Crescent Beach on Siesta Key

This is the time of year that the locals go to the beach. The bridge to the key isn't all backed up, you can actually find a parking spot, and the weather is perfect. Maranda need some things for her Marine Biology project, so we thought we'd go out to the key. We still like to go early before it gets too hot and to avoid a lot of traffic, even though is is before "season" there are still a lot of visitors to the key. Crescent Beach is just over the bridge and is the closest beach to us. Takes about 5 minutes if we time the lights right.

This is on the path leading to the beach. Crescent Beach is a good place to watch sunset because the sun sets over the water. At Siesta Beach which is about a mile or so north and it is around the "crescent" so the sun sets over the tip of land. Siesta Beach is more popular to tourists and it has a large parking lot the is usually full unless you get there very early. It was also voted number 2 this year for being the best beach in the country. It is still off to the right in this photo.

Back to Crescent Beach, this is the south end, where a lot of the beach runs that start at Siesta Beach will go to the "wall" or "point o' rocks" and back about 5 k. We can snorkel out in this area.

You can barely see Siesta in the photo below, the area where there is no buildings. Usually this early in the morning you have the joggers, walkers, shellers and a few fishers.

There weren't many shells this morning. I will post about all the sea urchins I found last Feb. But today this is pretty much what we saw.

It's kind of interesting because you never know what the beach is going to look like. Somethimes it's full of seaweed, or it has sea urchins dumped on it, or you find a lot of sand dollars or alot of one sort of shell or another.

It's funny how early people around here are getting ready for Christmas! ha ha

Yes, I was here. Maranda's picture she was squinting too much in the sun. She asked me to delete it.

We only found a couple of shells for her project, so we headed to the street where they have the little shops, restaurants and places that will rent you kayaks, boats, segways, bicycles, these paddle carts etc... anything a visitor could ask for. You know tourist wonderland! Yikes!

This is where we went to dinner last night. We figured we better go now while we can get in, before the tourists start coming down. Then there is a line to get into the restaurants on the key.So we check out the Green Turtle.

If you can't find shells on the beach, you can always buy them here! Does this say "tourist" or what?

I do love going in here though. It reminds me when we were kids going to Florida to visit granda. Who could resist an alligator head? Shark jaw? Shell candle? They did have swimsuits on sale quite reasonable.

Now this really takes me back. My older sister had this Orange Blossom Perfume when we were kids that she got on a visit to grandma's. I think back then it came in a glass bottle, but it had the little cork on the top. Funny they still sell this.

Hope you enjoyed our morning as we did, and I'll show you her project when she is finished with it.