North Beach: January 7th

This was really the only good day, weather-wise, of the week. Knowing this, we made sure that this day - afternoon, of course, school was in the morning - was spent at the beach. North Beach in Fort De Soto was ranked the #1 beach in the USA in 2005 and 2009 and for good reason, it's beautiful, the sand is super-fine and a gorgeous white; the views out over the water are incredible.

The kids and I drove over, the amount of parking available indicated that during peak season, this would be an insanely busy area, thankfully at this time of year, it was practically empty. There was a large sandbar area that we settled down in. Despite it being the nicest day of the week, I was still fully kitted out in sweats, while the kids were quite happy in shorts and T's!








There were a lot of different birds, managed to get a pic of seagull with a fish. There is a small area of the beach reserved for birds - not sure how they're supposed to know that it's their area! There weren't many birds in that area but plenty on the rest of the beach.




Dave cycled down to join us later in the afternoon and we stayed, playing on the beach and running around, playing tag at the playground, until sunset. We're so glad we opted to stay on the beach, the sunset was gorgeous. As we were leaving the parking area, we spotted a couple of raccoons, which we were excited to see, they were quite unbothered by us though, just looking for left-over food I suppose.