Punta Gorda Quilt Show, Mote Aquarium, Myakka River State Park

Our past few days in Sarasota have been busy. Thursday we decided to drive over to Lido Key, across the causeway from Sarasota, and tour the Mote Aquarium which turned out to be very good. On Friday Sheila met up with some State College quilting friends and spent most of the day at a show in Punta Gorda, a small town south of here. Meanwhile I went for a cruiser ride and went over to Siesta Key Beach (a famous US beach, supposed to be one of the best in the States), but was unable to "find" a parking spot so I came back to our condo and sat at the pool most of the day, not bad, though. Walked to the little town center again for a nice al fresco dinner at a Scottish restaurant. Weather turned a little cooler today so we decided to visit the Myakka River State Park not far from here. Had a very good time and saw many nice heron's, egret's, ahingua's, just to name a few. Also did some side hikes and did see a few good looking "gators". I guess the highlight of the visit was a climbing tower, I believe it was about 78 feet high and we got to it by crossing over a 100 foot swing bridge that only could hold four persons at a time. I've attached a few photos of that tower and bridge. The weird thing about it was that the wind was blowing fairly hard today and the entire structure (tower) w

as very noticeably swaying! It was a little nerve-racking to be up on top of this thing and it began to sway so we didn't spend a lot of time up there. The cool front is supposed to hang around tomorrow so we may go down to Armand's Circle just to check out the shops. Weather is supposed to rebound on Monday so we'll be attempting another visit to Siesta Key Beach early in the week.