January 03rd, 2025

Howdy do and welcome to 2025.  How's it working out for you so far?

That's Tim and I in the photo by the way

I've packed away 2024 along with the Christmas tree and all of the decorations already.  well, almost all the decorations.  The lights are still up outside because I need help taking them down and since most  of those are either not working at all anymore or flickering in an ominous sort of fashion, once down they will go directly into the trash. Do not pass go, do not collect two hundred dollars. Which is a shame because they are expensive to replace and two hundred bucks would be kind of nice right about now.  Hoping to find a good after Christmas sale to replace them for next year.

My original plan was to de-Christmasify the house on New Year's Day but I rethought that plan since Tim had the day off and I absolutely didn't want to waste it with chores!  It was an absolutely gorgeously perfect Florida January Day.  Warm, sunny and not humid.  Perfection!  Definitely needed to spend the day outside!  But where?

After tossing a few ideas around we decided to find somewhere photo-worthy but not local.  I'm at those all the time anyway.  So we headed to Sarasota. 

The first stop was BayFront Park which is, as the name suggests, right on Sarasota Bay.  There is still some hurricane season damage that they need to deal with such as the adorable little Tiki Restaurant that is current closed due to storm damage, part of which includes a large sailboat in isn't where it's supposed to be:

A shame :(

But you know what?  The birds aren't bothered a bit by human problems.  There were plenty of birdies to be seen:

This particular park is nestled right alongside a marina and one of my favourite things to do there is to walk around reading the names of boats.  Not sure why but I find it tremendously amusing. Some boat owners are very clever with their name choices. I say "boats' generically.  There are sea going vessels of all shapes and sizes in this marina, including some yachts that are so big they look like floating villages.  The photo at the top of the page, by the way, was of our reflection in the window of one of the gigantic yachts that we saw there!!!

I took a few boats pictures that were rather hohum ultimately but my favourite shots by far was of some boat dogs!  Their owner was hosing off the salt water off them and they were digging it!!

Their absolute unfettered joy was so contagious that Tim and I were both laughing out loud watching!  It would be impossible to have a bad time with those guys!

This first stop gave us the idea to check out some other Sarasota Parks.  We tried to find one that was unfamiliar to us just for the fun of discovery.  Ultimately ended up at one we had never even heard of before called, Payne Park.  Turns out it is 60 acres of skate parks, disc golf, a giant circus themed children's playscape area, ponds, green area and beautiful tree lined paths nestled into the city tucked in beside a church whose bells began to ring as soon as we arrived.  Talk about a welcoming!

We spent some time watching the kiddos with their skate boards, bikes and scooters at the skate park area, and then were content to just wander through the rest of the park walking along those lovely paths.  One of my favourite moments there was watching a little girl on her scooter (not in the skate park but on the sidewalks) wearing a full length, super sparkly blue dress with sneakers and a ball cap.  Over and over she would walk her scooter to the top of a hill and the hitch up her long dress to step onto the scooter and push off before 'flying' down the hill.  She was pretty awesome.

Some random photos from the park:

We had a lovely time visiting these parks, both the old and the new and now have a plan to discover more parks that are new to us, not just in Sarasota but everywhere else we go!  Why haven't we done this before?  It was a great way to spend New Year's Day and a great start to the new year!

Hope yours was absolutely wonderful too!

​Have a terrific weekend!