With a desire to get out and interact with festivalgoers in the Nature Coast, Diane Bedard, Publisher of NatureCoaster.com decided to attend three festivals in March, 2022.

NatureCoaster.com set up a booth at the Floral City Strawberry Festival March 5-6 and met thousands of locals and visitors, excited to spend a day outside in Floral Park, enjoying arts, crafts, live music, food vendors and, of course, strawberry shortcake.

We gave out hundreds of regional maps to attendees, as well as made friends with our neighboring vendors. We also gave away NatureCoaster.com stickers and some fun strawberry stress balls. The Florida Department of Agriculture and Consumer Services sent us some pens to share with festivalgoers, as well as the stress-berries and some wonderful strawberry shortcake recipe cards.

Dennis Bedard, Margaret Bronder, and David Collins helped set up and man the booth and we had a blast! Over 100 people signed up to receive the e-zine in the week following the Festival, which made us very happy.

Last weekend, March 12-13, NatureCoaster participated in Art in the Park in Brooksville at Tom Varn Park. While the weather made things challenging with a temperature drop and tornado warnings on Saturday, Sunday was a great day to enjoy art-lovers and give out more of these fantastic maps and stickers!

We were joined by Sally White, one of our award-winning authors, and the publisher of Florida for Families.com. Sally is a fantastic photographer, as well as writer, and she offered some of her prints as beautiful greeting cards and canvas wall prints. The booth was only open on Sunday, but we were again able to deliver hundreds of maps and stickers to our NatureCoasters!

Michele Sager, Lead Communications Coordinator for the Southwest Florida Water Management District was across the way from us, providing valuable information on how to protect the Weeki Wachee River and answering resident and visitor questions about area waterways and the District.

On March 26, NatureCoaster.com will once again go out and greet people at the 4th Annual Hernando Home and Garden Show at Crosspoint Church, 2440 Anderson Snow Road in Spring Hill. Please come out to the show and stop by our tent any time between 10am and 3pm. We will again have these wonderful regional maps and stickers for our favorite NatureCoasters.

Nature Coast Maps Available Now

Maps will be given to attendees at the Chasco Fiesta in New Port Richey over the ten days of the Festival. March 25-April 3.

NatureCoaster.com could not have provided these maps without the support of several of our partners. Thanks to Bomhoff Law, Cavallo Farm & Market, Chinsegut Hill Historic Site by Tampa Bay History Museum, Coastline Salt Room, Driftwood Tea, Homosassa Vacation Rentals, and the Red Brick Place.

We expect to have the maps available at Florida’s Adventure Coast office and Discover Crystal River’s office, as well as the Citrus County Chamber of Commerce, Greater Dade City Chamber of Commerce, Zephyrhills Chamber of Commerce, and the Greater Hernando Chamber of Commerce.

If you can’t get out to the festivals or one of the distributing locations, but want a regional map of Pasco, Hernando and Citrus Counties with useful phone numbers for agencies, or a NatureCoaster.com logo sticker, or if you have an organization that may want to have several on hand to give to your guests, just drop us a line here.