Welcome to a compilation of several of my recent Sweet Spots.

Cousins

The first is a recent visit to Fort Myers, FL, to touch base with my snowbird cousin, Peggy Peterson and her husband Roger.  Joining us were my brother Roger and wife Beth, from Gainesville. It’s always a fun time when the six of us get together and I usually come away learning something I never knew about the family, even after all these years.

Gone

One of my favorite pit stops in my rambles around Florida is now gone forever.  That’s right, the famed Desert Inn at Yeehaw Junction, just 90 minutes north of me, is now a vacant piece of land up for sale.  The demolition job started five years ago by a wayward semi was finished recently by a wrecking ball and a parade of dump trucks.

High School Classmates

A handful of the alumni from my high school class in Bradley, Illinois, get together in Florida in the spring for a lunch, an afternoon of visiting, and dinner up in The Villages, that mega-complex about sixty miles northwest of Orlando.  I got some special treatment this year because it fell on my birthday. I got serenaded twice, once upon arrival for lunch and then again at dinner, when the restaurant presented me with a small cake with one candle on it. These mini-reunions are always a pleasant occasion with some nice folks.

Arbuckle Creek

This is a pleasant narrow waterway lined with massive old cypress trees and passing through undeveloped rural Florida just east of Avon Park, which is a couple hours south of Orlando.  I like to go there but it’s a haul to do it one day from Lantana so I combined it with the visit to The Villages and filled out the weekend. Tap any photo and you can scroll through the larger versions.