Hello from Ft Pierce!!!

12 Dec 2014--We have been here 12 days now, mostly warm and sunny, but we have had a few rainy days if that makes any of you up north any happier...haha.  We are staying at a co-op called Ocean Resorts, a place where people privately own their 'spots', directly across the street from the ocean. Most of the spots here have houses on them, regular and pre-fab, while some have RVs of some sort. It looks like about half the people live here year round, while the other half are like us...just here for the winter.




This is for Hallie...what kind of trees are these?  They look like palm trees, but as far as I know these nuts don't grow on palms...pretty though.



This area is called the "Treasure Coast", but more appropriately should be called the "retired" coast, so, of course, we have shuffleboard to keep us active!  haha



Across the street is our co-ops private beach entrance...not that there is anything there to stop anyone else from using it.  These pics were taken on our first day here...in later pics you can see that there is not anywhere near the amount of seaweed on the beach, and the sand is flatter.  There have been a lot of rough seas in this area so I think they are throwing a lot of stuff around.  I love the mist coming off the breaking waves.


 

Walking the beach we came upon a bunch of these Man-o-Wars.  We hadn't ever seen any before so when I first saw one I actually thought it was someone's water balloon.  I guess the longer they lay in the sun the more colorful they get, and because of the angle of this picture you can't see how long their tentacles can get, but check out the pictures we downloaded to see what they can do to you if you get caught up in a big one.  We read that they can't swim so use their tentacles to gather food, etc., so when they latch onto something they don't want to let go...OUCH!



Downtown Ft Pierce is your somewhat typical coastal town, with lots of activities to draw you there. The main draw for us was to try to see a manatee...Ft Pierce is the #1 spot along the Treasure Coast to view them, and our very first day down there we lucked out and saw one.

 
 

On the left here, we only got the top of the manatee's head, but hope to get better pics another time. On the right is a dolphin...or at least we think it was...could be a shark, I guess!!!  haha

 

You scoff at my shark comment?  Not so fast!  And, YIKES! on the bobcats!  Haven't seen a sign like that before.  We road our bikes down to the end of the island where there is the Ft Pierce Inlet State Park, which of course leads to more beach.  I included the tugboat as it is called the 'Miss Emily', and thought Emily would like that.

 

At the weekly Farmer's Market!




And the Christmas Parade and tree lighting.




This was adorable...the little girl in the first pic, on the right of the pic, was blowing kisses.  And the little boy was trailing the horses as the pooper scooper.



Almost like a postcard, huh?!  haha



We have gone across the street a couple evenings because we can hear the surf crashing from our RV...notice in these pics that there isn't as much seaweed on the sand and that the sand is flat now.

 

Pretty, huh?!

  

So we will be here for 4 months...just praying for extended decent weather...so keep your fingers crossed for us!

Merry Christmas everyone!!!