Siesta Key, Florida – Day 5

Activities: Kayaking Mangroves at Ted Sperling Park and Bar Hoping at Siesta Village
Date: February 22nd, 2023

When we woke up, we weren’t sure how easy it would be to get an Uber so we checked the availability and made a plan to get to Lido Key in plenty of time for our kayaking reservation. The way things were looking, we would have a little under an hour to get some coffee and something for breakfast. Luckily, The Blue Dolphin Cafe wasn’t super busy and the service was quick (and very pleasant I might add). I went with The Everything Omelet and Jill had a Sausage Breakfast Sandwich with her coffee. The service simply couldn’t have been any better. 

After paying our check and tipping appropriately, we made the short walk to the kayak launch parking lot and found the trailer for the outfit that we rented from. The guys that we rented our gear from were great to work with; super easy going and funny. Sea Biscuit, the guy who provided us with maps and got our ‘yaks ready, even told us a few jokes while we waited for the clock to hit 9 AM.

Why do you never see seagulls over the bay where we are kayaking?

…because if there were, they would be called bay gulls (bagels).

Why do seagulls hate splitting a tab with their pelican friends?

…they always have a big bill.

Sea Biscuit informed us that the tide was coming in, so if we tried to traverse the mangrove tunnels right away, we would likely get hung-up and it would be in our best interest to wait a bit to go that way. That was fine by us because cruising around the bay for a bit was an adventure in itself. Every once in a while we would see a bullet fish (a type of tuna) jump out of the water, there were crazy big mansions around the bay with yachts and jet ski’s, there were dolphin and manatee to look out for, and we saw a ship wreck with nothing left but the rusting metal to look at.

Once the tide had risen enough, we paddled south (into the wind) and found our first mangrove tunnel to paddle through. The paths were marked with big numbers on buoys and with the laminated map they provided us with, charting our path was only mildly difficult. It was nice to get out of the wind and I welcomed the shade and the break on my now sun burned skin. The water was super clear so you could see right down to the bottom of the paths that we paddled down. We could see all kinds of little creatures like fish, crabs, and starfish and we also saw different crabs and birds in the trees. At one point we stopped on a little beach and Sea Biscuit was there with a small group he was guiding. He showed us the crabs that lived in the sand there and told us all about them.

We thoroughly enjoyed our two hour float around Ted Sperling Park. We took every trail we could on the map and when it was time to return the kayaks, we reluctantly and slowly made our way back to the launching point, letting the wind do most of the work. This little excursion was probably the highlight of our whole Floridian trip.

Once we turned all of our kayaking gear in and got our land legs back under us, we walked towards Lido Beach and took that back to St Armands Circle, a large business area with restaurants and shops. We did a bit more shopping, but ended up buying nothing. We did buy ourselves some lunch and a couple of adult beverages from the Madison Ave Cafe and Deli, however. Jill had a Mondello sandwich (cold) and a grapefruit-raspberry seltzer and I had a Corona with lemon and a chicken wrap. I initially didn’t want an adult beverage, but once that first sip hit my lips, the rest went down reeeeal easy.

After lunch, Jill tried to redeem her free birthday drink from Starbucks before we left the circle, but since her birthday was the day before, we had to pay for the cold brew, but it was nice to have something to sip on it as we Ubered back to our condo. I almost fell asleep on the ride home, so I went in, showered, meditated, and then took a nap while Jill went to the pool to worship the sun for a little bit (figuratively, not literally). Once we had relaxed enough, Jill showered and we grabbed our bikes and headed north to Siesta Key Village.

Along the way we stopped for a refreshment at Captain Curt’s. They had live music damn near every time we rode by that week but there wasn’t any at this time. We had one drink and kept our bike wheels pointed north. Our first stop once arriving to Siesta Keys Village was Gilligan’s Island. We grabbed a drink and walked around the restaurant. The place was immensely big but we managed to find a gift shop and in it a tiki mask that would fit well on my In-Law’s Pool Deck. We decided to purchase it as a thank you to them for watching our kids while we had this kids-free getaway. It was the least we could do, right?

When we left Gilligan’s we could hear some live music playing over at the Daiquiri Deck so we bellied up to the bar and enjoyed a cocktail and some tunes. I’m not sure if it’s common, but every bar in the area had live music. We were in heaven. After that drink, we ducked into the Shirt Shack and finally found our son, Mattix, a t-shirt which completed our souvenir shopping for the trip. Yay!

The Siesta Key Oyster Bar was packed full, but we managed to find a spot at the bar for a drink. I’m glad we did, because we met a really nice couple that thought I looked like Luke Bryan. They teased me that I should really get back to Nashville and it later came out that sometimes he would get asked if he was the Mayor of Whoville. His wife showed me a picture of the two side-by-side and I must say there was quite a resemblance. We made a plan for her to dress as Martha May Whovier next Halloween so that the two could capitalize on his doppelganger’s appearance.

After saying goodbye to our new friends, we decided to eat dinner at The Lobster Pot. All of these bars/restaurants were a stone’s throw away from each other in the Siesta Key Village which was mighty convenient. We had mussels for an appetizer and Lobster Bisque and the Cod Dinner as our entrees. As we sat and enjoyed our food, we noticed that the large photo on the wall looked very familiar. It was of a lighthouse on some rocks in New England and when we looked back at our pictures from Maine on our phone, we found almost the exact photo that we had taken earlier in the year while in Maine.

After an amazing dinner, we rode our bikes home and watched a little college basketball before turning out the lights.