Circuses and a surprising menu

We got to Oscar Scherer State Park in the late afternoon and found our site with no problems except perhaps Geoff needs to work on his reversing skills as when he first backed in to the site he ended up parked in a jungle! A second attempt and we were in perfectly in a nice site with water and electric although like many national and state sites there was no sewer. My cousin Cyndi and her husband Scott arrived a little later. There was a camp between us but that was okay, the trailer was called Wolf Pup. We visited a little but soon called it a night as it had been a long day.

The next day, Tuesday, we loaded PoGoGo and climbed into Scott's truck, heading for lunch at Yoder's Amish Restaurant, a Sarasota tradition since 1975 and an excellent comfort foods menu! The restaurant started when Levi and Amanda Yoder moved south from Nappanee, Indiana, and is now part of an Amish village, many of whom work in the restaurant.

Thoroughly stuffed, we headed off for the Ringling which includes an art museum, a theater and education center, gardens and the Ringling home, Ca'd'Zan, but most of all, of interest to us was the Ringling Circus Museum. As you may re,member from the "Tigers Oh My!" post, Geoff and I had already seen on perspective of the "boys from Baraboo" as some of the circus people were referred to and the Circus Museum in Sarasota presented a different perspective and more information about the circuses that once criss-crossed this country.


The most interesting exhibit is the huge circus model, a re-creation of the Ringling Bros. Barnum & Bailey traveling circus of the 1970's and 1980's. Much is often made of the three rings and the performances in the tents of this miniature but what I found even more fascinating was all the things that made up the background of the circus, the back stage necessities, from meals to animal care to barbers and medical tents, it was all fascinating, in many ways more so than the end product of circus performances.While poking around on the internet for links and details, I found a bunch of pictures from the miniature including those shown here of the mess tent and the food preparation area and the medical tent and also discovered there is a book out there "the Circus in Miniature" written by Deborah Walk in 2008. I have of course now ordered it.

The next day we loaded up the PoGoGo again and after much discussion decided on a restaurant listed as the Sunnyside Cafe, which mostly recommended itself because it was right on our route to our next destination, a classic car museum. Every so often one gets a real surprise when your out running the roads and the Sunnyside Cafe was one of those. The name of the place does not lead one to expect the great food excellently prepared, Hungarian and scrumptious! I had a mushroom and brie omelette with a side of guacamole - a lunch to die for! We also had a dessert of kurtosklalacs also known as chimney cakes which are a sweetened pastry strip curled on a rolling pin glazed and baked. They can then be sprinkled with sugar and/or cinnamon or sometimes filled with any of a number of things.

It is a wonder that we could even move after this culinary experience but eventually we dragged ourselves off to the Sarasota Classic Car Museum which had an impressive variety of classic cars including a 1967 Tempest convertible, close to the car of my heart, my first car, a 1965 Tempest convertible in champagne beige, close but not exactly it. Another hat joined my collection, a red one, and Geoff got a yellow model car.


We eventually made it back to the campground and a lengthy pleasant visit with my cousin marred only by PoGoGo misbehaving, beeping and refusing to move after being unloaded from Scott's pickup. Don't know what the problem was but when Cyndi walked up to visit, it suddenly quit beeping and behaved!