Stuart Beach, Florida

While in Florida we naturally went to the beach. We spent one morning at Stuart Beach on the Atlantic coast. Earlier in the week, the surf was too rough for swimming. We assumed that the surf would be bad again so we didn't bring our swimsuits. Our plan was to go to a different beach later in the day. Unfortunately, the afternoon was rainy. Thankfully, this visit was fun.

Stuart Beach

Since the surf was heavy, the beach had a drop-off by the water. The kids loved jumping off and climbing up a sandy micro-cliff.

By the drop-off

Someone stays, someone goes to the water

A flying leap

Facing the waves

Two jumpers

Getting wet

We did not encourage our children to get wet and could not stop them. We should have just had them wear their swimsuits anyway. Oh well!

Further in the waves

A happy boy

Attempting to dry out, we went to a playground in the parking lot which was small but fun.

Playground

A whale of a ride

The bathroom had an incredible mosaic. "Save Our Coral Reefs" by Brenda Leigh depicts a fun seascape. Jensen Beach High School art students helped with creating the mural.

Dolphins swimming toward...

...a mermaid!

Another dolphin headed to a turtle

The back of the building

A big turtle

Rays and other fish

One of the doors

Other Florida Geocaches 2019

After snagging some Hobe Sound caches, we went further north and found some caches near Jensen Beach. We went to the Treasure Coast Children's Museum though it was closed because we were too early. Out back is a long dock with the What's up Doc? (or is it down?) cache.

Rightward view from the start of the dock

Leftward view from same dock

Running down the dock

 The dock was infested with pigeons. My youngest son is a bit skittish around animals in the outdoors so he was very unhappy. We told him they would run away from him but he still didn't have enough confidence to get past them. I carried him to the end.

At the end we found a fisherman plying his trade by two light posts. He was by the left light post, so we checked the right one for the cache. Nothing there. So I politely asked to sneak in and discovered only half the cache! The lid was attached to some fishing line but the bottom (along with the log and whatever else was inside) was missing.

The fisherman craftily edited out

View back to shore

Back by the parking lot, we found Pokie Man. With the dock and the museum and some other attractions, this particular park has a lot of Pokemon Go virtual amenities. Thus the cache is named in a non-copyright-violating way.

Pokie Man's position

We went over to Stuart where another cache is on a pier out over the water. We parked in the cute downtown area and walked over to the boardwalk. On the way we saw a big Christmas tree!

Stuart's Christmas spirit

The pier with the cache

The Dock Holiday cache was a "did not find" for us since the location at the end of the dock had only some suspicious fishing line that was cut. We logged our non-find and the cache's owner was good enough to email back about checking the location. The nearby small playground was a fun break for the kids.

The standard swing set

Boat-themed playground

We saw two extra-long golf carts stop by each other and have a chat. After talking to them ourselves, we found out they are electric trolleys (of a sort) for the city. They said there is a much better playground across town so we took a ride. The local Kiwanis club built a fantastic area that we couldn't take full advantage of since it started to rain. We did enjoy some of the equipment.

Leaving on a jet plane...

...now with passengers

Maybe the baggage belt?

Another fun area

The downtown area has a few more caches but the rain dampened our spirits.

The next day we visited Stuart Beach. We found Old Staircase, which is indeed an old staircase in the brush between the beach and the parking lot.

Doesn't look like the beach or the parking lot!

We look forward to more geocaching adventures in 2020!