Our trip to Anna Maria Island

On Friday, we decided to explore Anna Maria Island.

You can see by our clothing choice that we were back in "winter mode" again, albeit "Florida winter," versus the minus 6 degrees that it was in Minneapolis! :-) So we are still happy campers!

We drove over from Sarasota and drove north on Longboat Key to reach Anna Maria Island. First we stopped at Coquina Beach and then went on to Bradenton Beach for a lunch under our Super-Brella back in use as a wind shelter that kept us nice and warm.

After lunch, we drove to the top of Anna Maria Island and ended up stopping at the Anna Maria City Pier. Note the flag blowing in the stiff breeze!

We had a recommendation to go to the Beachhouse at Bradenton Beach to watch the sunset. We drove to the restaurant and got an outside table overlooking the beach (luckily, the restaurant had big mushroom heaters that kept us warm).

We enjoyed Happy Hour drinks and appetizers. Unfortunately, there wasn't a sunset due to clouds, but we could see this would be an absolutely spectacular place to enjoy a sunset on a different day!

We found sun at Sanibel Island!

Since we have Kevin & Kris' car available this week, we decided to drive to Sanibel Island in search of sun. We found it and felt really lucky as there is rain in the forecast for the next few days.




Sanibel is about a two hour trip from the campground — the sky was cloudy and foggy the whole drive down. However, when we finally arrived at Bowman Beach on Sanibel, the sun broke forth!

Since there wasn't much wind, this time we set up the new Super-Brella as an umbrella (versus a wind shelter). It worked great and provided us a way to make sure that our "Minnesota white skin" didn't get too much sun!

We enjoyed our lunch, a long walk on the beach, and some reading time on this beautiful day at a spectacular beach.

After our time at Sanibel, we drove to Captiva Island and explored. We ended up stopping a little bistro, and had some tropical drinks and a snack before heading home. Leaving Captiva and Sanibel is not a quick process on a beautiful day, but eventually we were able to get across the bridge to the mainland and head north to our campground. We had a late dinner in the motor home and then got a chance to hear the rain on the roof during the night!

Looking for sun today!

Looking at the weather forecast for the rest of the week, it looked like today and tomorrow would be the best days to drive to some of the area beaches — rain is starting on Thursday.

So we decided to drive 25 miles north to Siesta Key beach which is renowned for its beautiful white sand that stretches for miles.

When we arrived, the beach was all socked in with a low hanging cloud — we quickly wondered if we had brought enough warm clothes!

Luckily, we were able to test out our new Super-Brella — a beach umbrella that can also be staked down and used as a shelter against the wind.

Once we got the Super-Brella staked down, it provided a cozy spot to eat our lunch and do some reading before we ventured out to walk the beach with all the warm clothing we had.

About two miles into our walk down the beach, the sun burned through the cloud for about 20 minutes. For a brief moment, we enjoyed a bit of blue sky and shed some of our jackets.

Then the sun went back into hiding and we bundled up again!

We finished our day in Siesta Key with a good dinner out at the Baja Grill in town.

Home to Minnesota and back in Florida again!

I made a planned trip home to Minnesota for four days to do a variety of things including going to the wedding of my good friend, Katie. It was a wonderful weekend — I got to have dinner with Dave, Mike, and Steve; see my Mom and two sisters; and spend time with Greg's Mom and step dad in addition to seeing all the wonderful people I worked with at the wedding.

When I left early Sunday morning, it was cold — minus 9 degrees with a strong wind! Time to get back to Florida!




Our good friends Kevin and Kris are visiting us this week, so I hung out in the airport until their flight came in and then we drove down to the campground together.

Greg set up the "screen porch" to give us a little more living area to spread out in outside the motor home. We enjoyed a leisurely breakfast before getting ready for a bike trip to Nakomis beach.

We were so relaxed that we even had a friendly little cardinal show up and hang out on the back of Greg's chair. He stayed around for about 10 minutes and certainly didn't seem to feel much fear.

Kevin and Kris quickly made the adjustment from the cold weather in Minnesota to the beautiful Florida day. As you can see, the temperatures warmed up since last week — no more down jackets and mittens today!

