In Bradenton we stayed with Alice, a warm shower's host. Her home is in a nice middle class neighborhood with mature trees, pools in the backyard and the Gulf of Mexico 1/2 mile away. Alice had just returned from a month long trip in India. Yesterday. Why she agreed to take us in for the night is beyond me. After pleasantries and showers, John and I went to get a mediocre Jamaican dinner while Alice attended book group. In the morning we swapped stories over cereal and coffee. Alice and her husband have traveled extensively. She is one of those women who get more done on a slow day than the rest of us do when highly productive. She filled us in on the local news; developers building condos over red mangroves, ruining important wildlife habitat; area attractions: the Robinson and Perico Preserves, museums, and art, and lamented that she wished she did not have to leave town that day or she would talk us into staying longer to see the sights.
Alice had offered to drive us over the Sunshine Skyway Bridge, a long tall, definitely not for bicycles, bridge that would take us to St. Petersburg in a motorized 30 minutes vs a 5.5 hours of cycling. Unfortunately, our bike would not fit in her van, so she road her bike with us to the much shorter and bike friendly US 41 bridge leaded to Tampa. There we said goodbye and headed out.
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| Alice and downtown Bradenton, FL |
The night before, since we were not sure if Alice would be able to give us a ride across the Sunshine Skyway Bridge, we had not planned our destination. Once over the US 41bridge, our first order of business was to pick a destination.
The trip from Bradenton to Brandon, FL, was...well, boring. We spent most of it on US41, a 4 lane busy freeway. It had a bike lane, but listening to cars wiz by at 60mph tends to take its toll.
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| Red Mangroves are small trees with reddish trunks. They grow near shorelines in clumps. Whether it is only during infancy or for their whole lives, pretty much all the creatures in the Gulf depend on the mangroves. |
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| When manatees go rogue. |
For now we are staying in a Brandon Extended Stay America hotel doing laundry and waiting for horrible weather to pass. We know we are heading north from here but have not decided on a specific location. More later.
In Bradenton we stayed with Alice, a warm shower's host. Her home is in a nice middle class neighborhood with mature trees, pools in the backyard and the Gulf of Mexico 1/2 mile away. Alice had just returned from a month long trip in India. Yesterday. Why she agreed to take us in for the night is beyond me. After pleasantries and showers, John and I went to get a mediocre Jamaican dinner while Alice attended book group. In the morning we swapped stories over cereal and coffee. Alice and her husband have traveled extensively. She is one of those women who get more done on a slow day than the rest of us do when highly productive. She filled us in on the local news; developers building condos over red mangroves, ruining important wildlife habitat; area attractions: the Robinson and Perico Preserves, museums, and art, and lamented that she wished she did not have to leave town that day or she would talk us into staying longer to see the sights.
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