Sarasota

Thursday, October 9, 2014

Today we left Clearwater and moved south about 65 miles to Sarasota. In route was the the Tampa Bay Sunshine Skyway Bridge.  At about 4 miles in length, this is an impressive structure!  No pictures of it though, as we were driving.  Our home for the next couple days is Sarasota Sunny South RV Resort.  This campground has several park trailers with full time and long term residents. It lies within a residential neighborhood, a little urban for us, but has all the amenities to make a long term stay enjoyable.  There are a number of in-park activities like community cookouts and many social gatherings.

Yesterday we made a visit to a not too well known, little park in Tampa that was not mentioned in the last post.  The park is called Lettuce Lake Park and is a Pinellas County Park.  The draw for us was a 1 mile boardwalk through a swamp that borders the Hillsborough River.  Along the boardwalk you see an amazing variety of birds, along with big cypress trees.  A few pictures follow.

Lettuce Lake

Swamp Lettuce

A Little Blue Heron

The swamp.  Looks like you could walk across, doesn’t it?

Dan’s new camera has a 50x zoom that came in handy for critters here.

Ok, back to Sarasota.  After getting set up we drove over to The Ringling.  This is the estate of John Ringling of the Ringling Brother’s Circus.  The Ringling brothers and their circus originated in Baraboo, Wisconsin.  There is a circus museum there that Lynn has seen.  He and wife Mable made Sarasota their home and built this palatial house and out buildings in a Venetian motif.  The house, built in about 1920, and its surrounding property is called Ca’d’Zan, meaning House of John from a Venetian Italian dialect .  John had amassed quite a fortune from the circus, his real estate holdings (he owned most of Sarasota), railroads, and some oil drilling ownership in Oklahoma.

Unfortunately, Ringling’s fortune didn’t last.  The Great Depression caused a big real estate crash in Florida and people stopped attending the circus, because they could not afford it.  As a result, Ringling blew through his money.  To top it all off Mable died.  At his death, 7 years later, creditors took all but about $300, however John had bequeathed his Art Museum and the estate to the State of Florida.  John and Mabel had no children.

The house was not open Thursday evening, but a Circus Museum and the Art Museum were.  The Circus Museum had some interesting stuff, but nowhere near the collection in Baraboo.

The cannon used in the human cannonball act.

One of 140 circus wagons the circus travelled in early 1900s.

Ringling’s private railroad car used by John and Mabel in the early 1920s

The Art Museum contained many works that John and Mabel purchased abroad.  Most were portraits, not our taste, but the courtyard was impressive.  The sculptures and the night lighting made it special.

Friday, October 10, 2014

As you should know by now, we dig gardens!  So today we visited the Marie Selby Botanical Gardens.  What attracted us to this one was the largest collection of Epiphytes of any garden in the US.  We bet you’re all asking, what are Epiphytes?  They are plants that grow on other plants.  They are not parasitic, nor do they use the host for anything but a place to hang on.  Examples are orchids, ferns, bromeliads, and mosses.

Most Epiphytes reside in South and Central America.  The Gardens sends expeditions into these areas, almost annually, in search of unique plants to add.  Here are a few pictures.

These are Bromeliads, also known as air plants. One Bromeliad that you all know is a pineapple.

The next couple are ferns:

The were many varieties of ferns.

This flower is in the begonia family.

The following are some of the very large collection of orchids:

And there were other plants too -

Pitcher Plant- it’s carnivorous

A member of the zebra plant family

 

Bird of Paradise

The Marie Selby Gardens is the estate of William and Marie Selby.  They gained their wealth through the success of Selby Oil Company.  Marie’s passion was gardening.  Unlike the mansion Ringling built, Selby’s was modest.

Within the estate grounds is the Christy Payne Mansion.  The house has been transformed into a Museum of Botany and Arts.  Currently on display are works of Angela Maria Isaza, who specializes in an art form called  Batik.  The technique uses cotton fabric that is dyed, layered with wax to mask areas from the dye, and repeated until the image is complete.  The wax is then removed by ironing.  It provides a remarkable piece of art.

Saturday October 17, 2014

Today its off to the beach.  We checked out Siesta Key beach yesterday and it looked fabulous, sugar white sand and FREE parking!

It didn’t disappoint. Sunny 90 degrees on October 11th, and we’re at the beach!  Rubbin’ it in for our friends in Michigan!

As many of you know, we are keeping our eye on possible wintering locations.  Although Clearwater was nice it was way too busy and traffic was a pain.  Sarasota looks pretty good, lots of things to keep you busy, but still a bit busy for our taste. 

Next we move onto Ft. Myers.  Stay tuned!