Saturday, February 7-Ave Maria/Ken & Peggy

We left Fort Myers and headed for Naples.

Mom wanted to check out this development called AVE MARIA which is about 10 miles east of Naples. Tom Manahan, the man who started Dominos Pizza, started this development. There is a huge Catholic church in the middle of the town, with housing and businesses around it. There is an elementary school and university there. Right now, there is about 500 students at the university. They want to have around 5,000. They are working on building a Publix grocery store there.

My aunt Marianne's brother used to be good friends with Tom. Tom is originally from Ann Arbor. He wanted to build this community in Ann Arbor, but there were problems with the city, so he built it down in Florida.

We went to Naples in 2007 and really liked it. We stopped at the Coastland Mall in Naples to visit with Lori Lear, who just moved down there in July. She works at the Estee Lauder counter at Dillards. It was nice to see her. I didn't like the clerk in the Petites dept. She was quite snotty and not very helpful. I am not sure I would want to live in Naples with all of these rich people. I would probably feel inferior next to them, as I am middle class. I feel better in an area with more middle class people.
We drove down Fifth Avenue in Naples. It was much more crowded this time down there.

Drove around Fort Myers Beach. There were many beach properties for sale down there. It seemed like every other house was up for sale.
The traffic was terrible there.

We got to Ken & Peggys in Sarasota around 6:15 p.m., which is much later than we wanted to. We got to see their mobile home and had a nice visit. We had a nice dinner at a restaurant on US 41. Ken said this is the first time he has ever taken us out to dinner. It was very nice of them to take us out. We came back to their place and chatted for a bit and then had to go back to Zephyrhills.

I am not big on driving at night in strange areas, but luckily, we made it home safely. I prefer not to drive at night, but it seems like we end up doing it on vacations. We try hard to get to our final destination before dark, but it doesn't seem to work out.