Last Florida Pictures

Since we are leaving for South Dakota in a week, I figured it was about time that I finished up these Florida pictures. One of the last bits of excitement we had was going on a SeaLife boat trip from the Clearwater Marine Aquarium. They took us out into the inter (intra?) coastal waterway, in between Clearwater Beach and Clearwater city. I like this picture because it's my best ever "I'm taking the picture but I don't want it to look like I'm taking the picture" picture. Got it?

Eventually all the kids went over to Grandma and Grandpa's side of the boat. That meant Michelle and I were able to smooch.

One of the exciting things about the boat trip was seeing dolphins. I have a nice camera, but it definitely isn't certified for use in National Geographic wild animal shoots. It's darn tough to get a decent picture of the dolphins. Here are the few pictures where I actually got the dolphins in frame.

And the closeup of that picture. It's a dorsal fin!

The captian told us it was a mother and baby dolphin. I believed him at the time, but he probably figured he could have told us anything and we would have believed him.

Look, TWO dorsal fins!

For all I know, that's just a big grouper.

Looks tasty to me.

Tortoise? Horseshoe crab? Anaconda? We'll just pretend it's a dolphin.

I need one of those imaging software programs they have on CSI, then I could sharpen up the image, zoom in on his eyeballs and see the reflection of the killer.

On the trip we stopped at some weird island created by the US Corps of Engineers in the 1920's. Or at least that's what the captain told us. Anyway, the kids got to get out and play in the water - and that's what is important.

Kelson looks for shells.

During the boat ride they dropped a net and pulled up some of the fascinating sea life of the area. The aquarium people put the specimens in little containers that the kids got to bring around to all the people on the boat.

When Koleman brought along his container, you needed to look fast, because once he thought that you had seen enough, he was on to the next person. No messing around.

I assume that once we left the boat, they had a big barbeque and ate all the things that we collected. They told us that they release the animals back into the water, but I highly doubt it.