A Day At The Beach. Kathy's obsessions.

Beautiful today in Southern Florida. 70's degrees with bright blue sunny skies. Off to the beach.

Kathy chose Gasparilla Island and its Boca Grande State Beach.

Just a short drive from our house, that is if you're not counting how many open houses/for sale sign stops that must be made on the way, Boca Grande (Big Mouth in Spanish) is a small beach community that takes up part of the 7 mile long Gasparilla Island. Million dollar beach front homes pretty much line the road from causeway to lighthouse at the end of the road.

Gasparilla Island sits at the northern end of Boca Grande Pass the deep water passage into Charlotte Harbor. I won't bore you with all the history that you can read up on via Wiki, but the island as been used in a couple movies and was heavily damaged in Hurricane Charley in 2004. There's great fishing here as well.. Wikipedia says "A typical 80-day Florida season in Boca Grande Pass produces an average 5,000 tarpon landed. As a result, it is one of the world's best tarpon fishing holes and yields more tarpon than any other location in the world."

While it's renown for it's sand beaches, it's also know as one of the premier "shelling" beaches in Florida. I can attest to it living up to it's reputation. Here's a couple square feet.

The whole beach on the Boca Grande Pass side looked like this.

This is also the place where I became aware of Kathy's second obsession, after house hunting.  Let's see. How many times did I hear "I really think I have enough".

Here's a shot of the Boca Grande Lighthouse, built in 1890 that still guards the opening of the pass into the bay.

A view of the beach.

Kathy with her first hat full of shells.

Yet more beach

It was MLK day so no one was working. Very crowded conditions.

Welcome to downtown Boca Grande. Again, very crowded conditions.

Kathy with a strangling fig. It didn't do anything of the sort.

20 lbs of shells and a very nice lunch at the Seagrille Cafe, we headed north towards Englewood to check out the beaches there.

Late in the day wasn't the best time to visit as all of the parking lots on Manastoa Key, the barrier island protecting Lemon Bay and Englewood, were absolutely packed. We did however find Lemon Bay Park on the mainland side of the bay to be nearly deserted. No beaches but good fishing according to a couple of guys I talked with.

Here's the view.

More beaches tomorrow. Cold front arriving tomorrow night so it'll only be 60 on Wednesday and too cold for the beach.

Good night and good luck.