Clearwater Beach --Still Pristine!

We spent our last Florida Day at Downtown Disney, followed by a ride to Clearwater Beach on the Gulf Coast. We got there in bright sun at 3 pm and the first thing that happened: we were swarmed by black flying bugs on the sidewalk as my daughter was smearing sunscreen on the boys. Maybe the bugs liked the sunscreen, because we didn't have any problem thereafter. But at this point, the boys felt like victims in the movie The Birds --and were getting hysterical about these black flying insects who were relentlessly seizing on us --no stings that we noticed. The exasperated mother stuck the boys in the van all slathered with sunscreen.

Eventually, we all got to the water's edge on what my husband says the Travel Channel calls the whitest sand beach in the world. They had sales booths on the nearby boardwalk dock, and acrobatic break dancers, a big inflated water? slide, cabanas for rent and a cloud right over us much of the time --which I didn't mind for it was so BRIGHT with sun and sand and water. Even I got into the ocean where the waves were just big enough to be fun but not so powerful as to knock me down as I was trying to come out of the water.

There were some scenes to be sighted, a couple of beautiful girls like magazine models in bikinis, self-consciously strutting their stuff --and a couple of gals in their 70's at least --who were BIG, obese women in TEENSY bikinis --preening and strutting --well tanned --very leathery, wrinkly, saggy and frankly, REALLY unattractive. And we wondered WHY such tiny suits --why such un-self-conscious display? I think they may have been from a nudist camp, so free were they. Not that I looked better for being a few years younger than they --but I cover up what's far from ideal on me! And recommend it. But to each his own, I guess.

"God is not willing that any should perish, but that all should come to repentance and have eternal life."--the Bible