If you spend any time in Tampa Bay during the summer, chances are you will get caught in an afternoon thunderstorm. On average, the Tampa Bay area has about 100 rainy days throughout the year. Storms typically last no longer than an hour, but the question of what to do while you wait out these [...]
Have you ever wondered what it would be like to be dropped off on a private island where all of your needs would be tended to? On my recent trip to the island, I was impressed by the number of facilities available. Caladesi Island State Park comes pretty close to providing all the beach essentials [...]
Honeymoon Island is one of Florida’s most popular State Parks. The white sand beaches softly blending into turquoise water are just like the advertisements for Visit Florida. The shore is sprinkled with sun-bleached shells ripe for the picking to take home as a souvenir. It’s easy to see why many people chose Honeymoon Island as [...]
Hunsader Farms is like an amusement park loaded with farm activities. The humble beginnings of the Hunsader Farm started with an eighty-acre crop of tomatoes. Over the decades, the farm has grown to add additional buildings to the property, including a barn to house produce for the farmer's market, an ice cream shop, and a [...]
My visit to Cow Creek Farm started early before the Florida sun could warm the air on this cloudless morning. A faded green tractor hauling a wagon rattled into place, ready for our tour around the fifteen-acre farm. As I walked to the check-in booth, the farm’s two resident donkeys greeted me with a bellowing [...]
Tarpon Springs is known for two things; Greek food and sponges. The two may seem like an unlikely pairing; however, the relationship started in the early 1900s, when Greek sponge divers settled in Tarpon Springs and created a thriving industry selling natural sponges harvested from the Gulf of Mexico. Today, Tarpon Springs relies mainly on [...]
Sunsational Farms is an hour North of Orlando in Umatilla, Florida. I knew I had arrived when I was greeted by the enormous glowing orange perched on the front lawn. This overgrow orange has acted as a roadside attraction in many towns across Florida since the 70s. After being abandoned in a field, it was [...]
There’s never a good time for a car emergency. Something minor can consume an entire day for repairs. This week I picked up a fragment of metal from the highway damaging the sidewall of one of my tires. Of all the mechanical issues, a flat tire is the lesser evil. Fortunately, the tire remained intact [...]
Amid stop-and-go traffic on searing blacktop pavement lies a tropical roadside oasis. St. Petersburg's Sunken Gardens is one of Florida’s last roadside attractions. Its humble beginnings started as a hobby for the landowner who drained this land of its marshy water and created the tropical garden we continue to enjoy over a hundred years later. [...]
As I look back on the past year, the list of favorite places I traveled was long. This year was a mixed bag of different adventures. Aaron and I planned two bucket list vacations that took us to the white sands of Hawaii and then to the mountains of Wyoming. We visited as many National [...]
