Siesta Key, Florida – Day 6

Activities: Bike & Hike to Palmer Point Park (dolphins!) and Straight Chilling on Crescent Beach
DATE: February 23rd, 2023

Siesta Key, Florida is a beautiful destination with plenty of natural beauty and outdoor activities to explore. Our recent visit to the area provided a perfect opportunity to relax and unwind, while enjoying our scenic surroundings.

The day began slowly, with a cup of coffee and a delicious breakfast of ham, eggs, and cheese on toast. Since the county had a water boil protocol, we boiled the water before making coffee with it. We love being active and staying busy while on vacation, but I do love a slow morning; taking our time waking up and just relaxing for a while with nowhere to rush off to.

But I also have an attention span of a goldfish so it didn’t take long before I got restless and started throwing out ideas to Jill about an adventure to go on. Earlier in the week, we attempted to visit Jim Neville’s Marine Preserve but we were unsuccessful due to the gated properties that outlined the preserve. By looking at the map, it appeared that we could see it if we could get to Palmer Point Park, which was a public beach between Siesta Key and Casey Key. So we packed our beach towels, some snacks, some sunscreen, and jumped on our bikes to head south.

The path to get there proved to be a bit of a challenge. The road leading to the park was private, so we parked our bikes at Turtle Beach and walked along the beach the rest of the way. At one point, we realized that we couldn’t take the beach any further south because there was a giant house with a concrete wall protecting it from the ocean waves in the way. I was picking up a vibe from Jill that she wasn’t all that excited about this adventure, so I was ready to admit defeat right before we saw someone walking along a road in the direction we needed to go. We thought, “What the hell…” and jumped over a large sand pile to take the road to a dead end that lead to a footpath straight to Palmer Point Park.

Although it was a long walk, the journey was worth it. We eventually arrived at the secluded park where we found a boat and some kayaks parked on the Marine Preserve side and a few families relaxing on a sandy beach with waves crashing on the ocean side.

After some sunbathing and relaxation on the beach, the heat from the long walk got to me and I couldn’t resist taking a dip in the brisk ocean water. While I was cooling off, Jill spotted something splashing in the distance and asked if I could see it. It turned out to be a group of playful dolphins and they were slowly getting closer to where we were sitting. There was clearly a smaller, younger dolphin in the bunch. We managed to capture some footage of the dolphins with my phone. I was no longer concerned that Jill thought my adventure was lame as she was pretty excited to have seen the dolphins.

We hung out for about an hour or so, snacking a bit and relaxing in the sun. We met a dog playing fetch in the ocean and his owner was nice enough to let us pet him. The dog was more concerned with chasing the ball, however. It reminded us of our old dog, Zoe, who would fetch a ball to exhaustion.

Our trek back seemed to go a lot quicker than our walk out. We ended up taking the road the whole way back, but noticed there was a no biking/no walking sign where we met up with the public road. Oops!

For lunch, we opted for a frozen pizza back at the condo that we purchased earlier in the week when we got groceries. We then took the short walk from our condo to Crescent Beach. My pasty skin couldn’t handle another layer of sunscreen, so I popped up a beach umbrella and hid from the sun under it while Jill and her olive skin color enjoyed the sun. I kind of felt like I was in a little fort on the beach under my umbrella and rather enjoyed my time in there. The only thing I would have changed if I could have would have been the red tide. The beach was pretty packed and every. single. person. was coughing and sneezing in the distance. It sounded like we were in an infirmary.

As the day turned to night, we watched in awe, yet again, as the sun set over the horizon, followed by the emergence of the moon, Jupiter, and Venus, shinning brightly in the evening sky. Our day ended with a delicious grilled ham and cheese sandwich on sourdough bread back at the condo, rounding out a perfect day in Siesta Key, Florida.