hiking in florida is actually just walking...but hey, still nature.

i arrived home from the baby shower last sunday just before noon, so i came home and took a short nap, and then shea agreed to go out to anna maria island to do some more geocache adventuring...

it was actually pretty cool, there are several out there. the first one we went to  had a beautiful little bay-side view with a park and benches, tennis courts, bball courts, etc. i 'm fairly certain i never would have ventured in to see it, had we not been pointed in that direction. and the cache itself was super creative!

from there we walked to the next one, which was merely .5 mile, i think. not too hard of a find, but no real beauty to speak of, just a little water-logged treasure box.

then we drove to the north part of the island, if you ever visit me here, this is one of the areas we would certainly visit! parked on pine, then walked to the museun...which was closed. boo. so was the dounut shop...double whammy...we then walked up the way and found our first geo-tour 'taking-flight' cache. it was actually pretty cool, because there was a story tucked inside. 2 letters, one was like a date letter, the other an engagement letter, they also left pictures from their wedding, came back and left a picture of the positive on the preggers test-having a baby! we kinda felt like we knew them...very neat! and being a 'taking flight' cache, there was information about the native birds and how to protect them. good cache.

we then had one last one in the area to check out near the beach. it was still too cool to really enjoy the beach, but beautiful views are hard to ignore. so was the burger joint...we smelled them as we walked by, and i hadn't gone shopping for food, so... just gonna' have to put off that complete healthy eating for a minute.

fast forward--nothing major happened this week, since it's the weekend before my birthday, and i have to travel on my birthday for work, shea made sure we did something for the bday weekend- kudos to having friends!! friday night we grabbed dinner at zoe's and then decided to try to find this rolled-ice cream place in the mall...it was somewhat of a scavenger hunt, but we found it! the flavor was fabulous, but it seemed that for the price you didn't receive as much as perhaps a coldstone or a kilwins...

so glad we have one fairly close-by!

great looking presentation, just hard to get started and get the spoon through the roll to eat it...

hmm.. on the board it said: LIKE YOU A LATTE....please note the more appropriate name for my ice cream choice: LIKE THE WAY YOUR (you're) LATE (proof reading is never a bad thing). and please note the name of the shop-it reminds me of the isosceles triangle bit from geometry class.

also, i did finally get my first glimpse of our hurricane video that shea edited and put together, and it's a lot of fun! we watched it yesterday before exploring little manatee river state park, one of the state parks that's nearby. we took the 6 mile 'hike' and of course, i pulled up the app and there were geocaches here as well...so what should have taken far less time took a little longer..oops. at least the weather was fabulous, and the caches were different and interesting! not much wild-life, we saw an armadillo toward the beginning of the hike, then again at the very end back at the trail-head. apparently there was also a dead wild boar near a bridge that we missed (a mom and daughter on the trail told us about it); we figured it must have been recently killed, as there were no vultures, flies, no smell, etc. there were a couple of times the app on the phone didn't go off, so we backtracked to find the sign-in-logs...i think we may have confused some of the other trail-walkers, so we of course did our best to explain.

but first...donuts!! weren't sure about the sausage and gravy donuts, but wow!

found an orange tree in the rough....

found the spikes on the tree...

just shea playing on the furniture

this tree fell during irma, and they had to cut branches to make the trail passable

cache 1 off the beaten trail

cache 2 looked like it was in a mini toolbox

cache 3 was hidden in a hole in the rock...

cache 4 was just a dangler

"amazing the change of vegetation that even a few feet in elevation will produce" said a blogger...umm..could it the land closer to the river have different vegetation than the land further away?

 my knees were feeling the 6 miles-mostly because it wasn't regular flat sidewalk. it was a good hike, i probably out to do this more often than i do, but most of the good state parks in florida seem to be a bit further north, requiring a full day at least to not feel exhausted by the drive to and from. planning. these will require planning.

i felt it this morning, so i lounged for a bit, but the weather got way too nice out to just sit around inside...although i did sit around in my pajamas a little longer than i should have before finally talking shea into getting outdoors too! in tomorrow's edition!

julie