...Florida, Here We Come

Leaving Virginia in freezing temperatures, the first part of our 2020 adventures took us to Florida. On the way down, we spent a few days in Nags Head, North Carolina visiting Jeannette's sister Ginny and her husband Jim. It was pretty cold there also, with snow flurries one afternoon.

Continuing south, we spent a couple of days in Savannah, Georgia, a city we'd visited in the past, but which we love for its historic district, garden squares, live oaks (that have leaves even in winter), and spanish moss hanging everywhere.

We spent some time at the Telfair art museum, which has two locations. One contains more historic art pieces. It's also the current home of the "Bird Girl" statue, made famous as the cover of Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil by John Berendt, a great book about Savannah.

The other museum building is much newer, and contains modern art. There's an interesting section of interactive digital and electronic art, and there was also a special exhibition of art inspired by Moby Dick including a half-life-sized sculpture of a sperm whale made out of felt!

We continued south and crossed the state line into Florida. We spent a couple of days in the Tampa area. We had a wonderful dinner with Jeannette's cousin MaryJo, who spent many years writing for the local newspaper.

We spent the next day in the beautiful neighboring city of St. Petersburg.

In addition to walking in (finally) sunny and warmer weather, we spent time in a couple of the city's museums. At the Museum of Fine Arts, we saw a special exhibition on opera, theatre, and film costume and scenery designs by various famous artists, including Picasso, Matisse, and David Hockney. We also happened on a concert by the Florida Symphony in the museum's atrium.

We also visited the James Museum of Western and Wildlife Art, opened in 2018. It's a spectacular sandstone structure built into the middle of a St. Petersburg parking garage. The founders have been great patrons of contemporary artists (including Native American artists).

Next, it was on to Fort Myers Beach on the southern Gulf coast, where we slowed things down a bit and stayed for five days at a campground right on the beach. Ironically, there are not that many campgrounds devoted to traveling RVers like us. Most campgrounds were full for the season with snowbirds. We found a space at an older RV park, built in the days that rigs were smaller, so we did feel a bit shoehorned in. However, the neighbors were friendly and it was great to have a place with palm trees and a view of the Gulf - if you positioned yourself correctly between 2 RVs.

We were able to get our inflatable kayak for the first time since August, and did some great padding among the mangroves. We saw many birds (including 3 bald eagles and a Great Blue Heron) and also a manatee (which surfaced and submerged too fast for us to get a picture).

We left the Gulf Coast and headed across Florida. Along the way we camped in Big Cypress National Preserve, which is just north of Everglades National Park. Although the cypresses had lost their leaves for the winter, they still were quite impressive with their conical bases rising out of the wetlands. Air plants, including bromeliads, adorned a number of the tress. We saw more beautiful birds and a couple of alligators.

We arrived on the Atlantic side of Florida on Super Bowl weekend, which made it a bit of a challenge to find a campground. We ended up in an overpriced campground near Ft. Lauderdale crammed in with a bunch of French Canadians. However, the weather was beautiful, and the coastal views were beautiful too both from on high and from beach level.

One nice thing about Florida was the opportunity to visit with family members, friends, school colleagues, and work colleagues who live here.

Now it's time to move on to Orlando for some theme park immersion! More about that in our next blog post.