North Star on the Great Loop Journey: Caladesi State Park

Preparing for the trip

Captain Jerry has been making the final preparations to North Star, our 32 foot Cape Island down east trawler. We are anxious to leave our landlubber lives behind and begin our long awaited journey around the Great Circle. Join us as we travel 10, 000 kilometers: through the historic Trent Severn Waterway; the pristine waters of Georgian Bay; the North Channel of lake Huron; and hop from beach to beach on lake Michigan. We will visit Chicago and begin our trek along the rivers: Illinois; upper Mississippi; Ohio; Cumberland: Tennessee; Tenn-Tom Waterway and the Black Warrior. We will have transited through 68 locks at this juncture. We have chosen the inner route from Mobile Alabama to Tarpon Springs Florida and the shorter Ocheechobee Waterway to reach the East coast of Florida. We will skip over to the Bahamas to wait out the winter before heading North on the Atlantic Inter Coastal Waterway.
The 10 years of researching and planning are finally at an end and we invite you to come along on our adventure.

Tuesday, November 22, 2011

Caladesi State Park

It is a pleasure to travel in protected waters on the Intracoastal waterway. We were delayed a few minutes by the sheriff at the Dunedin Causeway because they had a diver in the water. I wonder what gruesome task they had. It is nice not to have to hail the bridge to get it raised, North Star fits under all the causeways.
We spent the afternoon walking the beach at Caladesi State Park. It is reputed to be one of the top 10 beaches in North America. It was quite nice, hard packed white sand and lots of shells. I saw my first live armadillo, usually I see them dead at the side of the road. We met some friendly folks who invited us to join them at happy hour, we did join them but not before we went to photograph the sunset on the beach. We did not see the green flash that some claim to see as the sun sets.
This morning we walked along the 2 mile nature trail while we waited for the right tide to leave. it is a nice clean park with wonderful floating docks that are easy to tie up to and to get off the boat. A very worthwhile stop.