Fort Desoto Park ~ St. Petersburg, Florida

The Captain and I recently spent a beautiful and sunny Florida day on the white sandy gulf beach at Fort Desoto Park in St. Petersburg, Florida.

We couldn't have picked a better day . . . no rain, no storms . . . very unusual for this time of year.  There is nothing like sunning on the beach and cooling off in the warm, salty and refreshing Gulf of Mexico.

Our day started very early in the morning . . . we arrived as the sun came up . . . daybreak on the Gulf of Mexico beaches is awesome!

The park offers great diversity with a wealth of bird life, sea life, wild life and plant life.  We just visited the beach, but the park also includes two fishing piers, campgrounds, the historial forts, museum, boating and so much more.

Although it has been many years, it was one of my favorite places to go camping, where you can encounter cute raccoons that are very adept at stealing food, hiking or biking through the trails or fishing from your camp site.  An awesome place to go camping, if that is your thing.

  

The park consists of 1,136 acres of protected islands . . . home to beach plants, mangroves, wetlands, palm hammocks, hardwoods and native plants.  It is the one place in this area that I imagine is as it was when the Spanish explorers first discovered its vast beauty.

The park's natural ecosystems provides a home to more than 290 documented species of birds and the beaches provide refuge to the loggerhead sea turtle as they nest between April and September.

  

Fort De Soto's three miles of white sandy beaches was named America’s Top Beach for 2009 by Trip Advisor, the world's largest online travel community. In 2005, “Dr. Beach,” named Fort De Soto the nation’s #1 Beach.

Here are some photos we took . . .

Click here for the official website of Fort Desoto Park.

We plan on visiting again very soon to check

 out other amenities the park provides . . . 

hopefully for a couple days of camping and fishing!

This post has been linked up with the

following blog hop/meme . . .

Sunsets on a Florida Beach . . . Anna Maria Island

Sunsets are one of the most precious gifts of nature and I feel

so blessed to have been born in such a beautiful part of the world.

The following video was created from photos I took while on
vacation at Anna Maria Island, Florida, one of the most
beautiful beaches in Florida.

Click here for more information on Anna Maria Island, Florida
Hope you enjoyed the video!

Clearwater Beach, Florida

My first recollection of "the beach" was Clearwater Beach, where we spent several vacations and holidays every year.

Back in the day, the beach was lined with huge rental beach homes and the smaller mom and pop motels with assorted tourist traps, restaurants and nightly open air auctions. The backdrop was the gorgeous Gulf of Mexico with sounds, sights and smells that nothing else can replace.

The week after school let out was designated "Beach Week" . . . and everyone I knew from school went to Clearwater Beach for that week. Well . . . everyone but me . . . it was not allowed.

As a young adult, it was still my favorite beach and I would load my beloved blue Camaro with friends, brother, cousins . . . whoever wanted to go . . . just about every weekend. I adored the beach and it was my favorite place ever . . .

Many years have gone by and other area beaches and attractions became popular and I wanted to experience "new and different" . . . I had not been back to Clearwater Beach in a very long time.

My boyfriend and I decided at the spur of the moment to visit the beach, so we packed the van, picked up my mom and headed out towards a new adventure and old memories at the same time.

Gone were the mom and pop motels . . . in their place were gorgeous high rise hotels and fancy restaurants. The sadness hit when I knew we were at the beach, but could not see it like we could before all the new development.

It was comforting to see some of the old tourist traps made it through the transformation, although we didn't have time to walk the street and take it all in. Some of my fondest recollections of beach visits past were shopping at the shell shops that sold everything made with shells, loose shells, seahorses and sand dollars . . . I still have some of them!

Anyway . . . today's visit brought back many old memories that made me happy and sad. Sad was the fishing pier my dad and I fished many allnighters at was gone . . . a victim of a recent hurricane . . . we sat on a portion that was made into a seating area. Cool, but way more cool was the fishing pier of days past . . .

Happy was seeing the little boy come out in my boyfriend's eyes when we finally got out to the beach. The gulf beaches hold some kind of magic to kids of all ages . . . and it all came back to me today too. My mom shared her childhood memories of the beach and the way it was back in her day. I could see the little girl in her eyes too . . .

