Our next stop, Sarasota, is just a quick hop from Venice. So we made the trip nice and slow, admiring the beautiful homes along the ICW. A couple were eye-popping, and I’ve included them in the photo gallery below. You can tell we are getting into civilization. Lots of bridges and none of them high enough for us to get under. We are moored at The Field Club, a yacht club that was founded by one of Marshal Field’s sons. He married a Palmer. (This connection is much more interesting for our Chicago friends….let’s just say it was a marriage made in an investment office.) The club is on 18 acres of loveliness. The clubhouse itself is a Spanish style building with an interior courtyard, replete with burbling fountain. The pool here is kept at a constant temperature of 85 degrees…heated in winter, cooled in summer. In Marathon, our pool gets to 90+ degrees in the summer — definitely not refreshing. The Field Club does have rules….long pants for men and women (even for lunch), shirts with collars for men, jackets required in the dining room in the evening. Thank goodness they gave up on ties a couple of years ago (Cliff has neither a tie, nor a shirt that would be appropriate with one). The formality is actually pretty nice. As we finished lunch, a group of older women began to talk (loudly) about last night’s Republican debate (hooray for Rand Paul and Carly Fiorina, boo for John Kasich and Ben Carson). I was glad we were done with lunch and sorry that I didn’t have an extra glass (or two) of wine 🙂
Believe it or not, this is a photo, not a painting. I snapped the picture as we went through a bridge passage and spotted the pelican perched very comfortably on a very thin cord.
The stately Field Club
Dot.Calm in Slip #2
Our approach to The Field Club…I don’t think we’ll fit!
Egrets perching in the mangroves. A familiar sight to us in the Keys.
And who doesn’t do a little dreaming as they cruise the ICW. This incredible house was built on a peninsula. We couldn’t figure out how they would get a car to it. Didn’t see a garage or a driveway. Maybe they helicopter in?