Tarpon Springs
Tarpon Springs is a small town northwest of Tampa on the Gulf of Mexico. It is full of Greek restaurants and souvenir shops and apparently still home to a flourishing sponge trade. We know this because we bought some real live dead sponges at one of the aforementioned souvenir shops. Below are a couple shots of sponge boats and the Tarpon Springs sign if you want to know more.
The boat in the photo on the left is named
"Capt. Dexter". If anyone knows Dexter Wilson's email address, please
forward this to him. (I'm sure even Stanford guys have email by now.)
Indian Rocks Beach!
It took us 19 days to get here from San Diego. As usual, the Emerald Shores Inn Gulf Beach Suites are in superb condition. Check out their website at www.emerald-shores.com. Our hosts, the proprietors of this fine resort, Deb & Jessie recently purchased 1974 Oldsmobile Delta 88 ragtop coupe and are pictured below. I've spent many an enjoyable afternoon sipping beers and watching Jessie perform various acts of repair and cleaning on this old vehicle.
To give you an idea of what this area is like, I’ve taken photos looking up and down the beach in front of the hotel. The photo on the right was taken looking out toward the beach from the hotel. This is a great place and we’ll be here until April 10th when we’ll start our trek back to San Diego.
Below are a couple photos of me; one standing on the beach directly in front of our hotel (you can read the name on the sea wall) and the other relaxing in a lounge chair.
My first cousin Chris lives nearby and came to visit us. On the left is a photo of us. On the right is a photo of Lorri and her 87th cousin twice removed (she's been doing genealogy research) who lives down the beach in St. Petersburg.
My sister and brother-in-law, Jeannie & Kevin McHugh, flew down from Cleveland to spend a few days on the beach with us. They were reluctant to leave Cleveland because it was supposed to warm up to 29 degrees the next day, but they made the sacrifice and we're all having a good time here. Below are some photos of us all having a good time.
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Here is one final shot looking south along the beach. Our hotel is the third structure from the left, the low-rise.
Today is the 29th. We're supposed to go to a Phillies spring training game tomorrow. It's raining today (that's why I'm doing this) but hopefully it will be nice tomorrow. Sunday, My daughter Debbie, son-in-law Mike and the grandkids, Malarie & Jacob show up for a few days of R&R. We can't wait to see them. Next week I'll be posting grandkid photos here, so I know all you will want to check back to see them!