Sanford and Sun

After visiting Spongeorama on Wednesday, we drove to Sanford, Florida, just northeast of Orlando, to visit Joe's brother Ed, his wife Concetta, and Concetta's dad Tony. We hadn't seen them in a long time, and we had a great visit with them Wednesday night, and enjoyed some delicious, authentic Italian food prepared by Concetta, who was born in Italy. 

On Thursday, they gave us a tour of Sanford and the surrounding area. The weather in the morning was cool, probably mid 30s, but there was lots of sunshine and later in the day we were in the 70s. The first place we went was to Blue Spring State Park, where we saw more of the Florida manatees. As opposed to yesterday at Craig Park, where we saw only a few manatees, today's manatee count was 655. (Yes, someone actually counted them.)

Blue Spring State Park

Manatees

Walking path in park

We drove through some surrounding towns, including Stetson University in DeLand, Florida. According to Ed, Stetson was named for the man who created the Stetson hat.


We also drove through some small quaint towns with revitalized downtown areas. One such nearby town was Lake Mary.




We ended our tour with a stop to view Lake Monroe in a beautiful setting with Palm trees.





We headed back to Ed and Concetta's house where we enjoyed some more authentic Italian cuisine and another evening of enjoyable visit with family.

On Friday, we left Sanford and drove to Fort Lauderdale. We enjoyed some gorgeous oceanside scenery along the way, passing some beautiful homes, including Mar a Lago. We didn't get any good pictures of Mar a Lago, as there were tall hedges and a fence surrounding it, but we did get a picture of the street sign that the house is located on.




The city of Palm Springs is true to its name, with lots of beautiful palm trees lining the streets.



On Saturday, we will board the Princess Majestic for our cruise. There are rumors that there is an Internet cafe on board the ship, and also that you can purchase Internet in your room for a day, instead of having to purchase for the entire trip. So I may be able to update the blog from the ship at times.

We are looking forward to some warm weather and lots of sun, because frankly, during our time here in the south, we've had more cold weather than we expected. On Tuesday morning, the temperature in Morgan City, La. was 24 degrees. So we headed south to Florida. On Wednesday and Thursday mornings, the temperature in Tarpon Springs and Sanford, Fl. was in the mid 30's with some frost. So we headed south to Fort Lauderdale. They are predicting temps of 34 for Saturday morning in Ft. Lauderdale. (The record is 33.) So we're heading south to the Caribbean. If the cold weather follows us there, I give up!

Comments

  1. AnonymousFebruary 14, 2026 at 5:54 AM

    Beautiful views! Love the manatees and the quaint towns there!
    Cathy

    ReplyDelete

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