Moving on South

Leaving Clearwater Beach.  Follow that thar pirate ship
& seize the booty!  At least get their rum!

We left Clearwater Beach on Sunday May 26 for a cheaper marina in St Pete.  Because the winds had kicked up, and because we had had enough rock and rolling this past week, we decided to run the inside ICW to St Pete, rather than going outside.  We soon found out just how crazy the narrow ICW can be with countless boaters zooming around at full speed on a holiday weekend.  Once we got south of Clearwater, the boat traffic wasn't as bad, and we began to enjoy the weather and the scenery.

He caught the fish......now he has to swallow it!

We ended up at Maximo Marina on the south side of St Petersburg, just off the ICW.  We hadn't seen this marina in about 50 years, when Sue's brother was the dockmaster here.  Additionally, Sue used to live in this neighborhood from 1966-1970, when she was dating the Deck Ape.  We went to find the old house & I talked about where in the back yard that I got down on one knee & proposed to her.  As they say, the rest is history (at our ages, there's more & more history!) 

To top it all off, we were visited by Sue's nephew & family from the east coast of Florida, who just happened to be visiting their daughter & family from Seminole FL, who brought along some relatives of the relatives. So we concluded a very enjoyable day at the "golden arches" having some ice cream.

We plan to stay at this marina for a week.  Tomorrow we rent a car to drive back to Panama City to retrieve our car (6 hours each way).  We want to visit other relatives in the area this week, plus visit the Salvadore Dali museum in St Pete.  We hope to go to the local beaches where Sue used to go, and then drive to Bradenton & Sarasota to sightsee.  When we finally leave by boat, we'll leave our car here until we get to Florida's east coast, and then retrieve our car to head back to TN for a couple weeks to care for Sue's mom.

Memorial Day (a.k.a. Decoration Day) decorations