The road trip ended on Honeymoon Island, where we caught a ferry over to  Caladesi.  Until recently, Caladesi and Honeymoon had been 1 island (gracefully named "Hog Island"), but a hurricane had come along and rent the island in two.  This was sobering to learn of, since we could see the huge but shallow channel that now separated the two islands.  It was said that at extreme low tide, one could wade from Honeymoon to Caladesi, but we were tide ignorant and saw no such waders, so we paid the $7 per person and boated across.

We had all pictured what we thought a pristine Florida island should look like, and we were all surprised, mostly by how many other people had managed to find this island.  Certainly, if we had chosen to walk an hour or so, we could have had a stretch of beach to ourselves, but there were lots of folks about.  The water was a chilly 60 degrees, and was chock-a-block full of jellyfish and stingrays.  We opted not to swim.  The ladies walked to the shore and watched the stingrays cavort within feet of the land; the rays were apparently seeking out the shallows for warmth.  The day had clouded up, so we too were seeking out warmth after a bit: (It looks and sounds like all we do is lay around and nap.-- it really isn't so)

Wanna see what a pristine, sugar-sand Florida beach looks like?  Here you go. 

The drive back was easier than there.  On the way, we picked up a few hundred dollars worth of provisions.  Shopping weekly or so was a big change for us; back in Santa Barbara, we shopped very infrequently, and then usually only for milk, eggs, produce and bread, since we relied on delivered-to-the-door Mountain People food orders to keep our larder stocked.  Now we were eagerly seeking out health food stores and the occasional Piggly-Wiggly or Publix (East coast grocery chains).