Took about 7 hours to drive here from Topsail...longer than we normally like to drive but it was worth it.
Cedar Key is a really laid back, fishing focused island about 2 hours north of Sarasota. We stayed at our first privately owned RV park here and although we were expecting very little privacy on the sites, there was ZERO privacy. RV’s right on top of each other in a parking lot.
Luckily, this parking lot was on the water and we had reserved a waterfront site and we ended up in great spot. We were pleasantly surprised to find out we even had our own dock...although anyone in the park could use them. There was a tiny little spot on our left that no one used while we were there so we ended up with more privacy than most. You can see pics of how jammed in all the monster RVs were.
So although there was no privacy, it was a very social atmosphere. Met a local guy the very first day (he was fishing on our dock when we got there) and it turns out he grew organic strawberries in towers on a tiny plot of land by the RV park. Never seen them grown this way before....see pic.
He also told us about a sea farm just a few doors down that farms and distributes clams around the country. They sold them retail as well so we decided to stop by one day after our bike around the key. The local told us they’d probably sell us a bag of 50 but no go. The guys working there pretty much dared us to take 100...”even his 8 yr old nephew could eat that many just freshly cooked on the BBQ”....so surely the 2 of us could.
Since we were both clam novices, we thought we’d give it a try for lunch....well, 2 hours later, 100 clams were grilled, and eaten....soooo good. All you do it put them on the BBQ and wait for about 10 minutes until they pop open. They just steam in their own juices. Then you just squeeze on a little lemon juice or dip them in garlic butter...mmm...mmmm...mmm. Even better with some nice cold white wine. We have proof in the pics! We were kinda waiting for some sort of illness to kick in after that but we both felt great. Decided against dinner that night though. Not sure of the calories per clam or the nutritional value but I’m sure they were rich!
The dock was a great place just to sit and watch...we saw dolphins (about 100 yards away the one day), lots of birds, even saw a hawk of some sort catch a fish almost too big to carry off, lizards, turtles and a swimming snake. Don’t think it was anything poisonous, looked like a plain old garter snake from home.
We also saw some other very LARGE snake on the sidewalk while we were biking...no clue what it was but watching out for them adds a whole new dimension to a ride.
On another bike ride we encountered a couple our own age, (a bit of a rarity for us) a couple times, then later at the office, while checking e-mail etc, encountered them a third time. That was enough, for him to figure destiny meant us to meet, so he invited us to watch the sunset from “their” dock (they were parked only 3 spots over from us). He was a native of Australia and she was American, but had been living in Aussie land for the past 19 years. They had been RVing it for the past 10 months and had basically circled the edges of America and were now headed off to cover a bit of the interior. It turned out that encountering another couple their age was a bit of a novelty as well. We hope to hook up with our new “mates” sometime in our travels
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