Severance Travels: Timeshare Week

We did go to the ballgame Monday night. $12 for any seat in the stadium and 'all you can eat.' We sat right behind the Dunnedin Blue Jay dugout.

Judy had Boston Market and I had pizza. Later on in the game we had ice cream sandwiches.

It was a beautiful night for the game – nice breeze to keep you comfortable. Not a very large crowd as you can see. Lots of scoring and our team won.

Wednesday we drove up to Tarpon Springs which is a popular place to get sponges. Back in 1998 we took a boat ride and watched as a diver went down and harvested some sponges to show us how it’s done. The docks have many boats that go out into the gulf for weeks at a time. It is a very big industry here – all the shops along the wharf have some sort of sponge for sale.

Tarpon Springs is a Greek community so in addition to the shops, there are 3 or 4 bakeries selling their specialties. Of course, that was part of the reason we came up here!

More pictures on the beach refurbishing project. We drove up to Clearwater (about 15 miles north of Indian Rocks Beach) and found where they are now working. Here are some pictures - this is the equipment they are using to blow the sand to the beach. If you click on the picture, I think you can see the barge with the sand on the left.

Some kind of vacuum moves the sand from the barge thru a huge pipe to the shore and then down the shore to where it is blown onto the beach. this is the pipeline.

Here is the sand and water coming out of the pipe.

And this is the equipment being used to spread the sand around.

This is the area that they are moving the sand to.

Pictures just don't do it justice. I guess you have to be there to see it!

We were on the beach again last night and Judy went to look at a turtle nest:

There are several of these up and down the beach. The eggs will hatch in the fall and the little ones will scurry down the beach to the water. We experienced it in 1998.

I did some writing in the sand.

The SeaBreeze restaurant is interesting in that, when we lived here, it was a Shells restaurant and was very popular.

They brought peanuts in the shell to your table and when you ate them, you just threw the shells on the floor. I guess it was an accident looking for a place to happen because a few years later, we heard that they had closed due to a lawsuit from someone who had slipped on the shells. Then it became a CiCi’s of all things!! And now it has changed hands again. We didn't eat there.

Today we drove down to Pass A Grille Beach to look for some shells. We used to be able go on this beach and find a lot of different shells that we couldn’t find up here. However, the last few years this area has been blocked off and no swimming signs are in place due to the currents. But today, it looks like they have changed the beach so that it is accessible again even though they still have the no swimming signs. We didn’t wear our swim suits so couldn’t go out.

The pelicans were out - sunbathing!

Judy took a picture of this sign for Belinda and Barb Collette.

Seems they spent some time there one night, but we doubt that they even remember it!!

We stopped at the CVS Drug Store on Gulf Blvd in Indian Rocks Beach on the way back to do some shopping. For those that are not aware, this used to be an Eckerd Drug Store – we got to talking with the cashier and it came up that we lived here back in 1998 and had worked for Eckerd Drug. He suggested that we go behind the store and look at a sign back there!!