As I said at the outset of Monday’s post, we are in southwest Florida, where we’ve come for a few weeks the last three years. We spent the first week with Louisville friends who rent a house in Naples for three weeks each February.
On Sunday, we moved up to Clearwater/Dunedin, where we’re staying in an Airbnb and where two Kansas City friends have a home.
We like Naples, but we love the Tampa Bay area, which offers a tremendous variety of sightseeing and entertainment options, including golf, Tampa Bay Downs racetrack, The Dali Museum, the Pinellas Trail, great beaches and the Gulf of Mexico.
Check out some of what we’ve experienced so far…
The house where we stayed in Naples was a couple of blocks from the beach, which attracts a crowd on sunny days and almost every evening for sunset. The two days we went down at sunset, however, about all we saw were clouds.In Naples, old and new coexist, with new (and bigger) clearly having the upper hand. The Gondolier Inn on 8th Avenue South is a slice of the old. Old and new are both expensive, however: A room at the Gondolier runs about $400 a night, before taxes.Eating out is expensive, too, even at the food trucks, where this wagyu beef hotdog cost $17.Patty was in good form on Day One.We got to Dunedin Sunday night. No, we’re not staying at the Fenway hotel, across the street from the Gulf. Rooms start at about $400, and that’s a last-minute deal.With the MLB lockout — and baseball on hold for now — the Dunedin, spring training home of the Toronto Blue Jays is looking pretty forlorn.Today we went to Myakka River State Park, an area of great natural beauty just east of Sarasota. It was developed between 1934 and 1941 by the Civilian Conservation Corps, with help from the National Park Service and the Florida Park Service.One of the park’s greatest attractions is its canopy of trees. I took this shot from a tower, about 50 feet above ground. (I didn’t have the leg power or courage to go to the top of the tower, about 25 feet farther up.)Here’s a view of the canopy from ground level.Bird watching is a major sport in the park.The Myakka sand is unique and fascinating. During the summer rainy season, the ground is constantly wet. In the fall, it dries out in clumps in park areas with trees. On the walking paths, it is a fine, non-grainy sand.In 1989, the Florida legislature designated Myakka fine sand as the official state soil. It occurs in more than 1.5 million acres of Florida “flatwoods.”
Love the travel-log. The blog format is better than Facebook for this type of post. Btw I too have Louisville connections. Aunt worked at CJ, met her husband there. They moved to DC when he became a Washington Correspondent. Mom lived with aunt in Louisville, went to Atherton School and UK before transferring to Mizzou. At The Post, worked with Ian Shapira of Louisville, whose family founded the Heaven Hill brands distillery.
I never knew about your Louisville connections, Steve. It’s my hometown. I lived there until I graduated from Bellarmine University, then went to work in northern KY for less than a year and later in 1969 started at The Times and Star…The buddy with whom we stayed in Naples lived for quite a few years within a few blocks of Atherton High School. That was and is, to the best of my knowledge, a very good school. We went to St. Xavier, one of the two most prominent boys’ Catholic high schools in town…Thanks for the comment, Steve.
JimmyCsays: At the juncture of journalism and daily life in KC 
Love the travel-log. The blog format is better than Facebook for this type of post. Btw I too have Louisville connections. Aunt worked at CJ, met her husband there. They moved to DC when he became a Washington Correspondent. Mom lived with aunt in Louisville, went to Atherton School and UK before transferring to Mizzou. At The Post, worked with Ian Shapira of Louisville, whose family founded the Heaven Hill brands distillery.
I never knew about your Louisville connections, Steve. It’s my hometown. I lived there until I graduated from Bellarmine University, then went to work in northern KY for less than a year and later in 1969 started at The Times and Star…The buddy with whom we stayed in Naples lived for quite a few years within a few blocks of Atherton High School. That was and is, to the best of my knowledge, a very good school. We went to St. Xavier, one of the two most prominent boys’ Catholic high schools in town…Thanks for the comment, Steve.