Hutchinson Island and Home

On Thursday, January 19th, we slept in a little, not going to breakfast until 9 a.m. While waiting for Mary Joy, I checked the weather on the internet. Jensen Beach: 63 degrees. St. Paul, Minnesota: minus eleven. I'd known that it was likely to go below zero that night, but the idea of going back home the next day to weather that was 70 degrees colder than where we were now didn't delight us.

After a delicious, elegantly-presented breakfast, prepared by the owner, Katie, whose family had lived in the house more than a hundred years ago, we went to the nearby Indian Riverside Park to walk. Lunch was at Fiorentino's in Stuart, a pleasant Italian change of pace.

We spent almost all of the rest of the day on Hutchinson Island, the barrier island separating the Indian River from the ocean and stretching from Fort Pierce down to St. Lucie Inlet, where the St. Lucie and Indian Rivers meet and enter the Atlantic. The eastern edge of Hutchinson Island is one, long, gorgeous sand beach, with many points of entry. The principal one toward the south end is at Stuart Beach, with concession stands, lifeguards, beach rentals, changing rooms. Farther down, just before the exclusive private resort of Sailfish Point at the southern tip of the island, is Bathtub Beach, protected just offshore by Bathtub Reef, built up from the exoskeltons of millions of marine worms.

In the late afternoon, we took a long walk on the beach, north of Stuart Beach. A number of people were surf fishing, using long rods which they stuck in white pipes in the sand, until they got a bite. And many of them were getting bites: we saw croakers and snappers in people's buckets. One couple had a big jack, which the man said was no good for eating, so he cut the line, holding the fish by the remainder, and after measuring it against his thigh (it looked to be more than a foot long), waded out and threw it back into the water. Another man was raking the shore for sea fleas--a small crablike crustacean to be used for bait. We also saw a gull bring ashore a small, silvery fish that it had caught. At first it tried to swallow the fish whole, but it was too big. After it got the fish away from our vicinity--probably afraid that we would steal it--the bird went to work picking the fish apart.

But mostly we just enjoyed the waves and the brilliant array of greens--almost as many as Ireland's famous forty shades of green--displayed as those waves rolled ashore beneath a cap of white.

We went to dinner at Finz, in Port Salerno--fish tacos. Not bad, not great. Finz is a large place on the St. Lucie, with live music.

The next day, Friday, January 20th, after another nice breakfast, we went for one last walk on Hutchinson Island. After lunch at TooJay's (a wonderful New York-style delicatessen and restaurant chain) in Stuart, we eventually got on the road, none too soon, for there were no less than four different accidents (including one with a burnt-out SUV) slowing traffic on I-95. But we caught our 6:02 p.m. flight and arrived back at MSP around 9 p.m. CST, caught the van to the parking lot, brushed the snow off our car and drove home.