Our last day of vacation dawned bright and warm with a forecast to get hot. Hot as in 77 degrees. Yes, that’s right. Hot. (I’m going to cry when we go home. I pretty much despise winter in Morgantown where it’s always grey.) We’d figured we’d head over to the land of more delightful sandy goodness, so Chad picked Dunedin. Our original idea was to rent bikes – you know take advantage of the super long and very nice bike trail which would get me my geocaching fix and work off some of the delicious food I was planning on having for lunch – and then catch the boat parade in the evening. Well as luck (or Karma) would have it, the bicycle place was out of rental bikes and Chad had noticed there was a brewery nearby.
As you can see, we were swift to change plans when it became apparent that:
1. Lunch time was approaching
2. Dunedin Brewery offered food
3. And a patio on which to enjoy food & beverage
By the way, fried cheese curd rocks.
Even Ping joined in on the fun (although we had to cut him off a little early).
Sooooo, having satiated our thirst and hunger, we grabbed the geocache that was (inevitably) across the street and then headed out to explore the town.
I was having a hard time not just falling over laughing at all the Christmas decorations on the lovely green grass, tied to palm trees and proclaiming things like “Winter Wonder Land” (and I’ll refrain from mocking the folks that I spotted wearing puffy coats when it was full on 60 degrees the day we arrived in Florida). It was very much a bizarro world to me. That being said, yes please may I stay here a while longer and enjoy that blazing orange globe in the sky?
Anyway, it was a lovely day and we lost the car. But not really. Chad just remembered TRYING to park it in one lot. But what he forgot was that it was full so we had to park elsewhere. Surprisingly this did not for an instance freak me out. Good God, I must be learning how to relax after all (Dad would be proud).
We encountered, although not up close and personal, a pelican that was rumored to have a very bad attitude.
And lots of other birds which were, we assumed, pretty much as common to see to the Dunedians as deer are to us.
And then it was time for the boat parade. Only we managed to stake out a claim on the pier at the end of the parade. Also I learned that boat parades (or at least this one) do not have boats grouped as closely as say…parade floats. Still, we saw some very cool stuff.
So, that’s it for my stream of consciousness narrative. We had a great time.
chris on December 8th 2011 in Travel