March 21 - 23, 2014. Honeymoon Island, More Baseball and Pink Martini.

Friday's bike ride was intentionally long as we hadn't had a lot of exercise of late. We left Wall Springs Park and pedaled eight miles on the Pinellas Trail to Honeymoon Island State Park, billed as "A barrier island paradise". The Pinellas Trail which extends from Tarpon Springs to St. Pete's Beach is a spectacular biking trail, used by young and old, bikers, walkers, joggers, commuters, school kids. 

After we paid our park entry fee we stopped to look at the map and in front of us was a sign that made me say something a little stronger than Yikes! 

          

 We rode on, stopping at the Nature Center to take a look at the displays and get some information about the trails suitable for biking. We chose the Osprey Trail where we saw many osprey nests and fortunately, no rattlesnakes. We did meet a guy from NJ who had done the trail before and so we ended up riding along with him, finishing up the trail and winding our way through the beach parking lots and finally to the exit.  Another six mile ride took us to the ice cream parlor in Dunedin where we enjoyed much deserved doubles. The return trip was into the wind and so I am sure the ice cream calories were burned off before we arrived back at our site.

Saturday's ball game was the best we had seen so far with good pitching, strong defense and a solid victory over the Detroit Tigers. We met up with Mick (our NJ biking buddy) and instead of the planned gourmet vegetarian meal at Kelly's we headed for the waterfront and the Annual Spring Dunedin Seafood Festival. It was a relief to sit on the grass under a shady tree after the intense heat of the sun at the ball game. I am not sure what kind of fish I ate but I do know that it was delicious. 

Sunday's adventure took us to downtown Tampa. We had tickets for the Pink Martini concert at 8 but decided to go into the city early to get good parking and explore the area. Parking was a breeze and the downtown cultural district along the Hillsborough River Walk was designed for exploring at a leisurely pace. We watched water craft of various sizes cruise along the river, watched and listened to a group of young musicians performing at the amphitheater, and enjoyed people watching. 

          

Pink Martini is a group of about 12 musicians from Oregon who perform an amazing repertoire in many languages. The lead singer, China Forbes along with the rest of the group put on an incredible show to a sold out audience. If you have never heard if them, you should look for them on YouTube. You won't be disappointed.