2016 Mar 28-30 - Aalafia River State Park, Lithia, FL

We arrived on Monday, the 28th. The park is very nice, but there's not much to do in the park unless you ride mountain bikes. Yes, mountain bikes in Florida. It's an old phosphate mine, so the terrain is unlike that in most other places in Florida. The nearest towns are Lithia, Fish Hawk, and Wimauma - not exactly tourist Meccas!

I've never seen swarms of dragon flies like they have here. They don't bother anyone and they eat mosquitoes, so they're not a problem. It's just a bit weird walking through them.

It's Wednesday evening as I type this post. As you can see by the pictures, we haven't done anything very exciting since we got here. It's kind of nice to just relax.

2016 Mar 25-27 - Lunch in Boca Grande and Easter Dinner at Art & Jo's

Friday, we drove to Port Charlotte to meet our friends Mac & Jan from Decatur They are camping at a large RV park there and are in the process of buying a park model (manufactured home) for winter residence there. We drove to Boca Grande and had lunch at South Beach Bar and Grill. If you squint while looking at the first picture below, you can see the Gulf beyond the umbrellas.

Lunch was very good. After lunch, we drove to the end of the island to check out the lighthouse before heading back to Port Charlotte and on to our camp.

When we got back to camp, I got one of the big insect candles out of the car and lit it up. We've been carrying them around for a couple of years. Just thought I'd fire one up for fun.

Saturday, we just kind of hung out. After lunch at camp, we went down the road to the O'brien Family Farm for some fresh strawberry shortcake.

On Sunday, we went to Uncle Art & Aunt Jo's house for dinner and visiting. 

 

2016 Mar 23-24 - Mostly the Ringling Mansion and Circus Museum

With the exception of a few shots at the beginning, all of the pics in this post were taken at 'The Ringling' the huge estate of John and Mable Ringling which includes their mansion (Ca' d'Zan), the circus museum, art museum, gardens, education center, etc. Most of the pictures posed here are of the mansion, the grounds, the circus museum, and the learning center.

The only thing that "saved" the estate was the fact that John left it to the city of Sarasota. As a result of the great depression, he died with $311.00 in his bank account!

We spent almost six hours at The Ringling and didn't even scratch the surface! None of the pictures I took were in the art museum. You've seen one old painting, you've seen them all, IMHO!

Enjoy!