Caladesi Island, possibly as hidden as I'll find in Florida

Caladesi Island State Park, Sunday



I have taken the opportunity to sort out my suitcases. A week into the trip and you can imagine that very few things are where they should be. Inside both, I discover little cards from the Transportation Security Administration. After scanning at Pensacola Airport, they had hand searched both items of my checked in luggage. Not surprising really, I carry more electronic gadgetry with me than Comet has! I had been advised to leave them unlocked. Just as well, because I am told they would simply break them otherwise!
I have an early start, before Sunday breakfast is normally ready for guests at the Pasa Tiempo. But lovely Lotta, the Swedish 'innkeeper' at Pasa Tiempo has prepared a really lovely meal tray for me.
I've been reading the manuals for my Hertz 'Never Lost' and my very upmarket Mercury Sable Car. All my destinations are now carried on a 'Tourism Malaysia' USB pen drive. Having copied them from my laptop. The pen drive just slots into the side of the GPS and, hey presto, it tells me where to go.
It's almost an hour's drive to the Caladesi Island State Park along some of the ghastliest roads I've ever seen. Imagine a twenty mile long tacky seafront, huge advertising hoardings at every angle and level, with a three lane motorway thundering past. One advert proclaims. Doug Stein MD. No scalpel. No needle. 16000 circumcisions completed. True!
The contrast between the vulgarity of the road and the tranquility of the Caladesi and Honeymoon State Parks could not be more acute.
The islands were once connected. Honeymoon is now driveable via a causeway and after paying the $5 entry charge, those people wanting to get to Caladesi, pay another $10 for a 15 minute boat trip. (A sand bar has actually built up in recent years between Clearwater and Caladesi, so you could actually walk to the island, but Americans much prefer a 20 mile road trip!)
My host for the day is Park Ranger Carl Calhoun, who came for a couple of years and stayed for 27. As such, he probably knows more about the State Park than anyone else. He's northern Irish by descent and quite a character. Outside his office, we meet one of the Park volunteers, a guy with a plaited beard, the like of which I have never seen. He's parked his boat at the dock for free and is working a few hours each week to pay off his rent.
Just before Carl takes me out in a kayak, he shows me a skin from a rattlesnake. an eight feet long diamond back, to be exact. And, yes, they, and various other very poisonous snakes hang out on the island. It's a historic place. There are native American burial mounds going back some two thousand years. American history post Columbus? A mere bagatelle!
The kayak trail takes us round the mangroves. No alligators, who only lurk in freshwater and, thankfully, no snakes. But it's a delightful trip and I feel privileged to have had Carl as my guide.
After an excellent lunch at the one simple cafe that is allowed to operate, Carl takes me on an absolutely amazing tour of the one mile square land part of Caledesi. We see a pair of Ospreys building a nest, wild bees nests, pelican, heron, an armadillo, sanderlings, enormous horseshoe crabs and the very British sounding Ruddy turn stone. Carl reckons that, over a year, you can see some 300 varieties of bird on the island. I can believe it.
He's been very generous with his time and I have had an absolutely brilliant day.
Caladesi, with its' 200,000 visitors a year (only a few hundred today) is a very special place indeed.
I am sure they wanted me to tell you that its' beach was voted 'Best Beach in America', 2008. The beach is certainly unspoilt, very charming and totally natural.
But best? I have seen better and I have only been in Florida for a week!