Spending time exploring the Bradenton Area




Riverview Blvd - beautiful scenery

Now that's a big tree!

Native canoe at Desoto Memorial

View from Linger Lodge

Some of the last few visitors to the Lodge

Linger Lodge

Another beautiful view from the Linger Lodge



Scene in the Village of Arts area

Relaxing at the beach - doesn't get any better!

Beautiful day

Capt Chappy cooling off in the water

Desoto Memorial by water

Sandbar on a Sunday

Art?

Interesting

One of the art galleries in the Village of the Arts area

Just one of the murals around the area

Star Fish Company

Great place to eat

That's what they say!

View from the dock at Star Fish Company

Traps for the crabs and lobster

Is that NautiNell, the mermaid??

Great Special!

Steel Drums  - great music

Spending the day at the Elks Tiki Bar

One of the cool cars at the show

Mike's favorite

Several cool cars

they went on and on......

Gotta like this one!

Storms a brewing........

It's been more than a month since my last posting.  Wow, how time does fly.  Hard to believe that we’ve been here over two months already. We’ve been busy exploring the area.  

First thing – we took a road trip to Marathon to pick up our car.  It was a quick turn-around trip.  We did get to talk to Roy, the Dockmaster, at Sombrero Marina.  The restaurant is slowly coming along.  They are still saying that it will be open in October but everyone has their doubts.  I think it will be closer to the first of December.  Things don’t happen quickly in the Keys……  We’ll see.  We are still planning to spend the winter in Marathon.  We’ll see what happens.  J 

One Sunday we took the Whaler up the river to check it out.  Our marina sits right on the Manatee River.  It’s not very nice water but the scenery is nice.  They say that there are alligators up the river but we haven’t seen any signs, of course.  We had lunch at one of our favorite spots – Woody’s.  Then ventured on up the river a ways.  It’s pretty much residential as you get up toward the Braden River.  It was a great ride and a great day.

Another Sunday we took a dinghy ride down the river back out toward the Gulf and the Intercoastal Waterway.  This turned out to be a little longer trip.  There is a sandbar near the Cortez Bridge on Anna Maria Island that collects quite a few boats on the weekends.  A lot like home where people beach their boats and stand waist deep or bob around – with a beer in hand.  It was fun to see all the different boats.  Of course, a shower came up about the time we were getting ready to head home. We rode it out under a bridge trying to stay dry.  There is a very shallow area (flats) where you really have to be careful if you want to run out of the channel.  We didn’t have any problems going because the tide was up but coming back we should have stayed in the channel.  We got in the shallow area where our depth gauge read less than a foot!  It seemed to take forever to get back to where there was enough water.  Next time we’ll be a little more diligent about staying in the channel!

The weather has been in a pattern of afternoon showers about every day.  They don’t hang around long but it’s getting rather annoying!  One early evening we decided to ride the scooters to the Boiler Room and check out their sandwiches.  This is a local hangout with pool tables, etc.  The food was pretty good but before we could get back home – the sky opened up and dumped on us.  We really only had about a mile or so to go to get home but it was busy streets and the rain was pounding.  I wasn’t too happy about it.  We were soaked to our underwear!  Oh well, another adventure…!

We’ve made friends with Tom and Joyce who are on a sailboat across from us.  In fact, we first met them when we were at Marsh Harbor in the Bahamas.  They are a great couple.  They took us to a very interesting place for lunch the other day.  It’s a restaurant at the Linger Lodge RV Resort.  This Lodge began as a campground in 1945.  It is “decorated” with several stuffed animals that are native to this area.  I believe the owner is an amateur taxidermist or something like that.  Anyway, the place was full of animals of all sorts including a huge alligator about 12 feet long.  Very unique!  I had some of the best gumbo that I’ve had in a very long time!

Another place we checked out for lunch was the Star Fish Company.  This is a fish market/restaurant.  All the seating is outside on the river near the Cortez Bridge.  The food was great and very reasonable.  It is definitely a part of the “old Florida”.  Another local hangout.  We will definitely go back to that place again.  

I talked Mike into going to the beach the other day.  He likes the beach but not much into sitting for very long.  Anyway, we packed a cooler, our chairs, umbrella and sunscreen and off we went.  We decided to go on over to Bradenton Beach (Coquina Beach) since we’d been to the public beach on Anna Maria before.  This beach was less populated but with no lifeguard.  It was absolutely gorgeous and the water was crystal clear.  We spent most of the day. On our way back we stopped in at another local bar – the Sports Lounge for a cold one.  Very friendly bartender – we were the only ones in there so I guess he was rather lonesome.  Didn’t think he’d ever stop and come up for air!  HA!  What a great day!

