Florida: Biking in Gulfport and Uber trip to St. Pete

Day 172
No boat travel

We shopped around for dockage in St. Petersburg for tonight and New Year's Eve and came up empty-handed. Full everywhere! Weighing our options, we decided that our best plan of action is to stay here in Gulfport, which is a short Uber ride from St. Petersburg. With that decision made, we got our bicycles out for a trip to the store to pick up some produce and hit the deli.

I had hoped we would be off the boat early for our food shopping to avoid the noon-time heat, but we ended up dealing with banking issues for a couple of hours before we could get going. Dinner last night wiped out the last of my fresh vegetables on board, so we headed to the produce store first.

Clark seems to always have the camera at the ready. As we passed the docks when leaving the marina, he grabbed this very symmetrical shot.

Sailboat Alley

 I slathered sunscreen all over any exposed skin on myself as well as Clark to protect ourselves from sunburn. We biked the mile or so down mostly quiet residential streets including a cobblestone street.

Cobblestone Street near the Gulfport Marina

The produce store was on a busy street. I found most of what I wanted and loaded Clark's backpack up with my fresh veggies. From there we wanted to pick up some deli meat, but when I asked in the produce store, they told me that the only place to get good deli meat is the Publix about 3 miles down the road. The folks in the store recommended that we rode on the sidewalk to avoid being road kill. We followed their suggestion.

I am not sure why the ride back from some unfamiliar place always seems faster than the ride to a new place. That happened today. It seemed like it took forever to get to Publix. At one point I looked at my Google Maps app to see how close we had gotten and was very disappointed to see we were only half-way to the store. It felt like we had been riding long enough to get there and we had the same distance to cover to get there.

Clark was concerned about taking deli meat back to the boat in the heat since the ride would take us about 25 minutes or so. I decided to buy frozen fruit that I could use in fruit smoothies to provide a type of ice pack to keep the meat cool. We took the same basic route back to the boat that we had taken to get to the stores, but it seemed like we were back in no time where no time equals less than 20 minutes.

We rode down Beach Boulevard to get back to the boat and passed an artistic park with many interesting sculptures.

Fountain in Local Park

Chess Queen Statue done in mosaic tile

Chess "Queen's Knight"

"Big Dumb Heart" metal man proposing

"In Dog We Trust" metal sculpture

Fuzzy tree in park

 After returning to the boat and stowing our goodies, I contacted Faith from Third Degree who is docked in St. Petersburg and asked if we could get together for dinner tonight. She said yes, so we used the Uber app to get a ride over to the city. We ate at a restaurant called Rowdie's Den. I had the Den Burger with BBQ sauce, caramelized onions, and cheddar cheese. So Tasty! Probably one of the best burgers ever.

We got to the restaurant at 6:30; we left after 9:00 long after we had finished our meal. When we left the restaurant, we did not have a specific destination in mind, but eventually we decided to head for an ice cream store. It was past 9:30 and the store closed at 10:00. We had to hurry if we wanted a treat. Google maps said the ice cream shop was .3 miles away. It was worth the walk. Besides the ice cream, they had the most amazing display of sweets. They looked almost too pretty to eat.

Gingerbread House at Ice Cream and Pastry Shop

 We strolled the local streets back to the marina where Third Degree is docked and passed some very pretty light displays.

Elaborately decorated restaurant building

 Look at the arms on the soldiers in the next two photos.

Saluting Soldiers 1st pose

Saluting Soldiers 2nd pose

Even some boats are decorated for the season. This is the most decorated boat I have ever seen.

Christmas Boat

With the correct browser, the video that Clark took of the "falling" lights in the park may be seen on the website, i.e. not via email.

After a fun night that zipped by way too fast, we called Uber to get a ride back to the boat. Another fun evening!! St. Petersburg was beautiful and serene. Walking along the water's edge was a contradiction with busy streets on one side of us and calm, quiet water on the other. Despite the city traffic, the scene was very tranquil and peaceful.

We bought "First Night" tickets for St. Petersburg for tomorrow night. Clark's cousin, Dawn, plans to meet us to enjoy the night's entertainment. Fireworks will be fired at 8:00 and then again at 12:00. Clark loves fireworks. I do not know what time we will get back from our New Year's Eve outing, but I do not expect to post a blog entry tomorrow night.