St. Petersburg, Florida - Sunken Gardens

Monday 12/18/2017
No Boat Travel
8 miles by bike

The interior of the boat had not seen a vacuum cleaner in far too long, so I spent this morning removing a layer of grime from the floors and carpets. While I did that, Clark made some phone calls looking for a bolt to use as part of his alternator-regulator project. After lunch, we set off by bike to visit the Sunken Gardens. A direct route there and back would be about 3 miles each way, but I requested a route that minimized traffic. The trip along the water and through residential areas definitely met the "minimal traffic" requirement but added a couple of miles to the journey.

Since the Ace Hardware and the Winn Dixie grocery stores are relatively close to Sunken Gardens, and we needed something at each of these two stores, we biked the extra few blocks to include these two stops on our trip. Before coming to the Sunken Gardens, Clark diverted us to check out Crescent Lake and Park along the way.

Crescent Lake - St. Pete, Florida

Water tower at lake

Is this a "fish tank"?

Crescent Lake

Before we left the boat Clark checked for a coupon for the Sunken Gardens and found one. When we got there, we found out we qualified for their senior's discount. Better yet, we could claim both the age benefit and the BoGo coupon, so instead of paying $20, we paid $8. Not a bad deal!

It felt nothing like December with Christmas approaching while walking through the jungle-like scenery of the Sunken Gardens.

Entrance to Sunken Gardens

Looking up to enjoy the jungle atmosphere

Pathway through the gardens

Flowers in bloom

Buddha Belly Bamboo

Besides plant life, the grounds had a variety of exotic birds.

Laughing Kookaburras Birds

A McCaw named "Beaker" who likes to dance
if someone sings or hums

A number of pink flamingos

They also had a Koi Pond and several water displays.

Koi (Ornamental Carp) Pond

Mini Waterfall 

Sunken Garden Bridge

The display also included a butterfly garden,

Butterfly Garden

a "Growing Stone", and

Fossilized Limestone Growing Stone

a bunch of little critters running around.

at the Cactus Garden

After walking the 4-acre garden display, we opted to avoid traffic and take the scenic route back to the boat. Clark led the way as always. He tried to find a less-traveled cross street back towards the water, and he managed to find one, so rustic in fact, it was cobblestones all the way to the water! Since some of the sidewalks traveled today had practically made my teeth rattle. I figured I could handle the shaking with no problem.

When we got to the end, we found an unusual sun dial to check out. At first Clark thought a piece was missing to make it work, but after looking at it for a while, he figured out he was the missing piece, or rather his shadow was the missing element to making the sun dial work.

Numbered blocks and a cement slab?

To calculate the proper time, the observer needs to stand on the space marked by the current month. When Clark stood on December, his shadow pointed to halfway between the 4 and 5 blocks.

Yes! 4:30! Correct!

As we stood there checking out the sundial, a drone flew by us. I looked for the owner but saw no one. A little later, watching the water, we saw a dog on a stand-up paddle board (SUP). He and his owner were clearly having a grand time out there. There always seems to be interesting action at the water's edge.

Dog on SUP

Our timing for the day was great as we arrived back at the boat just in time to get a call from our younger son, Chris. We had a nice, long chat which topped off our lovely afternoon.

One of the television stations here, ION Life, plays Christmas movies every night, so tonight after dinner we enjoyed a bit of holiday spirit via the TV.