Adventures in O-Town

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Sorry for the lack of postings of late... I’ve been out of town, visiting my friends Melissa and Alex down in Orlando. Friday morning I left Waycross around 11:30 or so in the morning and drove to the Evil Black Hole that is Lake City, FL. I swear, no matter what I do, I simply cannot escape that place. Not that I was there for long or anything. My purpose in making for LC was to meet with my friend Chris, who is currently there visiting his family. (See, I’m not the only one who can’t escape. Really, it’s a chronic problem; all former LC denizens suffer from it.) Anyway, I left my car at Chris’s and rode with him down to Orlando. [Alright, as much as I hate to do it, I have to actually post something specifically regarding Lake City. As I was driving towards Chris’s, I ran across the first of many very large signs depicting the face of a kid who went through middle and high school with me... Turns out he’s running for County Commissioner. I find that kind of disconcerting somehow. Nonetheless, I wish him luck.]

Anyhow, Chris and I drove to Orlando and arrived at Melissa and Alex’s new house. I guess it isn’t that new, as they’ve been in it what – two, three years? But, it was all new to me as this was the first time I was able to see it. I guess this is a sign that we’re really adults, having houses and all. I realize that the law has said that I’m an adult for almost a full ten years now, but it never really feels like it. Yet here we are, showing each other our houses. After dinner, we went for a nice long walk along the Econlockahatchee River near their home. There’s a really nice, scenic park along the Econlockahatchee and it was a great place for shooting photos, in addition to exercising. (Linda and Shaggy: There’s a really nice Y attached to this park!)

Limpkin (possibly) along the Econlockahatchee River

Econlockahatchee River

Sunset along the Econlockahatchee River

Melissa and I using the tall and short fountains at the Y

Melissa's cat Henrietta ("fatty")

Melissa's cat Henry ("orangie")

The next morning (er, well, afternoon... it’s not like we’re morning people or anything) we set off on our adventures of the day. Our first stop was Big Tree Park, home to the Senator, a 3500 year old cypress tree, one of the oldest in the world. The girth and height of this tree was quite impressive.

The Senator: 3500 years old
That little speck of turqouise at the bottom is Chris.

Me and the the Senator

Melissa and Alex and the Senator

Melissa, Me, Chris
(Former Lake City people with the Senator)

After leaving the Senator, we made our way to Cassadaga, Florida’s oldest spiritualist community. Now, being that the four of us are all a tad bizarre and periodically inclined to celebrate pagan or pseudopagan holidays, Cassadaga seemed like a logical destination; however, we were pretty disappointed. The “community” seemed more like a highly commercialized, trashy tourist trap. It did, however, have a decent park for picnicking, were we dined on homemade hummus (courtesy of Melissa) and yummy, non-iceberg salad. (Seriously, iceberg lettuce should be banned. That stuff is foul.)

The bulk of the town looked like this.
We made Chris pose in front of the Father Christopher sign.

There were many pretty flowers.

I matched some of them.

I thought this was awesome - way to go Mother Nature!

That evening, after some scrumptious Indian food, we went to Sea World. They were having a special event for members of the UF alumni association and their friends. (I being the friend, obviously, although this certainly wasn’t the first time I’d pretended to be associated with UF! PS, Go Sewanee!) Sadly, while we did get in for free, only a small portion of the park was open for this event. We didn’t get to see any animals, other than some incredibly animatronic looking penguins, and the only two rides that were open were Kracken - a ginormous roller coaster that I refused to ride - and Journey to Atlantis - which may have been incredibly cheesy, but was far more surprising than one might expect. But all in all, considering that it was free and that we had fun, I’d say it was a good deal.

On Sunday, we had planned to go to Wekiwa Springs. Unfortunately, as there wasn’t a cloud to be seen, and as the temperature was hovering around 100F, too many other people had the same idea. Due to the delicate ecosystem of the springs, only a certain number of people are allowed in the park at any given time, and when the park reaches the limit, access to visitors is closed. Annoyingly, instead of allowing those of us who wanted to swim in said springs to wait for someone to leave, we were simply turned around and told to try again later. I think we tried to enter the springs at least four separate times during the course of the afternoon, but to no avail. Sadly, we didn’t have a backup plan, so in the interim we drove aimlessly around a part of the area that none of us knew well. At one point we attended an open house for a $425,000 house (obviously out of our budget!) simply for something to do. Chris asked a fellow in a convenience store parking lot if there were any other “swimming holes” in the area – he gave us directions to another spring, although its park, too, was closed to overcrowding. Quite frustrating! That evening we tried to go see A Scanner Darkly at the Enzion, but it was sold out. Clearly not our day. Ahh well. On the bright side, we did get to walk around the UCF campus, which was quite nice. Apparently they’ve just finished up a lot of construction and landscaping, turning the campus into a really attractive place. They’ve done an excellent job landscaping, and have planted oaks strategically all over. Granted, these oaks are still pretty small, but eventually they will turn that place into a shaded paradise.

Sunset at UCF

The next morning, after dropping Alex off at work, Chris and I began our journey home. At Chris’s I spent a good deal of time playing with his new kitten. He found it abandoned and near death in the back of his parents’ property (someone probably tossed it over the fence) and nursed it back to health. It’s adorable and playful. I love kittens.

Isn't he adorable?

On my way back up to Waycross, I stopped in northern Columbia County to photograph an old, abandoned gas station along Hwy 441 that I thought was picturesque.

Old gas station

Formerly Chevron, apparently

Later, in Argyle, GA I stopped to photograph the old train station. Oddly enough, I think that this was moved here from the nearby community of Manor, although I don’t know why. I would have explored the train station more had I been wearing shoes other than flip-flops and had I not been in fear of surprising a bum or two all by my lonesome. I think it would be awesome to either restore the train station and turn it into a museum or to fix it up and convert it into a house.

You can tell that it's been moved to this location

I liked this shot.

I would totally live here.

Speaking of houses, there haven’t been any more incidents at my house, other than learning that the estimate from the plumber for hard piping is about double the rough estimate we got from the gas man. Ahh well. I’m feeding at least one stray cat - although I’m not going to try to catch it and bring it inside, as that would defeat my semi-allergy free environment. It’s orange, and if it ever doesn’t run like the wind when it sees a human, I’ll try and take a picture of it. I guess that’s all the news for now!