Wildlife of Central Florida and the Gulf Coast
We've gone just about 1/2 way now. We've gotten to the point where we turn back west, but first we have to get to our furthest south east point. In the last post we had arrived in Ocala at the Shamrock Inn The Italian restaurant was only a 2 1/2 clowns. Extremely limited wine selection and the red sauce needed some more seasoning. Pasta and other ingredients were cooked properly. We caught a shot of the Shamrock's owner on our way out. Ate breakfast at Richie's and would recommend it. It's hard to do breakfast badly but this small home-town place has it right. Good baked goods, cookies, that you can buy for take-away.
We only had a short drive from Ocala to Clearwater so we took the time to go to Silver Springs State Park. This is the place with the glass-bottom boats. It used to be a major tourist attraction but fell on hard times after Disneyworld came to town, or at least down the road a ways. The state took it over about 3 years ago and got the boat tours back in business a couple years ago. It's strange to see the size of the buildings and facilities being used by so few people. Of course, we were there on a Friday and it had been raining hard that morning. The state has renovated the big stage and live event space and holds concerts there regularly, mainly tribute bands, but it appears to be coming back.
We took the extended 1.5 hour tour that actually took 2 hours. You travel down the Silver river. It originates at the springs. These springs produce crystal clear water at a rate of 550 million gallons a day to create the river. All of Lloyd Bridge's Sea World shows were shot there, and many of the Johnny Wiesmuller Tarzan movies were also shot there.
Wildlife abounds. Alligators, red and yellow slider turtles, herons, egrets, ibis, anhingas and several varieties of ducks. We saw several gators sprawled out on the debris pads soaking up sunlight. One, about 12 -15 feet long was particularly impressive.
We headed on down to Clearwater to meet up with Rick and Chevy. We had a wonderful time with our friends and Chevy's daughter Dawn on Friday night. They took us to a place in Clearwater Beach, across the inland waterway, for dinner and drinking. After dinner we headed out to the beach, a whole 2 feet away from the restaurant, and waded in the warm waters of the Gulf. It's strange for us Northwesterners to find soft, warm sand and water that was warmer than the sand.
They would have loved us to stay longer but its a burning bridges tour and named for a purpose. We have some longer stays planned for later in the trip, like now. I'm writing this from New Orleans since the wifi pipe in Clearwater was so slow I could not get photos to upload. We headed up the coast on US 19 almost all the way to Tallahassee. It took us no longer to do that than what the Garmin forecast using I-10. It's a bit slow up till past Tarpon Springs due to the traffic lights but once you got away from the coast there was little traffic and very few semis. Hell of a lot better way to go than on the interstate.
We stayed in Defuniak Springs on our way to New Orleans. It made the second day a short 3 1/2 hour trip and gave us time to do some much-needed laundry once we got to our hotel in the Garden District about a mile from Canal Street and only a block from a St. Charles streetcar stop.
Enough for tonight. Need to shower because it's hot, and humid, but that's New Orleans. More tomorrow on our current situation.
Ciao for now.