Photo Gallery One - 2026's First Trip
Keeping with our shorter is better theme, this will be another abbreviated story. This trip finds us in our usual location for a winter/anniversary trip - Florida. What's not usual are the two specific locations - Tampa and Bradenton - both on the Gulf Coast.
We started in Tampa which was sort of a last minute decision. Weather here was bad and we had two extra days so we left town a little early. We were so glad that we did after we drove out in the dark through subfreezing temperatures and some blowing snow. The logical route is through/around Atlanta and then straight south on I-75. If anyone read about it, there had been an accident/car fire just south of town that snarled traffic for miles; and although there were possible ways around the area, we had already passed the last one before we encountered the mess. After that and a stop for a nice breakfast, we had smooth sailing the rest of the way. We arrived in Tampa mid-afternoon, too early to check in; so, as we often do, we headed to the Visitors Center in downtown and found a wonderful crew of knowledgeable and engaging folks who provided oodles of great ideas for places to see/eat based on our particular interests. Weather was, and remained so while in Tampa, a bit less than ideal (cool to cold and windy), but we vowed to make the best of it.
Our hotel was in the Channel District, bounded by Ybor Channel, Garrison Channel, and the Hillsborough River. Although unknown to us when we made the reservations, it turned out to be perfect as we were just a couple of blocks from one of the many trolley stops that provided free transportation from a midtown stop, all along the peninsula we were on, with a terminal stop in Ybor City - perfect for many of the places we would visit. Image 1-1 in the beautiful interior of one of those historic trolley cars we rode. Image 1-3 shows the exterior of another as it reaches the main transfer point where it connects with buses and other public transportation. Around town we saw a couple of the many murals - the City of Tampa Postcard (1-2) and another random mural (1-4) as we walked to dinner one evening. One of our goals for this trip was finding working shrimp boats, and the aerial scene in 1-5 was the Tampa Shrimp Boat docks which sits in the middle of McKay Bay - an easy drive from our hotel, which also took us through historic Ybor City - famous for Cuban culture (food and cigars) along with many wandering chickens (1-6/7). Construction and repairs from hurricanes made getting to some of our destinations difficult, weather was not particularly great, and while we enjoyed our brief stop in Tampa, our photos will end here and maybe we'll try this again another day.
The next stop was in Bradenton, a relatively short trip from Tampa. Interestingly though, our first photo is an aerial shot of a water tower in Venice (1-8), just a chance stop on the route we picked to get to Fort Myers Beach with minimal goals - find some more shrimp boats and go to Doc Ford's for lunch. The shrimp boats (1-9) were, as luck would have it, right across the water from the restaurant, where we were able to sit outside and have a wonderful meal, then make a quick trip to visit/fly the docks, talk with a worker there about schedules, and see a pirate ship and crew to boot (1-11). This ended up being a rather full day with a repeated reminder: beaches plus water plus good weather equal masses of tourists and traffic - never on our To Do list. This reminder stuck with us all the way back to Bradenton.
In the calmer surrounds of our home for the next few days we did mostly sightseeing and wildlife photography (other than chickens). Our main "hunting grounds" turned out to be Emerson Point Preserve across the river in Palmetto, Robinson Preserve, and Perico Preserve - both just off the main road going west toward Anna Maria Island - a place after our first exposure we vowed to never return to - a true traffic nightmare. Images from those visits are a White Ibis in a tree (1-11), grazing Sandhill Cranes (1-12), an interesting sky/tree scene (1-13), a couple of brown pelicans (notice in 1-15 the graceful glide with a wingtip skimming the water); and finally, a Green Heron in the classic pose catching and retrieving a very small fish (and I can't even imagine how many it would take to make a meal!). The last image is an aerial view of the LECOM Park, a historic field which is home to the Tampa Bay Bucs spring training, which season was to open only a few days after our visit. We do have one additional group of 18 that we will get uploaded in a week or so.
