Relaxing Day in the Warm Sunshine

Mark and I were up at 5:00 am, thankfully our humble abode has a coffee maker and coffee. We each enjoyed a couple cups before heading to Maria's for breakfast. Mark found Maria's on the internet, the reviews were great and even better, the restaurant lived up to those reviews of a delicious quick hot big breakfast reasonable. We each got the morning's special of 2 eggs, sausage or bacon, hashbrowns, home fries, or grits, and toast. I decided on the eggs over medium, sausage patties, whole wheat toast and grits while Mark got his with home fries. All of this food for $3.45 each! After breakfast we drove 15 minutes to the beach.

The white sand, aqua blue ocean water and the brilliant blue sky sure made for a pretty picture. I plopped down to read while Mark walked the beach then read up under the shade trees. We left the beach around 2:00 pm drove back to our small apartment, changed and went to lunch at the Mango Bistro. We both ordered the special of half a grilled sandwich and a cup of Lobster bisque. The soup was really good. We decided the day was just too beautiful to go back inside so went to Lemon Bay Park (about 2 minutes from the apartment) and hiked. This park has miles of hiking trails along the bay.

Most of the trails were shaded by the thick mangrove trees but some of the trails were built up over the water.

 We didn't see a lot of wildlife. There were plenty of lizards but most of the migratory birds had already flown the coop. This is a huge well known birding area during the migration.

 We came to a big swampy area with this sign posted. I always tease my grand children that the overflow pond at home is an alligator swamp, well today we found the alligator swamp.

Both of us got just a little too much sun today. We were pretty hot and sweaty after the hike so decided to take a dip on the pool.

The picture above is looking out our patio door toward the pool. The water was pretty cool so we didn't actually swim but it was very pleasant sitting on the side cooling down our feet.
Emily sent a nice text today writing: I worked Oksana, she did great! I could collect and extend her trot and canter.

Oksana and Emily are in the Hunter Hack class the all youth judging at the IL Horse Fair and will be expected to show all three gaits collected, free, and extended. I ordered another memory card for the camera and this one is a 32GB! No WAY will I run out of space now. Of course all those pictures will have to be edited before posted so maybe I don't WANT Jessica to take thousands of pictures. What am I saying, of course we need thousands.