After a nice time at the beach (we actually wore our swim suites today!), we biked to an ice cream place one of the other campers told us about. It is actually a "fruit stand" that sells oranges and other gift shop items along with a variety of fruit ice creams. The line was very long, so obviously, this is a destination spot for others in the area, too.

Once back at the campsite, we're into full relaxation mode — sipping coffee, reading, and just enjoying our time together!

Biking Trip Today

After our rain last night, we decided to take a long bike ride today. Once again, the Legacy Bike Trail runs right through Oscar Scherer State Park, and that trail hooks up with the Venetian Waterway Trail.


We wanted to explore some beaches further south of Venice, so we started out at about 11 a.m. As you can see from my dress, we didn't bother bringing swimsuits and towels as the temperature was about 50 degrees with 25-mile per hour winds! :-)

As you can see, the bike trail is fantastic! We're so lucky to have it so close.

Once we arrived at the Venice Beaches (there are several), we took a break to walk out to the water. The ocean was churned up and the winds were whipping. Note all the sunbathers — NOT!

After our ride back to the campsite (of course, into a headwind the whole way!), we had a late lunch, and then talked to Andrew on FaceTime for about an hour.

It still is so amazing to me how we can be sitting at a campsite in Florida and can have a wonderful conversation with Andrew who is in Berlin, Germany. He is on his two-week break from teaching, and is traveling with friends. They have already been to Cologne and Berlin, Germany and are on their way to Prague, Dublin, and Scotland before they head back to Paris. Technology is so fantastic!

After we finished talking to Andrew, Greg went to work on fixing our furnace in the motorhome which hadn't been working since we left Minnesota. Since it might get down to 27 degrees tonight, he decided it would worth pulling it all apart. After an hour, he was successful! That means on this trip, he has already fixed our furnace and our hot water heater.

I've been teasing him that I'm going start calling him St. Eligius, the patron saint of Mechanical Engineers. I looked it up because I just knew there had to be a patron saint honoring people like Greg that can fix just about anything! :-)

Oscar Scherer State Park

On Sunday, we packed up and spent the day driving south to Oscar Scherer State Park which is located near Venice, Florida (south of Sarasota).

We left at 8:30 a.m. and finally arrived at our campsite at about 7:00 p.m. We took a short detour stop to a Camping World outside of Tampa to purchase a new control board for our hot-water heater which wasn't working.

Since we're staying at Oscar Scherer for two weeks, it was time to unpack the trailer — you can see all the hooks inside that Greg put in to hold all our stuff.










The next day, we biked to Nakomis Beach — there is a wonderful bike trail that runs through the park. We can take the trail part of the way to the beach and then go on some residential streets that are easy biking — it is about a 6 mile trip to the beach.

As you can see, while this beach had more people than the beaches in St. George Island, it still isn't overly crowded. On our bike trip back to the campsite, we saw our first pelicans hanging out on a pier.

In the evenings, we enjoy cooking dinner. We're still working off the meals we brought from home, but shortly, we'll need to start taking our bike trailer on a trip to the grocery store.

Greg and I have never been big game players, but we've decided to try and learn some that we can play together. Greg started playing dominos with his Dad this year and thought that would be a fun one for us to try. I learned the game pretty fast, and we've enjoyed playing a couple times already.

While we have had beautiful blue skies each day since we left Minnesota, there was rain in the forecast yesterday. The rain held off until the evening, and as we heard the rain on the roof all through the night, we were very happy to be in our dry motor home.

Today (Wednesday) the rain is over and we have blue skies again, albeit cool temperatures. We're not complaining however, as "cool for Florida" is nothing like Minnesota temperatures!

Valentine's Day in Florida

We had another beautiful day, albeit a little cool and windy. We did some hiking on the beach, and then biked into town again.

We decided to buy some fresh shrimp and use it for a Valentine's dinner. 

We met Doug who has had a fresh shrimp truck in St. George for over 22 years. We got a lesson in deveining shrimp with a special little tool (we were able to buy one from Doug.) We then transported our shrimp back to the campground packed on ice.

Back at the campsite, I worked on peeling and deveining the shrimp with my new special tool.

The results — a delicious dinner of shrimp, salad, and a rice side dish topped off with a few Godiva chocolates.

It was a really nice Valentine's Day!