daisy, and headed out to The Lump.
On the way to The Lump, Ken got so excited - he spotted a roseate spoonbill, his favorite bird and the 1st sitting for this year! As you can tell from all the pictures, he was overwhelmed!
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| Daisy gets so excited for a boat ride and has her "special seat". |
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| The roseate spoonbill is a site to behold! |
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| I guess they are friends! |
Dave and Sharon take us to The Lump every year so we can go shell hunting. The island is positively covered with shells and many our ones you don't find very often. We love it! As soon as we anchored the boat and our chairs and umbrella were in place, we all started our search!
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| The Lump is in view! |
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| Daisy could hardly wait to get out of the boat and enjoy the beach! |
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| The greeting committee! |
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| Shells..... |
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| shalls.... |
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| and more shells! |
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| Lots of starfish on the beach waiting for high tide! |
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| All set-up and ready for the "'shell hunt"! |
We returned to our chairs to have some snacks and to re-hydrate and then it was time for me to do a little more hunting! As I headed back to the boat for our departure, I realized that the are where we had set-up when we arrived had become very small! I actually had to walk through the water to get to the chairs and boat. High tide had taken over our "space"!
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| Our own little place on earth for a few hours! Note the width of our "space" when we set-up! |
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| This heron liked Dave's boat! |
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| Okay, Okay! We had to share our little part of the world with the birds, lots of birds! |
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| Still plenty of beach around us! |
On the way back, we drove by the concrete domes, a holiday home built in 1980 by a retired independent oil producer, Bob Lee. They were ahead of their time being both self sustaining and solar powered. Each dome was a separate room. They became the primary residence of his grandson until 1993, a year after Hurricane Andrew. When Ken and I first saw them, about 8 years ago, we were able to walk around them. But now they are 100's of feet from the coastline which has been washed away over the years.
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| They look like little Pac Man figures! |
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| Got these 2 photos of the internet. They were amazing when inhabited! |
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| Looks like a beautiful place to live - definitely one of a kind! |
We spent the late afternoon and evening sitting in their screened porch enjoying their fantastic setting. Ken bought some local shrimp for an appetizer and then Dave and Sharon provided a delicious dinner. We had such a wonderful time with them.
We left at 7:45 and got back to the CG around 9:30. Ernie and Noela had gotten back at 8:30 after driving the whole way to Miami today, about 4 hours each way!
I thought I would end this blog with some pictures of Dave and Sharon's property. They bought it about 2 years ago and have almost rebuilt it. The home has new siding, windows, doors, kitchen, walls, screened porch, new roof on thatched tiki hut, and several walls removed. The tiki hut roof has palmetto palm leaves and these palm leaves can only be cut down by native Indians. This year they had an electric boat lift installed, making it so much easier to get in and out of their boat and keeps it much cleaner.
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| Looks like a place where I would like to sit and relax! |
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| The back of their property! What a setting! |
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| Their boat on its new electric lift! |
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| From their screened porch they see dolphins, occasional manatees, and stingrays, lots of stingrays! |
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| We so appreciate Dave and Sharon's hospitality every year! |
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| What can I say???? |
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| What a peaceful setting! |
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