Linda asked me if we had ever been to Boca Grande and I said no, but I had heard of it. Then, even though we had planned to only spend one night, we decided to stay and go sightseeing with Joe and Linda.  It was a bit of a drive and then we came to a toll booth on a regular street.  I was having trouble making sense of that. We followed a causeway and then crossed a bridge.  The road did not have much along it but a bike path.

I was having some serious deja vu.  It seemed so familiar.  I was pretty sure I had been there before, but could not remember when, how, or why. I told them that I would know for sure when I saw the lighthouse, because I remembered that, if this was the place I was thinking of.

We drove through a cute little town and then on to Gasparilla State Park. Gasparilla sounded very familiar. It was driving me crazy. As soon as I saw the lighthouse, I was sure that I had been there before.  It must have been when we passed by here on the boat in January of 2007.  Or maybe there were two similar lighthouses and we were at another one. This is the Boca Grande light.

We took a walk on the beach and then toured the small museum in the lighthouse. Andy and Joe were watching the Gulf of Mexico

while I was taking pictures of the water at the inlet. There was a clear line where the inlet and gulf waters met. The water was a little rough there.

These steps show how much beach erosion they have had.

I asked my scale model Andy stand in front of the cliff of sand for some scale.

He found a shell covered in little barnacles.

This is one view from the lighthouse front porch.

I got a few beach flower pictures.

A sign called these Beach Sunflowers.

The waitress took this picture of us after she took our order.

I took this picture out the front window from the backseat of Linda’s car. It is the Gasparilla Island Rear Range Light. I’m glad the windshield was clean and not spattered with bugs like ours.

As soon as we got back home, I checked my photo files and, sure enough, we had stopped at Gasparilla Island on our way south by boat in January 2007. I remembered the name of the island and not the town.

We spent a good part of the afternoon in the swimming pool.  The water and air temperatures were perfect and Joe and Linda have some excellent pool lounging floats.