Florida 2026 03

This last week my family and I took a trip to see friends of ours. And along the way I took my camera and got some pictures.

The trip was long having to drive from Appleton WI to Stuart FL and then back. If you don’t know Appleton is just south of Green Bay. We are about a 30 minute drive to see a Packer game.

Stuart on the other hand, in ideal conditions probably an hour to an hour and a half north of Miami. Which means it will take you three hours in Florida traffic.

The Appleton airport does have direct flights into Stuart, a fact we casually mentioned multiple times to my oldest daughter’s annoyance. However, we prefer to drive. Its a great way to see the country. And avoid TSA lines.

Florida has many great places to stay if you want to go to the beach. We chose Stuart several years ago because our friend moved there and got married. My wife and I visited to attend the wedding and found that Stuart is a beautiful place to go even on Spring Break.

To the north of Stuart you have Cocoa Beach. We stopped and stood in the surf for a couple of minutes on our way down but the place was packed. Everywhere you looked there were people. Not our kind of destination. Though we could see the soon to be launched rocket at the Cape Canaveral Space Force Station.

North of that would be Daytona Beach, classic collage spring break destination. During spring break its a constant party. And unless you’re a collage student or a young party animal you will probably be out of place. Its nicer outside of the spring break season, when you can actually relax on the beach. But then its just like Stuart.

Orlando was fun as a kid. But our kids were never interested in going to Disney World. I’m sure some day they will go but now its just too crowded with spring breakers.

The only other place I can remember going in Florida was the gulf coast. As a teenager my parents took the family to the gulf coast for a couple of days. We relaxed on the beach and in our suite. Honestly I cannot remember exactly where but it was just south of Tampa.

I’ve never been to Miami myself, but our friends tell us its just as bad traffic wise. However I do have plans to some day visit the Keys. My parents tell me its beautiful.

Back to Stuart however. Our first full day at Stuart we started out at the beach. We got to the beach early so that we could have a few hours before the sun got too bright. Being from Wisconsin and of northern European decent our skin burns easily.

There were lots of people at the beach but not too many. My wife and kids started playing at the beach. I took out my camera and started to take pictures.

Because there are fewer people here and there are nature preserves near the beach sand pipers, seagulls, and pelicans were all around us. The sand pipers would search the sand between the groups of people for bugs and the seagulls searched for food that people dropped. While pelicans were flying over our heads.

When we were previously here there were people fishing from the beach and on boats just off shore. The pelicans were riding the surf as there were fewer people back then.

After a while our friends joined us. As it was getting close to noon we decided to get food and then wander around the shopping areas of Stuart.

Stuart has a nice downtown area with little shops. There are also several strip malls and we also found an open concept mall to shop. Combine these with eclectic eateries, museums, and nature preserves, Stuart becomes a great place to visit. And in our friends opinion its also a great place to live.

We ended the day by visiting Bath Tub Beach. This section of beach south of the official Stuart Beach boasts a natural reef which protects the beach from waves. However we found that this protection wanes at high tide. While the waves were not as big as those at Stuart Beach in the morning, the beach was not as calm as we expected.

We ended our day cooking out with our friends at their house. We had a great day and enjoyed our time with our friend.

I know this one was a little bit different of a blog. But I hope you enjoyed some of the pictures I took along the way. The trip was long so there will be more posts about it in the future. But for now, thank you for reading and feel free to leave a message.