One Last Stop Before Our Trip Home!

We left Oscar Scherer State Park at about 10:30 am on Monday on our first leg of our trip home. We have reservations at at new park for us, Stephen Foster Folk Culture Center State Park, in White Springs, Florida. We heard about this state park from some fellow campers we had met at Oscar Scherer who said it was one of their favorites.

The Stephen Foster Folk Culture Center honors one of America’s composers and celebrates Florida’s cultural traditions. Foster, whose song, “Old Folks at Home” made the Suwannee River known all over the world.

The state park is on the banks of the Suwannee River and features a museum and Carillon Tower. The museum exhibits ten dioramas depicting scenes from Foster’s most popular songs. The 97-bell carillon was built to augment the visual experiences at the museum by playing a repertoire of Foster’s compositions throughout the day. The camp ground is spectacular — we arrived at about 5:30 pm and had a chance to bike around on a beautiful, clear evening.

There is a Craft Square at the park where visiting artists share their talents — in addition, there are lots of special events scheduled here throughout the year that explore farming history, quilting, old time music, folk art, as well as the music of Stephen Foster.

We toured the museum and the Carillon Tower this morning — we learned a lot more about Stephen Foster and his legacy of over 200 Americana songs, many of which we remember singing in grade school. The museum also had all kinds of antique pianos that had been donated to the museum.

 

We are getting ready to leave this park at 2 pm today to head north (timed to avoid rush hour in Atlanta!) It is a long drive home, but we’re ready to get underway. We will staying at Flying J’s tonight and tomorrow night. We then will stop at Gary and Linda’s on Thursday before heading home on Friday morning.

We are almost to our “data limit” on our cell phones (due to using our cell phone’s hotspot), so this will be our last post. Looking forward to seeing you all soon back in Minnesota!

Easter Sunday in Venice, Florida

I think this is the first time ever we haven't been home in Minnesota on Easter. We decided to find a church where we could ride our bikes. After doing some research, we located a Lutheran Church online that looked like it was about eight miles away and had a service at 11:00 am.

 We packed a few "church clothes" in our bike bags and hopped on the trail at about 10 am.

We were riding straight into a headwind that was at least 25 mph with gusts up to 30?

Anyway, after a lot of work riding, we never did find the Lutheran Church exactly. At about 10:58 am, we decided to stop at the Venice Presbyterian Church for their 11 am Easter Service.

The church was huge — there were four pastors participating in the service! But we were able to find two seats in the packed sanctuary towards the back.

It was a lovely service and all the hymns were familiar to us — in addition, they had a brass choir, bells, and a large choir, so we felt right at home with all the beautiful music.

After the service, we rode our bikes to downtown Venice and had a wonderful meal at an "Italian Cafe."

The City of Venice acquired its present name in 1888 from settler Frank Higel, considered the "Father of Venice," because of its likeness to the canal city in Italy where he spent his childhood. The City of Venice was incorporated in 1927, and the dream of a model community became a reality when homes & businesses featuring Italian architecture were constructed. Having just traveled to Italy last fall, it was fun to have an authentic Italian meal for our "Easter Dinner."

After our meal, we continued our ride south to Venice Beach and the Venice Fishing Pier. You can get an idea of the wind conditions by looking at the flag and our hair! :-)

We then spent some time taking our last "Florida beach walk." So fun to see all the dogs having a blast on the "dog beach!"

In addition to the dogs, we enjoyed seeing kids and adults of all ages enjoying the waves and beautiful day at Venice Beach.


The final 12-mile ride home was a piece of cake — with the wind behind us this time, we just flew!

Now we are packing up and getting ready to leave this great state park tomorrow morning on our journey north. We've had a wonderful time here, and have enjoying biking everyday on this beautiful trail!

Siesta Key for the Day

Today, we decided to go to Siesta Beach closer to Sarasota. We've been to that beach before and know how beautiful it is. We also knew we couldn't ride bikes there, so we did some research on taking the bus.

We were able to figure out what bus to take and determined there was a bus stop relatively close to the entrance of the park.

However, the website wasn't clear at all whether or not you could pay on the bus. They listed some places where you could buy bus tickets including several Goodwill stores.

So first stop was to ride our bikes about 3 miles to the Goodwill store. When we got there, we discovered they only sell monthly passes, not daily tickets. The clerk there wasn't sure about how you bought at daily ticket.

So we rode back to the campground to leave our bikes — our plan was to see if we could purchase a ticket on the bus.

We waited out on the highway for about 20 minutes until the bus came. The bus driver told us we could purchase our tickets on board, but the ticket did not include the transfer we were going to need to get to the beach.

Once we sat down, Greg picked up a booklet on the bus system that had maps and schedules for the various routes. On the inside cover, it indicated there is a all-day ticket available for $4. So Greg ended up going back up to the bus driver to ask if we could buy the $4/daily ticket on the bus. He ended up giving us two complimentary all-day tickets —so all of a sudden, we were covered for our transfer and our trip home!

The only thing we think was strange is that there is no mention on the fare page on the website of this daily ticket — we think that would have been really helpful information to visitors to Sarasota like we are!

By the time we reached Siesta Key Village, it was about 1:50 pm and we were hungry! We had planned to have a lunch out — a special treat since we've made about 95% of our meals in the motor home. Both of us were hungry for some seafood since we were in Florida.

