A Stroll on the Beach

Today we managed to stay out of the car for the entire day.  We had good weather again even though they kept saying that it might rain. We decided to just hang out close to home. Paul chose to bask in the sun on our balcony. Since it faces south the sun is our constant companion when outside...plus you get to watch the various goings on on the beach (not much).

One of our high points is watching the guy with the mattress and umbrella concession come out at 9 AM in his ATV and set up the beach beds. He sets everything up and then retreats to his little booth a few hundred yards down the beach and  watches to see if anyone lights on one of his beach beds...then he races up on his ATV to collect his money. Yes...entertainment is hard to find but he's the only show for most of the day.

I decided I was going to take a walk on the beach down to the fishing pier. The pier is clearly visible and didn't seem that far away...just a little barefoot stroll down the beach. Walking ankle and calf deep in the water was nice. The water is still warm enough for swimming. Folks were out looking for shells in the surf...there's not many. Most of the shells are broken. There were a few other walkers out on the beach...including a large pelican who was maintaining authority over a small section of shoreline. People would come to a stop when they reached the pelican, not sure what to do...he wouldn't fly away and wasn't going to budge. Finally they would make a wide detour around him and continue up the beach.  It took an hour to reach the fishing pier and an hour to walk back to the condo...about 4 miles all together. That was much farther than I had anticipated walking in bare feet on sand and broken shells. But it was an enjoyable morning and the few other beach walkers were a friendly bunch.

After I recovered from my walk and Paul recovered from basking in the sun we decided it was time for lunch. There was a little cafe and oyster bar across the street and up the block that didn't look like much but had great reviews. We figured we could risk it and strolled over to get something to eat. Wow.  I started out with a pint of Guinness and Paul had a pint of Stella Artois and things went up from there. I got an excellent plate of baked oysters and then a couple grouper tacos. The grouper was wonderful. Paul got a big plate of fried shrimp with fries -- lots of food. We had to have more beer but, of course, it was happy hour...how fortunate can we get?? I suspect we will make it over there again.

Later in the evening we went up on the roof of the condo (in the meeting/event room) to listen to a aging folk singer who has a standing gig each Wednesday singing to the vacationers. He has a long list of songs that he does so he opens it up for requests. Every song requested for the first 45 minutes were sad tear jerkers. What fun that was!  Finally things lightened up and it turned out to be a semi-enjoyable evening. He ended the evening with "Run Around Sue" and "This Land is Your Land" which were big improvements.

Since we were still full from our big lunch we gave up on eating supper and just grazed on stuff we had in the kitchen.