On our second free day we visited the John and Mable Ringling Estate in Sarasota. On its beautifully landscaped 66 acres are the following:

Cà d'Zan Mansion that was built in 1924-25 for 1.5 million. Click on the link to find more details, like how much it cost to restore it.

There are two Circus Museums, one is the world's largest miniature circus, The Howard Bros. Circus Model and the other is the Ringling Museum displaying costumes, posters, equipment and restoration projects such as their traveling train and circus artifacts. Pictured below left Rick imagines himself squeezing into Lou Jacobs infamous "little clown car."

John and Mable enjoyed traveling and collecting art properly displayed in their Museum of Art for visitors to enjoy.

When entering the grounds there are 6 flagpoles that represent the center pole layout for the largest canvas big tops used by Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey combined shows. The poles are 60 feet apart from each other.

Rick and I were on the road for a six-week trek. We spend some time in Florida near Sarasota because the last time we were there we did not concentrate on the lower gulfside. We spent about 10 days in the area, then set aside two days of rest. One of them was on Boca Grande Beach on Gasparilla Island State Park. It is restricted to fishing and shelling only. Later we definately found out why. Rick was relaxing in his chair (pictured below right) and saw a stingray leaping out of the water. Later, my sister saw a shark and one of the fishermen caught a baby shark. A local egret was bugging him to get his bait of minnows.