I had blackened Mahi Mahi in romaine lettuce leaves with salsa, guacamole, and rice. It was delicious! Greg had fish tacos.













After our late lunch, we walked around the village a little before heading out to the beach. We saw lots of families — it appears the majority of the college students are back at school studying hard.

The beach is huge with wonderful white sand similar to the beaches on the panhandle of Florida.

We ended up walking for about 1.5 hours just enjoying people watching — all ages, shapes, sizes, etc.

After our time on the beach, we headed back to the bus stop and got back to the campground at about 6:15 pm.

It was another great day, and we now know how to go about taking the bus, thus expanding our options for staying at this park.

Transition Time!

It's hard to believe that this is the 7th winter we've come down to Florida in our motor home to explore the fantastic Florida State Parks. We've learned a lot about how to do a trip like this . . . . . and we definitely see this kind of trip in our future. Just not sure what form yet as we are planning on selling our motor home on our return to Minnesota.

We've modified our schedule some and now will be returning to Minnesota by Friday, April 1. Our house sold and we are closing on April 15th. Obviously, we will have a lot to do in those two weeks!

We are renting a town home in Minnetonka not too far away from our "hood" — it seems like a good chance to begin our next big transition without having all the answers in place yet.

We've lived in our house since we were 28 years old — we moved in when we were relatively newly married and without children. Now our four grown boys are men all making their ways in the world.

I saw this quote and it seemed like a good one for us — we are venturing out and making lots of changes. Selling our home of 34 years, trying town home living, and selling our motor home are just a few of the changes. I've also applied to a graduate level certificate program in Integrative Health & Wellness Coaching at the University of Minnesota. I anticipate finding out in early April whether or not I've been accepted. I would start with some classes this summer. The two-year program is a hybrid program — part online and part on campus. I'm really excited and ready for a new challenge!

As part of my preparation for myself, I've been taking an online class through Live Your Legend called Live Off Your Passion. It's been a great experience for me and I can see how online classes will work with our lifestyles now.

I got exposed to this class through a TED Talk by Scott Dinsmore — if you like TED Talks, I'd encourage you to watch it.

So, in the spirit of all the transitions in our lives, Greg and I will shortly be transitioning from Oscar Scherer State Park to Stephen Foster Folk Culture Center State Park in northern Florida. After that, we're heading home to a ton of changes . . . . . but we don't have any doubts we're on the right path for us!

Happy Easter to all of you!

A Beautiful Couple of Days!

We've had beautiful weather the last two days, so we've been doing lots of bike riding with some stops at various beaches.

This is a shot from the bridge of the bike trail we ride into Venice and beyond — it is called the Venetian Waterway Trail.

We can ride the trail all the way to Venice Beach — these are shots from yesterday at Venice Beach.

This morning, Greg took his road bike out on the trail while I worked on another project back at the motor home. The sun is just too intense to be out in it all day, so often we are going out for just part of the day.









After lunch, we rode our bikes to Nakomis Beach. There were lots of families and the beach was so colorful!

It's really nice to see people being more conscious of not getting too much sun exposure. Many people have beach umbrellas and I've noticed a lot of younger children wear sun-protection shirts on the beach and in the water. I wish these shirts had been around when our kids were little!

A far cry from when I was a younger girl and teenager and often got too sunburned on a day like today!

Here is our umbrella that we set up to protect us from too much sun.

Unfortunately, with all my precautions with not getting too much sun (wearing a long-sleeved shirt when biking, sunscreen all the time, a beach umbrella, etc.) I seem to have now developed some hives from sun exposure?

Luckily, they don't itch like the noseeum bites did, but don't look that great. Oh, well, that's my fair English skin!

Fun Day with a Surprise!

We had rain throughout the night and a heavy downpour early in the morning — both of us were so glad we weren't in a tent last night!

By 10 am, the rain had stopped, and we decided to bike ride into Venice.

About 3 miles out on the trail, we got a call from our good friends the Galiks. We generally see Karl and Marilouise every year when we come to Florida. However, this year, they were in Wichita, Kansas helping their son, Dave, and his wife, Ann, after the birth of their third child! Anyway, they had left Wichita two days early to fly to Jacksonville, Florida for a family funeral. Today they were driving back home to Naples and wanted to see if we could possibly meet them.

We decided to meet them in the late afternoon in Venice.

In the meantime, we continued our ride into Venice and had lunch in another little cafe. After lunch, we rode down to the Venice Beach.

It turned out to be a fairly nice day and we enjoyed walking along the beach for about an hour.

We were surprised when we got to this one section of the beach to see dogs everywhere! Pretty soon we figured out we were at a Dog Beach. All the dogs and their owners were having so much fun!

When we got back, we looked it up and sure enough, the beach is called Brohard Beach Paw Park.

On our ride back to Venice to meet the Galiks, Greg had a flat tire. Luckily, my favorite engineer had all the right tools and a new tube to make the repair.

We met Galiks at an outdoor cafe for Happy Hour — we enjoyed catching up on each others' lives.

As of April, the Galiks will have 10 grandchildren!! So they are in a very different life stage than Greg and I. They are flying to California in April to help their daughter, Karla, and her husband, Greg, with the birth of their third child.

It was a wonderful surprise to get a chance to see the Galiks after all!