Samba's Great Adventure: Sarasota

Our 15 mile trip on Wednesday from Venice to Sarasota was pleasant.

When Carol wasn’t enjoying the view from the bow, she was chasing dolphins around the boat.

Today, they were playing at various times on both sides of the boat and in front.

For the longest time, we had a trio of young ones about half way back who appeared to be following mom. She was most of the way to the front of the boat but simply swam straight with no crazy antics. The 3 young ones swam so close to each other, they were probably slapping fins. We’re pretty sure mom was teaching them how to pace a boat. Though it’s a little hard to see, this is the trio.

We could tell we were approaching a larger city by the size of the homes along the water.

We had 3 bridges who had to open for us & 1 that we could sneak under. This one appeared to be fairly recently painted.

The Sarasota marina was totally booked because of a boat club of some 10 or 15 boats who had reserved space for the week so they had us take one of their mooring balls. Though a little inconvenient due to the long dinghy ride in, it worked out OK.

When we "pick up a mooring", we run our bow lines through a large loop that is attached to a large mooring ball that is securely anchored on the ocean floor. The marina places these mooring balls across a large area they call the mooring field.

After lunch, we took the dinghy in to check in and then explore the downtown area. The dinghy dock was pretty crowded - - Jim is standing next to ours way at the end of the dock.

There were lots and lots of shops and restaurants within just a few blocks of the marina. They also had a beautiful bayfront area and this very kewl statue. Notice how large it is with Carol next to it.

We had heard there was a nice botanical garden about 1 ½ miles down the waterfront so we hoofed it over to check it out. It was quite beautiful, and well worth the walk.

This is a nice clump of bamboo.

One part of the garden had a rainforest complete with a board walk and suspended trail that ran through the canopy of the jungle.

This was a pretty interesting walk through a banyan tree. This is all 1 tree and some of its roots.

Though a bit tired once we got back to the boat, we decided it was worth the effort to visit such a beautiful garden.

The view of the harbor at night was wonderful.

Thursday, we Uberred to the Ringling Museum. We didn’t know exactly what there was but wanted to see this place we had heard so much about. When we lived in Peru, IN, we co-chaired the effort to move the International Circus Hall of Fame from Sarasota to Peru so we were interested to see Ringling’s side of circus history.

The estate, displays and museum far, far exceeded our expectations.

If you ever get to Sarasota, it is worth the price of admission to see the “miniature circus” exhibit. Everything in it was made by 1 man and is all exactly to scale and intended to show future generations what circus life was all about. The exhibit was intended to show both the magnitude of the effort that went into the traveling circus and what a typical day at the circus would have included.

This amazing 1-man exhibit took him 50 years to make and had 42,000 pieces which included 154 wagons, 925 animals and even 7,000 folding chair under the big top. Wow – truly spectacular!

Notice the unbelievable attention to detail he had, even in the employees' dining tent! Be sure to zoom in to see just how much is going on.

This poor lady had fallen off her practice high wire. Notice the men with the stretcher coming to get her!

Apparently, one of the favorite attractions of the circus was Goliath. Weighing 3.25 tons, the giant sea elephant (walrus??) traveled in a specially constructed water tank on the train. He ate 150 pounds of fish a day! Check out the detail!!

The big top was truly spectacular. He tried to accurately depict both the size and what all would be happening at the same time in the 3 rings. Even all of the little folding seats worked. Pretty amazing!

Notice even the tools were to scale in the carpenter shop!

This is Jim & some of his buddies. LOL.

We had a great lunch there on the Ringling grounds.

Right below where we were sitting, one of the long-necked anhinga’s caught a fish for lunch.

After a little coaxing, the fish went right down. You can just see the tail here.

After lunch, we continued our walk through the grounds. This was Ringling’s personal rail car.

All of the decorations on the wagons were hand carved from wood. This is a coal-fired calliope wagon.

They had a number of banyan trees on the property. Carol is standing next to this one to show you how large it is.

This is Ringling’s home, Ca’ D’Zan ("House of John" in Venetian)

Boy, talk about opulent!

We walked down a couple of trails and finally found our way to the Ringling Art Museum. The artwork he collected is breathtaking. It took a couple of hours just to walk through it. Most of the time, we were by ourselves.