Honeymoon Island

When I found out that Nick had the weekend off, I wanted to do something special so I searched online for places in Florida. Honeymoon Island (top left image) looked pretty but nearby was Caladesi Island, which was voted the 2nd best beach in the nation (top right image). When I read that we could kayak from Honeymoon Island to Caladesi Island, I was sold.

Sunday morning we drove down to Dunnedin, FL to Honeymoon Island. The reason why these beaches are so pretty is because they are both State parks. We didn't waste any time and as soon as we got there we rented the kayaks and headed out to sea.

I was a little worried because it looked really far away. Everyone assured us it would take only 20 minutes to get there although it could take us longer because of all the private boats in the water. Having had a bad experience kayaking once before, I was hoping they were right.

Once we were about half way, we saw a weird break in the water- waves were crashing in the middle of the ocean. I was scared because we were headed directly towards it and I was afraid to tip over. You can't see it very well in the picture but you can see the mini waves crashing.

It turned out to be an off the coast sand bar. It was so shallow I was afraid we'd get stuck in the sand. We could barely paddle without hitting the sand floor.

Nick and I were such a good team, we made it through and all in about 25 minutes.

Caladesi Island is like a Corona commercial-crystal clear water and nothing else! Nick and I "parked" our kayak and went for a walk. We found some great shells for Mary (Nick's mom). It so hard to just pick a few shells because there are so many different ones and unlike the "regular" beach, the shells here are intact.

I just wanted to relax and enjoy it before our kayak time was up. The beach is so shallow that you have to float to be submerged.

I was "walking" with my hands to get to deeper water when I felt something weird in the sand. I picked it up and it was a live sand dollar. We'd never seen one live. Once I got over the "yuck" feeling, I stared at it and it was very pretty.

We also saw either a small squid or a "needle fish" (I think that's what Nick called it). It was clear and the back of it looked like a squid. He was as clear as the water so it was really hard to tell exactly what it looked like. Can you find it in the picture?

When we got back to our car, we saw a turtle eating grass. There was another one nearby that was "walking" pretty fast for a turtle.

Nick and I had so much fun and we will be going back pretty soon!