Q Is For Quirky {Linger Lodge in Bradenton, Florida}

During April, we're participating in the Blogging from A to Z Challenge. Every day (except Sundays), we’ll be doing an alphabet themed post starting with “A is for Adventurous” and ending with “Z is for Zinc”. We've got a theme for every letter sorted except for Y. If you have any ideas for the letter Y, please leave a comment or email.

Normally, we don’t like staying at RV parks. The idea of being parked right next to other folks and being able to see their RVs up close and personal when you look out the window isn’t really our cup of tea. Don’t get me wrong, I love looking at other people’s RVs (I’m nosy that way), but sometimes it feels like you’re living in some sort of apartment building-parking lot hybrid with everyone nestled up so close to each other. RV parks are usually more expensive then staying in national, state or county campgrounds and often a lot less scenic. That’s not to say that we haven’t stayed in RV parks. They come in handy when you want to be in the center of a city (like our time in New Orleans), or when you want to take advantage of the amenities (like free WiFi) or when you can’t find any place else to stay. 

That’s how we found the very quirky Linger Lodge Resort. We were in Florida during the height of snowbird season and were getting desperate to find a place to spend the night that wasn’t a Walmart parking lot. After a lot of internet searching and a lot of calls ending with the usual refrain of “You’re joking right? This is February – we’re full up until May!”, finally we scored a spot at Linger Lodge and at a price we could almost stomach. 

To be honest, we weren’t expecting much. We were just glad to have a place to park and plug in. So imagine our surprise when we got there and discovered what has to be one of the quirkiest RV parks we’ve ever seen. Granted, we haven’t seen too many RV parks, but any place that has a cage full of peacocks and other funny looking birds sure beats your box standard RV park any day. Not that we’re advocating caging animals up (except maybe alligators – they scare me), but the birds were fun to look at.

What is this one anyway? It has some sort of weird feather ruff around its neck and long feathers on its feet. Looks like some sort of cross between a chicken and a cabaret dancer. 



Linger Lodge is located on the Braden river. You can pay extra for waterfront sites. We didn’t. It was enough just to be able to wander down and enjoy the views. 



After a while, we headed up to the restaurant to have a couple of beers. And that’s when things really got quirky. The place is chock full of taxidermy (and taxidermy is the very definition of quirky) including an alligator that was bested by Linger Lodge’s founder. 





The taxidermy theme flows through to the menu with specialties such as the “Bag N’ Gag” lunch special consisting of anything dead on bread, because “eating food is more fun when you know it was hit on the run.” Or “Guess That Mess” which promises you “meat so fresh, you can see the tire tracks.”   Or if you’re looking for something lighter, you can always get one of the tummy teasers – fancy some “Shake N’ Bake Snake” or “Rigor Mortis Tortoise”? Of course, if you can always order more normal food like frogs legs. Sadly, our entertainment budget didn’t stretch to dinner, so we stuck with a couple of beers instead.



I guess that’s why the place has been called one of the most unusual restaurants in the world by Forbes and Al Roker rated it as one of the top five weirdest restaurants. I think they meant to say quirky rather than unusual and weird. But then again, they weren’t trying to come up with a Q-themed blog post. 

We enjoyed the quirkiness of Linger Lodge on 3-4 February 2015.

Thanks for stopping by our blog - we love it when people come visit! We're also on Facebook - pop by and say hi!