We turned the corner and saw the impossible; snow covered mountains in Florida. We knew our eyes were deceiving us because Florida doesn’t have mountains, or snow for that matter. Had we known about the brilliantly white sand that graces Florida’s ‘Emerald Coast’ we might have expected to see these dunes on our way to Grayton Beach, but instead, they took us by surprise. Read More…
We lucked into massive thunderstorms the day we pulled into Falling Waters State Park. Ordinarily, I don’t wish for storms, and certainly not the kinds that come with tornado warnings, like these had. But if we didn’t get some rain, there wouldn’t have been any ‘falling water’ at Florida’s largest waterfall. Even with the rain the falls couldn’t compare with the ones we visited up north, but the 73 foot drop into a sinkhole is still a sight worth seeing.
Nestled against the Apalachee Bay where the panhandle connects to the larger Florida peninsula, Wakulla County mixes the wetlands of Southern Florida with the Spanish moss draped grandeur of old Georgia. This isn’t a region that is on anyone’s “must-see” list, but it should be. In fact, had we stopped here on our way south, the Everglades would have been disappointing in comparison. Read More…
Slow and fast are the Yin and Yang of our travels. Oftentimes we have difficulty striking the right balance between the two. Move too fast and we risk burnout. Move too slow and we get antsy. Four days at Manatee Springs State Park risked staying too long. We covered its most interesting areas in the first couple of hours. But the advantage of spending time with a place is that you can discover things others might miss. By the time we left for good, we had such familiarity with the park that we knew where the deer liked to feed, where the turtles liked to sun themselves, and where the snakes liked to hide. Read More…
For those who remember our visit to the Ernest Hemingway House in Key West, Florida there is a good story in today’s New York Times about the house, Hemingway, and the six toed cats who live there.
“There was very little that was safe or conventional in Ernest Hemingway’s life. The great writer hurled himself into danger in three wars, managed to survive two plane crashes on the same big-game safari in remote Africa, and precipitated many domestic dramas with a variety of love affairs in the course of his four marriages. “Moderation” appears to have been one word lacking from his otherwise superb vocabulary, even when it came to cats.
Everywhere Once 