ROADTRIP 2010 – The Gulf Coast
ROADTRIP 2010 – Islands and Seafood and Gators, oh my!
Readers, we’re back again! Today I’m writing from the beautiful Braswell avocado farm. We took the day off to relax and visit with Mike’s parents who run their avocado farm in Homestead, Florida. The last time we were here was when we got married and the weather was cold and rainy – today it’s much more pleasant, thank goodness. So I’m writing while sitting on the back porch, enjoying the warm air, and looking out across the acres and acres of gorgeous avocado trees. No need to be too jealous everyone – the avocados aren’t in season right now, so the trees are just bearing flowers and not the yummy avocados that the Braswells are known for!
Over the past couple of days we’ve hit the beautiful beaches of Longboat Key, Anna Maria Island, Fort Myers Beach, and Marco Island – and everywhere in between! We realized that perhaps our timing was a little off for some of the Gulf Coast beaches. It’s their busy season…and boy were they busy! A lot of the places we stopped were just too slammed to chat with us so we just dropped off our information and a Scenic Rentals mug and hoped for the best! Good for them, though – in this economy we’re just happy that anyone in the by owner vacation rental industry is thriving. Perhaps vacationers are catching on that it’s so much more economical than staying in hotels and that they should Take a Vacation from Hotels™!
We actually really loved Longboat Key – so pretty and relatively quiet, especially for Spring Break time. And our car magnets proved worth it – a nice gentleman saw our magnets, stopped to speak with us, and said he wanted to list two properties. Pat on the back for us! We seemed to do equally as well in Fort Myers Beach and Anna Maria Island. Everyone there was just so friendly and said they were glad to see a competitor for the big names in the vacation rentals by owner business. We sense a lot of growing frustration out there with the property owners so we’re trying to listen to them and really take their advice to heart – that’s why we are limiting the number of properties in each destination to only 60! The property owners aren’t going to have to compete with thousands of other properties in their area, just hoping that someone stumbles across their listing.
We ended the day in Marco Island – well, the business day that is. We spoke to several friendly property owners and property managers. Marco Island is close to our heart because Mike’s family has vacationed there since he was little. In fact, if anyone is in Marco Island over Thanksgiving weekend, watch out! The Braswells will descend upon the island – and as of January 10th there’s one more of them! The day in Marco was just too gorgeous and we kept getting tempted by the signs for the local Seafood Festival…until finally we just couldn’t resist. We called it a day around 4:30 pm and went to the festival. They had great music, yummy seafood, and cold beer. But Mike’s favorite thing at the festival were what he called the “Crab Ladies” – ladies walking around with crab hats selling raffle tickets. Don’t worry folks, we got a picture…and a video.
After a couple of hours’ drive through Alligator Alley, complete with several alligator sightings of course, we landed in Homestead, happy to be with Mike’s parents Gloria and Doyle. And to finally have a day off!
This entry was posted on Sunday, March 21st, 2010 at 12:35 pm and is filed under ROADTRIP 2010, Vacation In Florida. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
