Don Pedro Island State Park

I realized today that, no matter how much I have enjoyed the towns we have visited on our journey, I have more fun exploring the out-of-the-way places that only a dinghy or small boat can get to.

Don Pedro Island State Park is one of those places. The entrance lies between markers 33 & 35 on the ICW (Intra Coastal Waterway) and winds along a narrow canal between mangrove stands.  

There is a small day use dock, and a voluntary $2.00 user fee paid by putting your money in an envelope and dropping it into  a box.  The park ranger arrived just as we were filling our envelope, and we had a nice chat about the park and his job there.  

We started down one of the trails, towards an eagle's nest according to the ranger, but we never found it.  We did see this osprey having a meal. You can actually see the fish clutched in his foot.

 After a while, we cut across the scrub and sea oats and cactus to get onto the beach, which was beautiful - long and white and empty, with gentle waves rolling ashore from a very calm gulf.

Pelicans present an endless source of amusement for us.  They're big, and ungainly, and kind of ugly, and they splash noisily into the water as they hunt for fish.  But we have never really watched them fish before today, when they put on an aerial show for us.  There were two, flying and diving often in unison. Who knew that when they dive they roll onto their backs and actually enter the water upside down??

As we left the park, we spotted this egret, and a loon beside it entangled in fishing line, and trying desperately to get out of the water.  There wasn't anything we could directly do to help it, so we turned around and went back to the park to find the friendly ranger.  It turned out he already had a call into the Florida Fish and Wildlife folks to come to the rescue.  We can only hope it didn't take them too long to respond.

The little bay we are anchored in has a channel leading off it, running between two rows of houses, all of which have docks and boat lifts on the canal.  We puttered up to see what we could see, and again - birds, birds, birds.   

There was a red tide here over Christmas - a toxic algae that comes periodically and kills many fish, and can affect people with respiratory issues too.  There are a lot of dead fish still floating around, and even the gulls won't eat them.

All this low speed travel is thirsty work, so we went back to the mother ship for a cold beer and something to eat, followed by a lazy afternoon on the aft deck, enjoying the warm temperatures (80-ish) and bright Florida sunshine.