Monday, December 05, 2005

Last evening, after I had written the Sunday report, we took some sunset photos from our balcony before heading up to the entertainment at the 60th Street Pier in Clearwater Beach. They had a band playing, street entertainers, beach volleyball, jumping slings and a lot of vendors displaying their wears in the pier area. We didn’t spend a lot of time there, as we were both getting hungry for dinner.

We both slept in late this morning again and had breakfast in the unit. After breakfast, we took a leisurely walk along the beach. Karyle was hunting for shells- I have not idea what for. When I asked her what she would do with them she told me “bring them home and put them in drawer.” My drawers are all full, so I didn’t pick up any shells.

We decided to head down the island (key or whatever) towards St. Petersburgh Beach. We stopped at Mederia Beach (Station 25) and got photos of their engines. Both of their engines are totally enclosed with the pump on the captain’s side rear. Then we headed further down to Treasure Island and I got photos of their back up engine, a 1926 Brockway/ALF pumper and a medic rig. The main engine was out on errands. Our next stop was St. Petersburgh Beach Station 23 where the ladder truck was at the shops. I got photos of their engine and medic rigs. Then we headed over to the mainland and stopped at South Pasadena Station 20. They were all sitting down for lunch so I told them we’d be back after lunch and Karyle and I went and had lunch also. Engine 20 took two runs past the restaurant we were eating in, the second time as we were finishing.

When we finished eating, I drove back towards the beach looking for Engine 20 and found them at a motel (EMS run). Just a s I pulled into the motel, they took off. We headed back to their station where I got good photos of the engine and ladder truck. We headed to nearby St. Petersburgh Station 9. Truck 9 was parked out back and I got photos of it. One of the firefighters was running a reserve engine in the station and I asked if he could pull it out so I could get a photo. He pulled it out for me, but as I was taking the photo, Engine 9 got a run and headed out and I missed getting any info on it.

We drove past new St. Pete Station 6 as we drove towards the St. Petersburgh Pier near downtown St. Pete. We parked a ways down the pier and took a walk along the long bridge towards the six-story pier tower with restaurants, many shops, fishing areas, an old ship docked at the end of the pier and a rooftop observation deck.

Karyle went shopping in the stores and we both took a number of photos from the top deck of the pier. It is really a nice view from the top of the pier as you can see downtown, the shoreline filled with high-rise towers and the downtown airport. We saw a few huge ocean-going vessels to the south of St. Pete. Some smart ass with a big huge honker of a boat kept buzzing the pier. I’m sure some of the people fishing would have liked to kill the guy creating the big wake with his boat.

We headed back through downtown St. Pete- sorry, there isn’t much to it folks. We were going to see the sunken gardens, but Karyle changed her mind and we headed back to the unit. We had a little shopping to do and made a stop on the way back. We got back to the unit around 4:00 and I started doing my laundry. I purposely did not bring enough clothes for the entire trip, knowing that I could do laundry at the timeshare.

We headed down to the beach for the sunset around 5:30PM. Tonight’s sunset was not very picturesque as there was cloud cover coming in. I did, however take some interesting photos from the deck of our unit. They’re expecting some rain here overnight with a 30% possibility here tomorrow morning.

I didn’t hear any fires today- I did hear lots and lots of EMS runs however. EMS must constitute 90% of the runs in this area. They are really busy early in the morning. It seems to be non-stop from around 6:30AM until 8:00 with EMS runs.

That’s all for today. It was overcast off and on here today with a high near 77.

Your Roving Reporter