Holding Down the Fort – part one

Part of the mortar battery that defended Fort De Soto. The Fort was built on the Gulf of Mexico after the US entered into the Spanish American War.

The Fort is part of a larger park that includes a campground. We’ve been here before and love the beaches and the biking as well as easy access to St. Petersburg and Tampa.

This is South Beach on Tampa Bay. At the southern most end of the beach you can observe a number of nesting Osprey. A four mile ride takes you to the more popular North Beach on the Gulf of Mexico.

This long expanse of beach is great for hunting for shells, people watching and birding. Our haul. We saw these fishermen as we walked the beach.

Having easy access to Tampa and St. Petersburg opens up lots of restaurant and museum options. We love ramen and when we travel we always check out the local ramen offerings. We found a winner in the Seminole Heights neighborhood of Tampa with Ichicoro Ramen. St. Petersburg has a number of world class museums, a Dali Museum, the Chihuly Collection and the Florida Holocaust Museum. Our first stop was the Chihuly Collection that is part of the Morean Art Center.

We then spent an emotional two hours in the Florida Holocaust Museum. We’ve not been to a Holocaust museum before. A very powerful experience. They had one of the cattle cars used to transport Jews to concentration camps in Poland(120 people per car). The rails that it sets on come from the Treblinka Concentration Camp. We were struck by the timeline of events from 1933 through 1939. It was chilling to realize how civil rights were stripped in a slow and steady progression until the final solution. It was a somber reminder of the need to remain vigilant to any erosion of our rights — but the stories of resistance and survival were inspiring.