On our third day at Oscar Scherer SP we drove to the Sarasota waterfront to bicycle there. We biked around Bayfront Park enjoying views of the bay and downtown Sarasota as well as seeing the marina and all the people out enjoying a beautiful Sunday afternoon. Since our last visit here. Sarasota has extended the trail over the Ringling Bridge to Bird Island Park, and we enjoyed biking that new section.
The next day we broke camp and headed to the Ringling Museum in Sarasota which consists of the Ringling Museum of Art, the Circus Museum, and Ca’ d’Zan, John and Mabel Ringling’s winter home. There wasn’t time to see it all, so we decided to save the art museum for another visit. Ca’ d’Zan (which means House of John) is a 5 story Venetian Gothic mansion filled with the treasures the Ringlings collected as they traveled extensively in Europe looking for new circus acts.
The Wisconsin, their private railcar in which they traveled about three-fourths of each year, is included in the Circus Museum along with hand-carved circus wagons, a calliope, circus posters, and an original human cannonball machine. A highlight is the world's largest miniature circus, the Howard Bros. Circus Model. The model is a replica of Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey Circus from 1919 – 1938.
The grounds of the Ringling Estate are quite impressive, with gardens and huge banyan trees.
After our stop at the Ringling Museum, we continued to Caladesi RV Park which is just north of Dunedin and right on the Pinellas Trail. On Monday we planned to bike the eight miles north on the Pinellas Trail to Tarpon Springs and have lunch at the sponge docks at Mykonos restaurant. However, a stiff south wind caused us to head south on the trail for about four miles to Dunedin’s Hammock Park which is listed in the "Great Florida Birding Trail Book." This park reminded us of Oscar Scherer in that it was a natural oasis within a congested urban area. We biked the main trails of the park and came upon some wading birds right away. Irene spent a good bit of time photographing the birds.
We then ate our picnic lunch in a quiet interior section of the park which appeared to have been a tangerine grove at an earlier time. We saw many tangerine trees albeit with very small fruit. We enjoyed a leisurely lunch with a nice breeze and plenty of shade. Later we met up with a very short fellow on the trail.
Our return trip home was assisted by the same stiff south wind that had made out southbound leg a bit difficult. Though it was a hard pedal up, we enjoyed experiencing the trail overpass of Alt US 19.
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