Clearwater? Sarasota? Who Knows Where the Next Dream Leads?

Well, starting Friday we've been all over the place here in the Gulf coast area of Florida looking for that place that "just feels right" and can be our next home. At this point in our lives nothing is "forever." What we may like and even love as a place to live can change. Like Becky says, "I might change my mind some day."  Indeed.  And so might I.  But for now Florida looks like the next place for us to live. So we came to Orlando to house sit for a few days and have been traveling to nearby areas on the Gulf coast to see if there's a place that feels like it could be home for a while as we continue to dream this dream.

St. Pete does have a neat downtown area, just as Mike told us. It's a nice place and could possibly become home. We drove over to St. Pete beach and liked it.  Here's a picture of the 250 miles we drove over a 10 hour period with various stops along the way to check into visitor info centers, beaches and so forth.

Yes, we drove for 10 hours checking out all the different areas on the peninsula. Everything from St. Pete at
the South end over to Clearwater Beach (super crowded and waaaay to commercial and touristy) to Pinellas Park
and Gandy Road.  The peninsula is huge and offers all kinds of neighborhoods ranging from "you don't want to
live THERE!" to upscale gated communities. Hmmmm, where to land???

St.Petersburg Beach ("D" on the map) is actually out on a spit of land -- a barrier island -- and was quite nice.

St. Pete Beach. Nice!

 And there's downtown St. Pete that also looked like a lot of fun. It had shops and restaurants a-plenty all along Central Avenue.

The Central Avenue area in downtown St. Petersburg

The St. Petersburg pier looking out into the Gulf of Mexico

Then, on Saturday we went to one of the places Becky especially wanted to see: Sarasota. Wow! What a nice town. It reminded us both of Jupiter. The landscape architects have definitely been in Sarasota. It has art and culture everywhere in the downtown area including a campus of the University of South Florida. Performing arts. Museums. All of that and more.  We drove through a number of beautiful neighborhoods and visited the beaches at Siesta Key and Longboat Key as well as Armand Circle on Longboat Key. There is so much to explore there.

Siesta Key Beach - proudly proclaimed as the #1 Best Beach in America by local chambers of commerce and others
who promote the area.  And it is beautiful. The sand is so fine that it feels almost like talcum powder. And it's
nearly as white as snow.  The beach is very deep and a few miles long, so there's plenty of room to
play soccer, beach volley ball and to pitch umbrellas and toss towels on the sand -- all without worrying about

being too crowded.  Overall, YES! It is the nicest beach we've seen in Florida to date.

We got back home to Orlando and began checking out the long term rental situation in Sarasota only to find mostly condos -- very few single family homes to rent. So we'll keep looking. That's what this dream is all about at the moment. Just looking. Hoping to find that "perfect" place and "perfect" house.  ha!

Me thinks there's nothing "perfect" this side of Heaven. The cat sitting next to me as I type might disagree though. She's perfectly happy licking her feet and purring.  Is there something we're missing here??  LOL