Pack your bags! Florida Studio Theatre (FST) is taking the whole family on a one-of-a-kind musical road trip in On The Road Again, an all-new outdoor live performance. Featuring songs like “Take Me Home, Country Roads,” “Surfin’ USA,” and “Deep in the Heart of Texas,” celebrate all that makes this country special from sea to shining sea. Join FST for an outdoor concert in this summer touring performance as they hit the road with music that has defined the U.S for generations. Admission is free.
Families and groups can register here:
https://www.floridastudiotheatre.org/road-again.
For questions about On the Road Again, call FST’s Box Office.
Enjoy a cheap, easy, fun way to have a night out to remember with the family!
On June 23rd you can watch Avengers: Endgame (PG13) on the big centerfield screen.
The 1st 25 tickets purchased will receive a bag of free popcorn 🍿
Parking is free.
CoolToday Park is the Spring Training Home of the Atlanta Braves
& is located at 18800 S. West Villages Pkwy, Venice FL 34293
https://www.facebook.com/CoolTodayPark
Summer Movie Nights presented by Sharky's on the Pier, Fins and Snook Haven
Summer Movie Nights presented by Sharky's on the Pier, Fins and Snook Haven
An easy fun and inexpensive way to have a night to remember with the family. A variety of thrilling movie selections including action and adventure. Don't hesitate to POP by with friends to make this even BUTTER together.
Dress Up Night June 23rd Avengers Endgame. Family Series July 7th Onward and July 21st The Lion King. Animal Animation August 11 Tom and Jerry and August 25 Jumanji.
At different locations in Florida, you may find shark teeth in the sandy beaches. Some of them are fossils, and some are more recent tooth losses.
One area of Florida with a great concentration of shark teeth is Venice Beach on the Gulf Coast. This area is called the “shark tooth capital of the world.”
Shark Tooth Capital of the World
Venice Beach, Florida, is called the “shark tooth capital of the world” because of its preponderance of fossilized shark teeth. In particular, Caspersen Beach is a rocky portion of the area that is home to a glut of Venice Beach fossils.
Every year, Venice hosts a Shark's Tooth Festival that provides educational opportunities as well as the chance to buy good quality fossils. So why are there so many Venice Beach fossils? It helps to understand the lay of the land and sea in both the present and the past.
Prehistoric Seas and Venice Beach Sharks
In prehistoric times, 10 million years in the past, what is now Florida lay submerged under seas. A plethora of sharks plied those waters, and on portions of land, other prehistoric animals roamed such as mastodons, mammoths and saber-toothed cats.
As for the Venice Beach sharks, the species that lived in Florida included makos, bull, sand, lemon, great whites, tiger sharks and the massive megalodon, which is now extinct. Sharks lose thousands of teeth in their lifetimes, so over millions of years, a significant amount of shark teeth fossils have built up.
The enormous megalodon is the most prized tooth fossil of all the Venice Beach sharks. They can be several inches long. There is a layer of fossils in the Venice Beach area that can range up to 35 feet deep!
Good Locations for Shark Teeth Hunting
In southwest Florida, Venice Beach sits along a sloping shelf of a coastal land mass. With no sharp drop, a layer of shark teeth fossils is gradually eroded and brought on shore. The aforementioned Caspersen Beach offers a good concentration of shark teeth fossils at low tide, with about four miles of beach available to search. Other prime locations include Casey Key and Manasota Key.
The Venice Fishing Pier can operate as a base of operations in your Venice Beach shark fossil hunt. There are also places where you can kayak to hunt for shark teeth. The Peace River offers good chances for fossil expedition tours, with November through May being the best time to go. These tours provide great ways to learn about the rest of Florida’s natural history as well.
Different vendors offer rentals or sales of shovels and screened baskets, perfect for sorting through the sand. You may find coral pieces, shells and possibly other fossils in your quest. Finding at least one tooth is essentially guaranteed.
Tools to Use for Venice Beach Fossils
If you would like to hunt for Venice Beach fossils, obtain a fossil-hunting permit. This is not required for shark teeth per se, but as there are vertebrate fossils also prevalent, the permit allows for their preservation.
Fossilized shark teeth tend to be dark in color, whereas newer teeth are paler. Use a scoop to dig into the sand, and use a screen to filter through the sand to look for shark teeth. Some captains provide charter trips for divers, who can find much larger prehistoric shark teeth fossils a bit offshore.
