Will you love the Sugar Sand Festival in Clearwater Beach?
I did love being at the amazing Sugar Sand Festival 2017! There is so much to do and discover in Florida. Enjoy my videos from my visit which show you the magical time we had together.
I was delighted with my balcony room at the brand new Wyndham Grand which overlooked the pool and the beach. I had great sunset views and walked on the beach for sunrise in the most amazing sugar sand.
Have you been diving in Florida? I went Scuba Diving with Captain Ryan from Tanks-A-Lot. Have you ever held a basket star? You can see me holding one in the video. We dove at Big A and Area 51.
Dinner at Salty’s with blackened mahi mahi was a great start to my Florida adventures.
The Sugar Sand Festival 2016 took 11 artists 11 days to build with 1000 tons of sand. Fantasy was the theme and the creations were incredible. I loved them all.
The VIP dining experience at sunset was spectacular. I loved sitting in a chair made with sand, eating great food and listening to marvelous music.
Spending the day at Clearwater Marine Aquarium was amazing. They truly focus on Rescue, Rehab and Release for marine animals and their boat tour taught about the animals, the estuary and the mangroves. The children were able to touch creatures, observe a net pull and identify fish. We had a sea urchin, pinfish, catfish on our boat. We saw dolphins on our boat tour and back at the Aquarium we saw Hope and Winter from the Dolphin Tale movies!
Turtles, manatees, river otters and many other creatures are saved by the hospital facilities here. This marine life rescue center has over 700,000 visitors a year. There are over 400 volunteers helping care for the animals. You can participate and be a trainer for a day.
Master sand sculptors Damon Meri and Dean Arscott spoke to me about their love of art, sand and sculpting.
The Sugar Sand Festival supports a project for Sandy Lane Elementary School and brings students to visit Clearwater Beach. Some of them see the ocean and Pier 60 for the first time!
I loved being at the outdoor concert at Coachman Park. I have always enjoyed Jake Shimabukuro‘s music but this was the very first time I heard him play a live concert. WOW! He is fantastic! Definitely see a concert in Clearwater Beach!
Without a doubt, Kenny G gives a great show! He played in the crowd, he told funny stories and he is an incredible musician. His entire band is fantastic. I loved when he talked about how long they had been together and if you keep practicing, you will get there. Life takes practice and a sense of humor! I cannot wait to see another concert with this consummate entertainer!
Thank you to Clearwater Beach and the Sugar Sand Festival. My entire group loved participating. Thank you to Jason Frye for sharing the camera with me in this and other of the Florida videos!
I hope to see you at the Sugar Sand Festival 2018! Lisa Niver
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Lisa Ellen Niver is an award-winning travel expert who has explored 102 countries and six continents. A graduate of the University of Pennsylvania, she worked on cruise ships for seven years and backpacked for three years in Asia. She is the founder of the website WeSaidGoTravel which is read in 235 countries and was named #3 on Rise Global’s top 1,000 Travel Blogs. Niver is a speaker at the Los Angeles, New York, Chicago and Dallas Travel and Adventure Shows for 2023. Her podcast, “Make Your Own Map,” has been watched in more than 11 countries on 4 continents. Niver is represented by Chip MacGregor of MacGregor Literary, Inc. Look for her memoir in Fall 2023 from Post Hill Press/Simon and Schuster.
You can find Lisa Niver talking travel on broadcast television at KTLA TV Los Angeles, Satellite Media Tours, The Jet Set TV and Orbitz travel webisodes as well as her YouTube channel, where her WeSaidGoTravel videos have nearly 2 million views.
With more than 150,000 followers across social media, she has hosted Facebook Live for USA Today 10best, is verified on Twitter and listed on IMDb, and is the Social Media Manager for the Los Angeles Press Club.
As a journalist, Niver has interviewed Deepak Chopra, Olympic medalists, and numerous bestselling authors and been invited to both the Oscars and the United Nations. She has been a judge for the Gracie Awards for the Alliance of Women in Media, and has run 15 travel competitions on her website, publishing over 2,500 writers and photographers from 75 countries.
For her print and digital stories as well as her television segments, she has been awarded three Southern California Journalism Awards and two National Arts and Entertainment Journalism Awards and been a finalist twenty times.
Niver has published more than 2000 articles, in more than three dozen magazines and journals
including National Geographic, Wired, Teen Vogue, HuffPost Personal, POPSUGAR, Ms. Magazine, Luxury Magazine, Smithsonian, Sierra Club, Saturday Evening Post, AARP, AAA Explorer Magazine, American Airways, Delta Sky, enRoute (Air Canada), Hemispheres, Jewish Journal, Myanmar Times, BuzzFeed, Robb Report, Scuba Diver Life, Ski Utah, Trivago, Undomesticated, USA Today, TODAY, Wharton Magazine, and Yahoo.
https://bit.ly/m/lisaniver
Awards
National Arts and Entertainment Journalism Awards
2021 Winner: Book Critic: Ms. Magazine “Untamed: Brave Means Living From the Inside Out”
2019 Winner: Soft News Feature for Film/TV: KTLA TV “Oscars Countdown to Gold with Lisa Niver”
2019 Finalist for: Soft News, Business/Music/Tech/Art
Southern California Journalism Awards
2022 Finalist: Book Criticism
2021 Winner: Technology Reporting
2021 Finalist: Book Criticism
2020 Winner: Print Magazine Feature: Hemispheres Magazine, “Painter by the Numbers, Rembrandt”
2020 Finalist: Online Journalist of the Year, Activism Journalism, Educational Reporting, Broadcast Lifestyle Feature
2019 Finalist: Broadcast Television Lifestyle Segment for “Ogden Ski Getaway”
2018 Finalist: Science/Technology Reporting, Travel Reporting, Personality Profile
2017 Winner: Print Column “A Journey to Freedom over Three Passovers”
Social Media Presence
YouTube Channel: We Said Go Travel (1.7 million views)
Short form video:TikTok, Instagram Reels, Facebook Reels, YouTube Shorts
Twitter: lisaniver (90,000 followers)
Instagram: lisaniver (24,000 followers)
Pinterest: We Said Go Travel (20,000 followers and over 70,000 monthly views)
Facebook: lisa.niver (5,000 followers); We Said Go Travel (3,000 followers)
LinkedIn: lisaellenniver (9000 contacts)
