We quickly slid from the throngs of East Coast Florida Spring Breakers to the Left Coast where the crowds and waves on the Gulf coast were down to almost nothing by comparison.  The promise of beach time was the allure and winning proposal but as you can see the water, while warmer than the local air temperature, just wasn’t warm enough to get fully immersed in.  However, Stanna found one of the few remaining 50’s beach resorts nestled between the high-rise versions that overwhelm the current St. Petersburg beach-scape.  This place was perfect in our eyes with all single story one-bedroom units double barrel shot-guned between the highway, the water and those boxy 10 story condo buildings.  Light and bright, with contemporary furnishing, fixtures and appliances, only the checkered tile in the showers belied the true age of these earlier get-a-way resorts.  The biggest hit with Julia was the HEATED pool which she only exited once the cooling 6 o’clock shadows of the neighboring behemoth chilled the air.

Since an AirBoat ride in the Everglades didn’t strike a note of interest for our 10 year-old charge, we settled on a canoe paddle down the Hillsborough River just northeast of Tampa.  This was a reality version of one of those Disney rides where you had to paddle your own locomotion and the wild animals were closer, more naturally animated and live.  The Canoe Escape Canoe Escape: Canoeing the Hillsborough River near Tampa, Florida offers 2, 4 and 6-hour self guided adventures providing various water craft and return shuttles for a very modest price considering it’s in Florida.  We opted for the 4-hour (there is a intermediate State Park with water, picnic tables and restrooms every 2 hours), so we got to finish our week in Florida with a real adventure.  First thing that you’ll see is turtles everywhere (in the sun) and then the variety of bird life is wonderful (with a crowded regions of 100’s of Turkey Vultures), and of course what would a Florida water source be without gators, lots of alligators.  And not all of them were sunning on the sunny banks.

Several very large ones, just down stream of our meandering progress, submerged themselves just like Disney would have, as we trepidaiously paddled forward right over their last known position.  Julia paddled the first 4.5 miles and after our lunch break took the middle canoe spot and became the photographer and got several good granddaddy alligator shot which I hope to include.  You’ll have to settle for “half a gator” until we can get those sent from Oregon.  We’d recommend this short adventure for anyone because it’s amazing to see such wildlife so close to a metropolitan area.  This was a wonderful finale to our week long Florida adventures.