It was unfortunately a very rainy day and we didn't want to get our cameras wet . . . so, only a few photos of the beach for today's visit . . . but we will be visiting again very soon :-)

Some photos from today's visit:

Some vintage postcards from Clearwater Beach:

HitchHiker's Guide to Tampa, Florida

TAMPA . . . The word "Tampa" is a Native American word used to refer to the area when the first European explorers arrived in Florida whose meaning is sometimes claimed to mean "sticks of fire" in the language . . ."The place to gather sticks" . . . which also relates to the high concentration of lightning strikes that Tampa Bay receives every year during the hot and wet summer months.


HISTORY

Spanish explorer Ponce de Leon first arrived in the Tampa Bay area in 1513, but the Spaniards focused their attention on settling eastern Florida and left the western areas alone. In 1824, only two months after the arrival of the first American settler, four companies of the U.S. Army established Fort Brooke to protect the strategic harbor at Tampa Bay.

Tampa owes its commercial success to Tampa Bay and the Hillsborough River. When phosphates were discovered nearby in the late 1880's, the resulting mining and shipping industries prompted a boom of growth and wealth that lasted through the 1890's. The Port of Tampa is now the seventh largest in the nation; today phosphate shipping is supplemented by trade in shrimp. A pleasure cruise line operates as well.

In 1886, Vicente Martinez Ybor established a cigar factory in Tampa. From the steps of Ybor's factory, José Marti, sometimes called the George Washington of Cuba, exhorted the cigar workers to take up arms against Spain in the late 1800's. Hispanic culture enlivens Ybor City which covers about 2 square miles between Nebraska Avenue, 22nd Street, Columbus Drive and East Broadway.

The military has also had an ongoing role in Tampa's development. The city was the primary outfitting and embarkation port for U.S. troops bound for Cuba during the Spanish-American War. Today the U.S. Operations Command is headquartered nearby at MacDill Air Force Base.





WHAT MAKES TAMPA UNIQUE . . .
DIVERSITY

One of the things that makes Tampa unique is the Gasparilla celebration, a festival similar to Mardi Gras with a pirate theme . . . best to check out the video . . . click here.

As far as I'm concerned, this is as close as I'm going to get to living in paradise. There are warm breezes, gone is the humidity, the daily afternoon tropical thunderstorms or threats of an impending hurricane and only the occasional cold day and night (what I call cold) . . . this is winter in Tampa, the best time to visit my part of the world. We occasionally get a freeze at night, but it never snows and cold fronts usually move fast and last a day or two, then back to warm and sunny Florida weather.

No matter what you are in the mood for, you can find it here, there is lots to do . . . you can relax and dine at a waterside cafe, take a streetcar ride to Channelside for shopping and back to Ybor City for a delight all to itself.

Ybor City is an experience that takes you back to another era, known as Florida's Latin Quarter, wrought iron balconies, globe streetlights, brick-lined walkways and the majestic architecture of cigar factories, social clubs and other unique buildings. It provides a glimpse into an era rich with culture and history . . . famous for Spanish Flamenco dancers, Cuban sandwiches, hand-rolled cigars, shopping at Centro Ybor by day and when the sun goes down, party at the many restaurants, nightclubs and bars that line the streets of Ybor City that are so reminiscent of New Orleans.

For those into sports, Tampa is home of the Tampa Bay Buccaneers, Tampa Bay Lightning and winter home of the New York Yankees and served three times as Super Bowl host.

Tampa is one hour away from Disney World and the home of Busch Gardens, where you can ride world known roller coasters like the Montu, Sheikra, Gwazi, Kumba and many other attractions, one of the most awesome zoos in the world and gorgeous gardens to walk through. Check out all to do at Busch Gardens by visiting their website, which is a treat in itself . . .
Busch Gardens website

Cross Tampa Bay and you will find white, sugar sand beaches, sport fishing, jet skiing, parasailing . . . there is nothing like walking the beach at dawn or watching a spectacular sunset on the Gulf of Mexico.

There is also an abundance of state parks, botanical gardens . . . a nature lover's paradise.

Famous people from Tampa . . . Ray Charles, Nick Carter of the Backstreet Boys, his brother Aaron Carter, Hulk Hogan, Lauren Hutton, baseball players Dwight Gooden, Gary Sheffield and Steve Garvey, singer/songwriter Stephen Stills . . . and me!