Sarasota, Ringling Bros Museum

On a day without much planned, we head over to “The Ringling” Museum to check it out. It’s a pretty fabulous collection of circus memorabilia!

A man named Howard Tibbels fascination with the circus began in his childhood. He spent summers with his grandparents in West Virginia. He would watch the circus trains unload using binoculars from a hilltop. As a child, he started making miniature models of different circus figures. He would end up spending over 50 years recreating the circus in miniature. The Ringling Museum took his models and put them on display. It is a fabulous depiction of the circus that spans about an acre of museum space! Check out the workshop that he built everything in!

Famous costumes and props the circus used.

Then we walk outside for a walk to the next building.

We step in to check out the Historic Circus Galleries and more miniature models. There is a workshop where workers refurbish and complete unfinished works! One of the train cars that the dignitaries of the circus travelled in was quite the car, complete with bathtub! And of course the ‘Human Cannon”!

A walk through the grounds reveals many Banyan trees where even a statue of a child has been swallowed up by the trees!

We checked out the “Ca’dzan” museum from the outside but did not elect to pay the $30 admission fee.

Then it was back to John & Andrea’s place for the evening.