Visiting St. Pete's...

It was good to get out in the Jeep this morning and hit the road to St. Pete's. Howard and Teri have been down here for almost two weeks now, and we have not had a chance to meet up with them. It is only an hour and a half drive over from Winter Haven...

This is a beautiful area, with many luxury type Condo Buildings, just made for the Snow Bird!

 

Howard and Teri were the welcoming committee as we arrived, in lovely high 70's temperatures today.

There are a few different buildings, but all a real nice. Teri has a Brother that owns this particular Condo and was nice enough to lend it to them... oh ya, it comes with a real cool BMW.

This fancy BMW has one of those hard top convertible tops that folds up into the trunk... we toured around a bit today in this bomb!

We thought we would take a short trip up to Tampa and visit the Tampa Electric Plant, as they have a special Manatee Viewing Area, right at the Plant.

Above are the nice boardwalks that they built, so you could view the manatees. Why do they hang around here you may ask??? The reason is the Power Plant. It discharges warm water in the inland waterway and they simply love swimming in the warm water, so they hang around the power plant.

This pic Judy took at the exhibit centre, is a picture of a manatee. They are very big, can weigh up to 600 lbs. and swim around real slow. Their closest relative is an elephant. Very cool...

It is very hard to get a good picture of them in real life... however you can see 3 of them above...

 

There was a big sea wall we walked out on... also ran into friends of Teri and Howards, John and Betty who are down in Florida on vacation from Ontario.

The walk way was real neat, leading out through Mangrove Trees...

The coal fired Electric Plant is huge! It is also a very clean burning facility and does not pollute very much at all.

That is an actual manatee jaw bone that Howard is holding up to his head... They live to be about 35 years old.

They had a good exhibit area, with all kinds of info on them... including skeletons to give you an idea how they are built...

Judy and Teri were having a blast on this interactive Manatee Video Game that you had to pedal on to make the manatee move... it got a little rowdy for a while in there....

 

Things got real crazy when Howard got swept away in the Hurricane Simulator!

We returned back to the Condo and decided to take a nice late afternoon walk on the beach at Pass-a-Grille, a small community just south of St. Pete's Beach. It is a beautiful white sand beach...

Judy and Teri decided on the low road at this point, and yes, they did get wet! It was a great afternoon for a walk.

Finished off the day with dinner at Skitters Restaurant, on Gulf Blvd. in St. Pete's.

This is a nice Family Dining Restauirant, and it was busy! We enjoyed.

We are staying overnight at the Condo tonight, and are going up to Tampa tomorrow to take in the big Florida State Fair at the Fairgrounds. (Same spot the big RV show was at...)

Till tomorrow...

 

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