You look to your right and see the cruise ships coming into the port. You pass the shrimp docks. Then the highway lifts you over the bay and after a short distance you hit U.S. 41 and turn right. U.S. 41 hugs Hillsborough's eastern waterfront. To look at this scenery is to have the word beauty driven from your head.
Industrial structures rise starkly out of the bleached landscape.
You can see the water from the industrial sites, but that's because the mangroves were long ago pulled out and replaced by sea walls. A poor man can live on the water here. He just doesn't get a waterfront view. In between the industrial sites, whole neighborhoods of trailers, on noiseless, clean streets butt up against the mangroves that serve as a barrier to the bay. A few miles south of the Gannon Power Station, the Audubon Society watches over bird sanctuaries on two small islands in the bay.