Monday

 

We took Toby to the causeway for a sunrise walk. Another thing from my vision of retirement was to enjoy sunrises. There’s something exciting about starting a new day at the very beginning.

It was so quiet you could hear the waves lapping on the shore. Normally, the traffic is too loud. It was about 75 degrees with a light breeze.

We were going to go back to the Garden Room to get more plants, but they were closed, so we hopped on our bikes and rode south on the Pinellas Trail without a destination. Before we knew it, we were in downtown Clearwater headed to the causeway that leads to Clearwater Beach.

John picked up a t-shirt at the Bait House Cafe.

The cafe would be a nice place to eat sometime. It’s a bit pricey, but the atmosphere looks charming perched on the water on the backside of the island.

The causeway bridge is always a challenge. It’s tall enough to not require a drawbridge. 

The bridge in the distance is the bridge from Clearwater Beach to Sand Key. We’ve learned from one of our Pinellas Trail/Dunedin Causeway buddies that a good ride is to go to Clearwater Beach, cross the Sand Key bridge and ride down the island to the Belleair Beach Causeway, then back to the Pinellas Trail, heading back north to Dunedin.

This is the view from the Clearwater Causeway bridge down into the island. This is what Honeymoon Island would look like if the city of Dunedin had not had the wisdom to buy the island from developers and give it to the state park system to manage.

The road takes you to Pier 60 and the famous beach. We saw the tractors raking the beach. I read recently about the huge volume of trash they collect daily from this beach to keep it looking like this.

After lunch, I rode to Weaver Park and the outdoor gym to exercise. On the way back I cut through Hammock Park. It was nice to have some alone time.

To show my appreciation to John for watching Toby solo, I practiced brain games for an hour. We played hide and seek, we practiced commands, and then John joined me to feed Toby his dinner by practicing his “come” command. John was at one end of the house and I was at the other. We kept moving and hiding to make Toby use his brain to find us. When he did, he got some kibble. Brain games + fetching + walks = a very tired dog.

Zonked and too tired to join me on the sofa!

Over an hour later and he’s hardly moved! The key insight from pet training this week: “Exercise their brains, not just their bodies, if you want a well-behaved dog. If you don’t exercise their brains, they will come up with their own games to stimulate their brains and you won’t like the games they come up with.”

Today’s bike routes to Clearwater Beach and then later Weaver Park.

Miles walked: 5.6

Miles biked: 25.68