After reviving ourselves with a snack and cold drinks by the water, we headed out again to a few spots we noticed that had potential. We had passed this boat several times by the side of the road and it looked interesting enough to investigate. The light was coming in nice from the side so all 3 of us set up alongside the road and painted the boat. We could have gotten a job there as official traffic-calmers, the way the cars slowed to a crawl when passing by to see.

It was around 6 pm and the sun was dropping, which also brought out the no-see-ums, mosquitoes and buzzing swarms of gnats. That meant fast painting and really put pressure on us to just get down the key information and get out of there before we lost the effect of the light. I had been warned before about painting boats...they often get moved so you have to paint quickly to get them down. In this case we thought the boat laying on the grass made it pretty unlikely we would lose our focal point until a disheveled, heavily bearded man muttering to himself came over and started checking out the boat. He piddled around it a bit, moved a few things inside, but thankfully he left the boat where it was. He came over to see what we were doing and was surprised to see his boat as the subject of all our paintings.

Even more suicidal gnats came out and pitched themselves onto the wet paint, plus the no-see-ums were fierce. I sprayed down again with bugspray and that may have driven more of the pesty creatures onto Perri and Jeanine because they soon packed it up. I spent another 20 minutes on my painting, determined to get close to finishing, and then called it a day too. I was able to make some finishing touches at home. Overall we had a great time painting at Cedar Key and it's someplace I would love to go back to visit and paint some more. The salt marshes were a new challenge, and I heard the outer keys are also very beautiful to see. That sounds like another painting roadtrip in the future.
  Me and Perri, traffic calmers

Painted at the salt marshes before crossing onto Cedar Key.

Our road trip to paint at Fanning Springs State Park the weekend of April 24-26 was a lot of fun.  I drove up with my friends Jeanine and Perri and we rented a cabin there for 2 nights. However as we entered the park, the sign on the office window said "...el agua es muy moreno y feo..." translating to the water is very brown and ugly. The heavy rains caused the Suwanee River to overflow into the springs turning them all brown instead of crystal clear blue.  And then within 5 minutes of walking on the trail, Perri looked down and a tick was rapidly crawling up her leg and another tick was on my shoe. We ditched the idea of painting at Fanning Springs and instead drove west the next morning to see what we could find of interest in Cedar Key to paint.  
As we approached the gulf coast, I slowed down as we came upon the salt marshes before the town. It was morning and the light on the water and marshes was beautiful and we all agreed to paint first at the marshes.  The cedar trees distinguished themselves as dark green masses among the pines making up the hammock areas, and the grasses alternated between shades of green, brown and maroon so there was a lot of color in the landscape. After painting about 2 hours we packed up and headed into town for some afternoon refreshments, making a few detours along the way to check out potential painting spots near the water for the late afternoon.