We made it to Stone Mountain today by 3pm. Long drive by our standards of only going 100 miles a day. The campground is nice, but at a slope going down to Stone Mountain lake.

Stone Mountain is the largest granite uprising mountain in US. Kind of surprising to see it, tomorrow we will go to the amusement park.

We will be able to go to the top of the mountain tomorrow and do some other things like Geyser towers to see if we can keep from getting wet. Of course with 95 degree weather it would be good to get wet.

We Traveled our 91 miles today and arrived at Florida Caverns State Park around 11 am

We rode our bikes to the visitors station where we will be able to take the cave tour.

Becky is cozening up to one of the CCC boys who helped working on the caves and other projects in the park

.The caves were surprising, who knew they have caverns in Florida. It was about a 45 minute tour and well worth the effort to see them. We were amongst only  6 other people on the tour.

 Above is an Oyster Skiff that was on display at St. George that we saw as we left. 






 We went to Topsail Hill Preserve State Park next, it was about 150 miles, a long drive:) This is a resort owned by the state of Florida. The beach was the best yet  and the water extremely clear. It did have some vegetation floating and little fish would hide in it.

We now are in shrimp country.  So we bought 1 1/2 lbs. of shrimp and had them steamed.  We stopped at Wal-Mart and picked up two ears of sweet corn and a couple of potatoes to round out the meal.  It was a delicious feast.

 We ended the day with sunset on the beach.  The sand  castle stands at around 36 inches.  It must be nice to have such artistic talent.  We enjoyed both the sunset and the art.

Before leaving Manatee Springs, we had some visitors for breakfast.  Yes, the person with Squirliosis is feeding the deer carrots.

 Our destination today is St George Islalnd State Park.  After a fabulous swim at the beach we had a late lunch at Captain Snook's.  The oysters were great.  We had them both raw and deep fried.  

We climbed to the top of St. George Island Light House.  The view was spectactular

We left De Soto park at 8:30 AM and drove our 133 miles to Manatee Springs State Park. We never know exactly what to expect and we like it that way. We got here at noon, it was a slow go with a couple of stops. We found out that the Manatee will come up to the spring and get warm in the 72 degree water in the winter. At this time of year you can swim in the hole, it had 33 million gallons of water coming out of the ground per day and is crystal clear. We went swimming twice really nice and not all that cold. The spring runs into the Swanee River a few hundred feet away. So I guess you could say we are way down the Swanee river today.

This is our third day in St Pete and we were not sure what to do. So we packed the bikes on the car and set out to explore. First we decide to got o eat lunch and we heard of a place called Ted Peter's Smoked Fish. It was fantastic, never had smoked salmon so moist. Then we drove to downtown St Pete and found a nice tree for the car to be under. It was pretty warm, but the humidity did not seem bad. We rode our bikes up the bay trail and saw many really nice homes. We rode back downtown and saw a playground. It said you had to be 12 to play so I qualified and got into the plane. You can see the result of my not flying no more picture. We saw a boat with the name that said it all. After a great day of riding our bikes we just took it easy because we have 133 miles to go tomorrow:)

Today,

We have been messed up on our days since we left. We wondered why everyone was leaving on Saturday and then we realized it is Sunday. We went swimming at the Best beach in USA in 2005, and it was nice. The beach is extremely slow slope and nice sand. A school of small fish started jumping and swimming toward shore as a group, very interesting to be swimming so close to them. The temperature is so nice here. As the sea breeze comex in and it really comes in here it gets so nice and cool. We have one more day here and we plan to try another beach. Been riding our bikes around a lot. You can see the Skyway bridge behind the picture with Becky