The majority of the shark teeth you will find may range from 1/8 of an inch to 3/4 of an inch. Megalodon teeth are larger, and each inch of tooth length corresponds to 10 feet of the animal’s length!
Whatever shark teeth you find, you can marvel at the wonder of so many sharks that lived so long ago.
NORTH PORT — The city’s portion of Sarasota County’s Legacy Trail breaks ground Monday.
North Port’s Legacy Trail Connector will be nearly 4 miles of paved trails. Two other routes in North Port are planned: The South Powerline, which is an improved shell-packed road, and a more natural trail surface through Deer Prairie Creek Preserve.
The North Port package of trails is part of Sarasota County’s Legacy Trail, a $65 million project funded in a 2018 voter referendum. Some 400,000 annual users reportedly use the Legacy Trail that connects Sarasota, Osprey, Nokomis, Venice and South Venice.
The trail is a wide, smoothly paved path for walkers/joggers, rollerbladers and bicyclists. There are trailheads, parking areas and seating along differing route distances.
North Port’s Connector is “one of the most exciting things as a parks director,” said Nicole Rissler, executive director with Sarasota County Parks, Recreation and Natural Resources.
The bigger picture is linking Florida in a so-called rails-to-trails movement of walking and biking trails. Many of those trails are converted rail lines, hundreds of miles criss-crossing the state, linking cities, providing transportation alternatives, drawing visitors and boosting eco-tourism.
A North Port Connector will run nearly 4 miles of paved pathways along the Deer Prairie Creek Preserve, “where one can go to experience native habitats, including pine flatwoods, prairie hammocks, and seasonal wetlands,” according to information on the Friends of Legacy Trail website. That nonprofit was started in 2016 to further The Legacy Trail, a Sarasota County park.
“Once the connector gets to North Port, it’ll be a wonderful asset to our community here,” Friends of the Legacy Trail-North Port coordinator Sharon Donovan had said.
The Legacy Trail's North Port Connector ground-breaking is scheduled for 9 a.m. Monday at 1045 Calera St., at the end of West Price Boulevard.
Those three connections are:
• Powerline Trail, connecting Border Road through the Carlton Reserve and Big Slough Preserves to Myakkahatchee Creek Environmental Park.
• Deer Prairie Creek Route, connecting the east end of Forbes Trail to the south entrance of Deer Prairie Creek. That starts Monday.
• Schewe Route running along Interstate 75 before turning south and eventually connecting with Warm Mineral Springs. North Port city commissioners this month approved a $9.2 million upgrade package at the Springs with the Legacy Trail as a future component.
“A different experience in different parts” of the Trail, Rissler said. “Everybody’s super excited.”
Sarasota County’s original Legacy Trail dates to around 2004. The county bought a former railroad corridor for about $12 million. That 12.5-mile project runs from Sarasota to Venice. It is popular with walkers, bikers, inline skaters and others; so popular, in fact, that devices had been added along the trail to count daily users.
Trail use in the last year had exploded, Donovan said, “indicating a great interest in outdoor recreation, especially during the pandemic, when people are looking for safe things to do.”
North Port’s mayor had long pushed for a connecting trail to the city, in her time having covered “every inch” of the Legacy Trail, riding, rollerblading and walking it, Mayor Jill Luke said.
“It’s outdoors, it’s nature,” she said. “I love it.”
North Port Connector ground-breaking is scheduled for 9 a.m. Monday at 1045 Calera St., at the end of West Price Boulevard.
Fireworks will be shot from the South Jetty on Sunday, July 4, shortly after 9 p.m. to celebrate Independence Day. The free show will last an estimated 30 minutes.
Although the South Jetty and Jetty Jacks Refreshment Deck will be closed for safety July 3-4, the fireworks display may be viewed on area beaches from Caspersen to Nokomis, as well as from other locations around Venice. Arrive early to secure your spot. Social distancing between groups is encouraged.
Boats should be at anchor by 8:30 p.m. July 4; the Venice Inlet will be closed to boat traffic at 8:45 p.m. until about 45 minutes after the display’s grand finale.
In the case of inclement weather, the fireworks show may be delayed. Please visit this Facebook page, the City's Twitter (@CityofVeniceFL), or the News section of the City website, www.venicegov.com, for updates.
