The focus of this blog is Leonbergers. However, sometimes I post about other things and today I am posting about our short vacation to Florida, to the St. Regis Longboat Key Resort in Sarasota to be specific. It was just for a few days. We were supposed to come home last night but the plane was more than five hours late due to the thunderstorm in the picture below, so we came home this morning. That is the reason I have not been posting since Wednesday, and I have mostly been missing from the blogosphere in other ways as well.
Now a day whenever we go on vacation we have someone we know well and trust stay with our dog Rollo, in our house, and sleep with him during the night. This way that someone is house sitting for us too. It is safe, Rollo is taken care of, and it keeps potential burglars away. However, that does not mean that Rollo is happy when we leave.
Photos of St. Regis Longboat Key Resort
Here are some photos of the resort.
Photos of the Gulf of Mexico
I swam in the Gulf of Mexico quite a bit. It was maybe a bit too warm, 86 degrees, or 30 degrees Celsius. That is not refreshing but certainly easy to jump into. One good thing with the Gulf of Mexico as compared to the Atlantic Ocean on the East coast of Florida (at least the place we’ve visited) was that there were hardly any Jellyfish or Zooids, the ones often called Portuguese Man of War. There were sting rays though.
The dark picture is of the Gulf of Mexico at night. You can see Venus and a thunderstorm cloud. We had one thunderstorm every day, which I have to say is a lot. In Texas we’ve had sunny and super-hot and sunny weather every day for almost two months, In Texas we have very severe thunderstorms in spring, but it seems like Florida has more medium sized thunderstorms pretty much every day in summer.
Photos of Florida Beers
The beers I drank were Luminescence from Florida Avenue Brewing Co. Jai Alai IPA from Cigar City Brewing. Unholy from Coppertail Brewing Co. Postcard Pils from Green Bench Brewing Co.
The Lagoon Adventure Feeding Sting Rays
The trip had two highlights for me, swimming in the Gulf of Mexico and snorkeling and feeding the sting rays in their Lagoon Pool. They had a large pool that looked like a little lake surrounded by rocks and parts of it were glass. I did not take good pictures. First of all, I took photos straight through the glass standing in front of the glass. As you may know the reflections in the glass will destroy the photo, something I did not think about until afterwards. I have included a couple of bad pictures as well as ChatGPT generated images of me feeding sting rays.
Feeding the string rays was an amazing experience. The instructor had a big bucket of dead squid that we used to feed the sting rays. At first, I did it all wrong. I placed the squid right in front of the sting rays. However, sting rays have their mouth underneath their bodies, not in front. Not only did the sting rays not get any squid, the fish knew of this mistake and took advantage of the situation. They jumped to get the squid and also bit my fingers. They swallowed my fingers whole. It did not hurt. The fish had very small teeth.
In the pictures below the fish are not swallowing my fingers whole as they did in reality. However, it is against ChatGPT community standards to generate images with fish swallowing fingers. Don’t ask me why.
I can add that the sting rays were very friendly and seemed to like to be petted and they came up to us, maybe hoping for more food. I can add that the sting rays as well as the fish were well fed. No one was starving.
Back home to Rollo
We arrived late early this morning and this is what we saw. Our house sitter had left but Rollo was standing in his window waiting for us. He was very happy to see us.
Leonberger Life 
Welcome back! The resort looks beautiful; too bad you had to deal wtih daily thunderstorms. Love the “angry” cloud photo! 😀 Interesting about the stingrays! “Friendly” isn’t a term that comes to mind, so that was a revelation. Rollo looks so lonely, staring out of his window. He must have been overjoyed at your return. 💖
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Thank you so much Debbie. I should say that they clipped the barbs so if they hit you it is not dangerous. I accidentally touch and scraped myself on the remaining tail/barb but it did not nothing, and that was me not them. They never did anything even though we were touching them all over. Very harmless and friendly, but they begged for food and they ate it out of your hand. You have to be careful not to step on them though. They allegedly would not do anything if that happened but you hurt them. Yes Rollo hates it when we leaves. He goes and looks out the window when we leave. He may not sit there the whole time but I think he hears us when we come home and goes to look out the window. Leaving him is difficult.
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Sounds like a great trip, Thomas. We’re heading to Key West (first time) in January.
One of the stories I like to tell from my youth has to do with the Gulf of Mexico. We spent one Christmas in Chicago with my uncle, aunt, and cousins. There was over a foot of snow on the ground. On Dec. 26th, my cousin, one of his buddies, and I drove to Florida. Like foolish teenagers (I was 18 at the time), we decided to drive straight there, only stopping to get gas, go to the bathroom, or eat. It took us about 24 hours to get to our grandparents’ condo. On Dec. 27th, we were swimming in the Gulf of Mexico. Amazing how much the weather changed during that time span. It wasn’t too hot for swimming, but it was odd just to walk in without the normal burst of cold one expects when getting into the water.
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