For us time at anchor is the very best time boating. It is quite, we can be lazy, and we tend to suspend chores and just enjoy being there. When anchored our dinghy becomes our "car". We crank up the "dink" to take out the trash, to go sightseeing around the anchorage, and to join our friends. In an urban anchorage such as we are in here we use it to go out to dinner, or to the Laundromat, or the grocery store. Clearwater beach has all that a cruiser can want only a short dinghy ride away. There are city maintained docks where we can park the dink and walk a few blocks to Publix for groceries, this forces me to be mindful of how much I am picking up because it needs to fit into our backpacks for the ride back.
In urban areas, but not on the rivers, we can also use public transportation to get around. Saturday we dinghied to the city dock and walked to the Jolly Trolley stop. We waited - which is the negative part of public transport- for the trolley that runs up the coast on the weekend and rode it to the little artsy town of Dunedin. Yes, we were in a marina there for a couple of nights - but we were tired when we arrived and busy the next day cleaning off the salt and doing a little laundry. Besides it was about 2 miles from the downtown section and we didn't want to put the bikes down for only one day so we took the Jolly Trolley while we were anchored in Clearwater. We arrived hungry and by the time lunch was finished we had missed the farmer's market, but the town was a fun visit. One business owner/dog lover /artist has painted the local dogs on the walls of his establishment.
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| The "Dogs of Dunedin" wall! |
The trolley system in amazing because you can catch it at Publix and go North or South on the beach side or over to Clearwater. Oh what the heck - splurge on the unlimited day pass and for $2.50 you can ride from one end to the other all day long. On weekends you can go over to Clearwater and then north as far as Tarpon Springs.
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