We had a very nice Labor Day Weekend.  Saturday we took a scooter ride down the scenic Riverview Blvd.  It is absolutely beautiful.  There are huge gorgeous homes and manicured lawns along with beautiful trees with Spanish moss shading the streets.  We rode it all the way to the De Soto Memorial National Park.  This is where De Soto made one of his first stops during his expedition through Florida territory back in the 1500s.  I should have paid more attention to my history teachers back in school.  What I understand is that in the wake of Columbus there were many other adventurers sailing to America from Spain in search of gold and silver.  He ended up dying in Arkansas and was buried in the Mississippi River.  Who knew!

We then stopped in at the local Elks Lodge for lunch.  They were having several special events during the weekend celebrating Labor Day.  Their Lodge is nice and even has a pool with a Tiki bar. 

On Sunday, September 1 – you could saltwater fish without a license so Mike decided I should go out fishing with him.  We enjoyed it but the fishing wasn’t all that great.  It was also the first day of snook season.  Snook are really good eating.  But there had been a bad freeze in January 2010 here and had really took out the population so the season has been closed since then.  I guess they’ve populated enough since then so they opened the season again.   It was all about catching snook – however, we didn’t.  In fact we didn’t catch anything big enough to keep.  Oh well, we had a good time.  At least I did.  I’m not sure Mike is big on taking me fishing again anytime soon!  LOL!

That evening we went back to the Elks Lodge for bbq ribs and steel drum music.  The guy playing the drums was great.  The ribs were okay – they were billing them as St Louis Ribs.  I think Mike may have been able to teach them a few things about cooking ribs….!  Anyway we enjoyed it.

They had a nice Car Show on Monday and the weather was perfect.  We checked it out and Mike was definitely in his element.  There were some really different cars there.  This time we decided to try somewhere else for lunch.  Enough of the Elks food.  This time it was Smitty’s – for wings.

Last night Tom and Joyce invited us over to their boat for chili.  We really enjoyed visiting with them and the chili was wonderful.  A wonderful end to Labor Day Weekend.

Well, over a week has passed since I started this post.  Since then our dock – “F” Dock- had a potluck dinner.  One thing for sure – boaters like to eat! The food was great.  And even though it did rain a bit we all had a good time.  There are quite a few boats on our dock and it was nice to get to meet all of them.  There are two other Jefferson boats here.  We’ve spent a lot of time comparing notes with them. 

Last weekend was the “festival” at the Village of the Arts.  This is a section of town not but a few blocks from the marina.  We decided we needed to check it out.  Hopefully it picks up during the on season because there really wasn’t much going on when we were there.  The area is made up of old houses that have been made into galleries.  They are peppered through the neighborhood among just plain old houses – if you get my drift.  Anyway, we enjoyed it.  We had taken the scooters so the ride was nice anyway. 

There was a luau being held this past weekend on Anna Maria Island.  The Island pretty much used to shut down during the month of September.  The tourists go home and school starts so there really isn’t much to see.  But they have tried to keep things going the past few years.  We decided to give it a try.  Well, the luau wasn’t anything to get excited about but we enjoyed eating at the Bridge Tender Grill and watching the people.  There were plenty of people to watch.  They had a contest for the coolest island garb so it made for good people watching.  Oh yeah, it rained a little too.  Surprise!

We FINALLY found a place we really like.  It’s Aces – a blues bar and a really down home type of place.  Very friendly – good food and good music.  AND they don’t gouge you for your drinks.  Wish we had stumbled on this place earlier in our stay!  On Sundays they have an Italian Buffet for only $6.95 and good live music with no cover.  We are going back over there tonight and check out the jam session.  Last Saturday night – Michael Allman (son of Greg Allman) played – sorry we missed that.  Anthony Gomes is playing there in a couple of weeks.  He’s a really good blues guitarist.  We’ve seen him before when we used to hit the blues circuits.  Hopefully we’ll get to see him again.  This place has quite a bit of history to it.  It used to be an old barn that was in Tennessee.  This lady had it torn down and moved to here in Bradenton where it was rebuilt and turned into a bar.  Not sure why….  Anyway they are really big into live music and good food.  That’s perfect for us!

There are a few places on our list that we want to see before we leave this area - Ringling Museum in Sarasota, the Robinson Preserve, the Palma Sola Botanical Park and the Whimsical Museum.  We better get busy!  Around the first of October we plan to head over to Caladesi National Park which is just north of here about 40 miles.  We will take the boat and spend a week or so there.  It's really beautiful there - at least that's what we've been told.  It was rated one of the top ten beaches in Florida.  After that we're not sure but will probably keep the boat at Dunedin Marina which is just across the water from the Park.  We are tentatively planning a trip back to Missouri for a week or so in late October.  When we return we will head the NautiNell down the coast and back to the Keys for the winter.  Well, at least that's our plan today! 

Till next time!

Admiral “C”

P.S.  This took forever to get posted because our computer had a glitch.  Finally it's working so this one is done.  There has been more going on and I have plenty more to say as usual....so I'll catch you up in a few days.