Yesterday, I drove down to Manasota Key with a couple friends. Since they’d never been before, I showed Katie and Alyssa how to hunt for fossil shark teeth. Quick learners, they wandered along the shore doing the shark tooth shuffle. It wasn’t long before they both had a couple handfuls of shiny, black teeth.

I’ve played down there a few times before and though I am an avid hunter of all kinds of treasure, yesterday I was mostly mesmerized by the water. I love the beach in the area where I live but the color of the water south of Venice is just stunning.

We stayed for sunset (good thing we did, it was amazing) but by then we were starving so we stopped by an old Florida oddity, the Linger Lodge. The original log cabin lodge was built on the banks of the Braden River back in 1945.

Sadly, a fire destroyed the lodge in the late 1950s. The current version was built in 1968 and the decor hasn’t changed much through the ensuing decades. While we weren’t adventurous enough to order off the Road Kill Menu, we did try their alligator chowder and gator bites, which we all agreed were quite tasty.

What a wonderful day!