Hooray, I got a letter from the Water Company on Thursday and they agreed to reduce out bill by $83.60 Which is nearly all of the sewer charge. That sure helps a lot. I hope I never have another leak like that.
Yesterday, we went on an all day outing to Cayo Costa State Park. It is an island park and only accessible by boat. We went to Punta Gorda and got got underway at 9 AM in the morning and headed down the Peace River. Along the way we were give a history of the area and they we got a couple of Dolphin shows put on by the local dolphins!!! At on time we had 4 dolphins on one side and three on the other. Thee were even several young one swimming and jumping along with us. I did not take a camera so there are no pictures to show.
We arrived at Cayo Costa at 11 AM ..... yep, a 2 hour boat ride!! There are no concessions on the island so we brought our own lunch and drinks. They say the shelling is superior on the island. I brought my snorkel gear and when I went in the water I found the visibility only about 5 or 6 feet. Most of the good shell were in water at least that deep so they were hard to see. Also I did not bring any weights as I had trouble diving down and staying down to get any of them. I need to wear about 8 pounds of weight to make my snorkel dives done more easily. I still found some good shells in the shallow waster and on the beach.
One of the interesting ones was a Purple Spined Urchin. I always see them alive in the water but we found several dead ones on shore. When they die and dry, the spines are easily brushed off and there remains a very fragile shell that looks like a hollow ball with one opening. I also found a near dead Lightning Whelk. It looks like a small conch shell.
Since it had the "animal" in it I tried one of methods I found which is freezing it overnight, thawing and pulling the animal out. I did not get it all out so I then boiled it for a while and now I think I have it all out .... If not It will stink to high heaven.
I found a great site to identify the shells and how to clean and preserve them. You can look at the site at seashells.org.
We got picked up at 2:30 PM and after another 2 plus hours on the boat we got home. We did have a small dolphin show on the way back. They had a drawing just before we landed and Carol won us another boat trip. They have a number of different ones so we will have to chose which one we go on the next time. Darn, I'll have to my own way!!!!
It was definitely a fun day but we were tired when we got home.
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