Golf Day

 

My main activity today was playing golf with John.  John had an afternoon event so we played quite early.  I could have taken a lot more pictures, but this one shows you a typical Florida golf course.  We did see one alligator sunning, thankfully, on the other side of a pond.  

All in all, it was a beautiful day with good temperatures, lots of sun, and little wind.   And both John and I played good golf, both shooting a 93.  I was using borrowed clubs which was a bit of a challenge. 

After I got back from golf, we did some suitcase packing so we'll have less to do in the morning.  Once ready, we took one last beach walk.  Sure love the sound of those waves!

With the clear weather, it made for a great sunset picture. Mary got this great reflection shot tonight.

Tomorrow we drive back to Tampa and fly home.  We have a nice mid-afternoon flight so no need to get up early and rush around in the morning.

I hope you enjoyed following along on our short Florida trip!

Monday Boat Ride

Today my golfing buddy, John, invited us for a boat ride on the inter-coastal waterway.  He's a member of a boat club and had reserved this nice pontoon boat for our group. That's John in the orange, Irene (former DTE co-worker) in blue and Mary in white (the two in blue are dock workers).

We enjoyed a nice 4 hour boat ride,  John showed us a lot of the area that you can't see by car.  While we did not do this, at many places, boats were beached and the people got out to explore, hike, picnic, or fish.   Mary took this picture of a very noisy osprey who squawked a us as we passed by.    Eventually we docked at a restaurant on Manasota Key (where we are staying) for lunch before heading back to the marina.  

We got back to our condo in time to walk to the beach and see a very pretty sunset.  We will miss seeing sunsets like this once back in Michigan.  

Tomorrow I'm playing golf with John in the morning, and then Mary and I need to start packing for our trip back to Dearborn.  

A Quiet Sunday

We took our morning beach walk at low tide today.   On the left you can see the path that we take to get to the beach.  Once you get to that point, you can start to hear the waves. 

We walked south today and the beach is much flatter this way as you can see on the right.  The waves glide quite a ways up the sand.  We both ended up with wet socks as we failed to dodge a big wave!  It's good we did this at low tide since we could see that the waves at high tide reached across the sand to the rocks in several places. But it was a very nice 1 3/4 mile walk. 

Tonight we went to a Jim Curry concert in Punta Gorda.  As expected, it was a super good concert.  I like how Jim takes extra time to give the background  of some songs which adds a lot to the concert rather than just singing them.  In addition to the classic John Denver songs, they sang one un-recorded John Denver song called Wandering Soul.  We stayed around afterwards to talk and were among the last to leave.

Tomorrow we are doing a boat trip with golfing buddy John and a former DTE co-worker, Irene.

Note:  Thanks for the blog comments.  Mary and I read and enjoy all of them.  

Tiger Baseball

 

Today we drove to Lakeland to see the Tigers play the Yankees in their first spring training game.   Before the start of the game they announced the temperatures in Detroit (27), New York(43) and Lakeland (73), then thanked the crowd for their wise decision to be in Lakeland. 

If you look at the lineup card on the right you'll see that only 4 "name" Tigers started.  And once they got to the 6th inning, they substituted for every player.  

But was a great day with super good seats, right behind home plate.  It was sunny (and we were in he shade) and a comfortable temperature.  

The Yankees scored early and often and had multiple base running in every inning.  The Tigers had a few good innings, but ended up losing 22-10.   

But it was a nice outing, even if we did have to fight some heavy Florida traffic there and back.  

Tomorrow is a Jim Curry Music concert as we continue to enjoy our vacation.

Florida Day 2

 

We had a nice, peaceful day today.  Our plan was to take a beach walk in the morning, then drive somewhere in the afternoon.  Well we headed to the beach about 9:30 am, but saw the waves were high and our only option would be to walk on the soft sand, which makes for very tough walking.  So much for our plan...

So we decided to drive to Port Charlotte to see what we could see.  It was a nice drive but not too much to see.   We did take the beach walk in the afternoon.  The waves were still quite high and this photo does not do them justice.  They left little packed sand to walk on but we did our half mile out and back. 

Later we had a nice dinner at Ken and Barb's, a local restaurant we knew about, then came back to the condo and streamed a few episodes of This is Us and that ended our exciting day.   Who says we don't live it up on vacation!  

Tomorrow we head to Lakeland to see a Detroit Tiger spring training game, their first one of the year.

First Day in Florida

This year we are staying on Manasota Key in the same condo we rented in 2022.  It's a nice, well furnished condo and has just a short walk to the beach.   Having been here before, we are somewhat familiar with the area which helps a lot.  

This morning we visited the Englewood Farmers Market.  It's rather large  (about 2 blocks) and has sprouted up a few nearby markets.   Lots of produce, jewelry, handicrafts, and food.   It was neat walking through all the crowds and seeing the many booths.  We did our share of buying.  I'd been looking for a new wallet and found one here.  We also bought a spanakopita (spinach pie) and baklava along with some snack foods.  Our morning ended with a pleasant beach stroll. 

After lunch, we headed back to the beach to enjoy the sunshine.  So relaxing, with the warm sunshine and the soothing sound of the waves.

After supper we headed out to catch the sunset.  It was a bit chilly (for Florida).  A few clouds got in the way, but this shot with colorful sky was one of the prettiest we took. 

Nothing planned for tomorrow so we'll see what develops. 

Heading to Florida

 

Today we flew to Tampa for our winter break.  Unfortunately it was 60 in Michigan today and only reached 69 here.  But it will be in the 70s for the next week here and Michigan will be cooling off a bit. 

We had a 2 hour drive to our condo and fortunately had very light traffic.  This part of Florida is notorious for long backups and we saw a few on the northbound side of the freeway.   The condo is nice and has a beautiful private screen-covered patio with a pool.  Before dinner and grocery shopping we did take a short walk to the beach.   The waves on the gulf were rather high today.   It was nice to be near  a large body of water again and hear that relaxing sound.

Tomorrow we plan to visit a farmers market and sight-see a bit.