Today was a lot of fun.  We had booked a boat ride with Florida Girl Charters for an undisclosed but very reasonable charge for a river and Gulf / Bay photography tour.  Our captain Laura was very knowledgeable about the area, and the ride was fun.  See the nice pictures we took (Steve took most of the pictures for the group – it is part of his job in addition to generally being our most outgoing person.)

When Laura was not pointing to birds she told us about all the places we could go on land in our jeep to take more pictures.  Some – like the road to nowhere – we had already covered.  Some – like Hagens Cove in the other direction – we had not yet explored.  So after a fine lunch we head towards Hangens Cove Beach and found a great observation tower and some promising bike trails.

Steve begged off on bike riding, so Tom and Scott took off for some of the most waterlogged sand trails of the trip – at times we needed to use our highest power settings to keep the bikes moving forward – would have been impossible for us to pedal them.  We worked our way out to the main road (still unpaved) and then back into the entrance to the park.  At one point on the entrance road a family of otters crossed the entrance road, but we didn’t get to our phones fast enough to take a picture so you’ll have to trust us on this.

Our original plan was to leave Wednesday, but we decided to leave the next day.  Steve had realized that – free spirits that we are – we might do this, and mentioned it to the campground folks when paying originally.  They said “don’t worry about that – we’ll take care of you.”  However, the next morning as we left when Steve asked for one day’s stay back, the said “sorry – we don’t keep cash around.”  Suffice it to say their reputation as the worse campground we stayed at was firmly secured.