Giddy Up

Sunday, March 11th: Pulled into a campground in the middle of beautiful Florida horse country at Myakka City. It’s kind of in the middle of nowhere about 20 miles east of Sarasota. This camp was the home of Herrmann’s Royal Lipizzan Stallions, which is centuries old line of horses originally bred in Austria for war. In fact, General Patton saved this breed from extinction during WWII. They were moved to the U.S. in the early 1960’s and were raised and trained for shows and circuses. No coincidence that the epicenter of the circus world was right near there in Sarasota under the name of Ringling Barnum and Bailey. These horses are born brown and mature to gray and then pure white by the time they reach four years of age.

For the evening we popped over to Siesta Key, an island community just outside downtown Sarasota. The beach is pure white sugar sand and goes on for miles. No surprise that it has many times been voted the #1 beach in America. For dinner we stopped at the Oyster Bar and got a seat at the outside bar looking into the restaurant with each inch of the

walls and ceiling decorated with $1 bills … thousands. The four-piece band kicked up behind us. Between songs we saw a patron pushing a waiter that led to a fight with five other waiters jumping in and rolling out to the street. When we left an hour later, the fighter was handcuffed on the curb surrounded by several cops. A lot of entertainment value! Oh, the oysters rockefeller was excellent.

Monday, March 12th: Ringling’s last circus was in 2017, but John Ringling left behind a legacy in two museums: a circus museum and an art museum. We visited the art museum, located near downtown Sarasota. The artwork is from the baroque and renaissance periods and it is fantastic. The buildings themselves were awesome. A note to remember is that Mondays are free days because this is the agreement Mr. Ringling made with the city of Sarasota. After the museum, we drove over to Yoder's Restaurant, an Amish place that

served decent quality food and a LOT of it. We took home enough pulled pork for three more meals. The Amish established a population down here many years ago and have thriving businesses in Sarasota today.

Tuesday, March 13th: Since we had enjoyed seeing Venice FL last year, we decided to spend the day there, walking around in 73 degree sunshine and watching the boats drift by on the Intracoastal Waterway which runs from over in Texas all the way down and up the

coasts of Florida.

After building up an appetite we rolled over to Sharkey’s on the Pier, a great burger restaurant and bar right on the Gulf of Mexico. Nothing like a cheeseburger and an IPA watching the sun set over the water to keep your head right.