Just in time for the Delta variant and Florida becoming even MORE of a hotspot. *sigh*
But this time, having been vaxed, we decided to risk it and flew down anyway. Ocala is about a third of the way down Florida, inland, at the center of a lopsided circle made by Tampa, Orlando, and Jacksonville. Brad and Kathleen are in one of the mega-retirement communities (not The Villages, though their much smaller community has the same concept), a place a little off the map where land isn't cray-cray expensive and you can get a lot of house for the dollar. This one featured a bewildering variety of gorgeous facilities and activities, from pools to pickleball (Google it – it’s a thing!) plus social get-togethers like Friday BYOB happy hours at the (gorgeous) club house.
Day 1, we did the glass bottom boats at Silver Springs State Park, which was interesting as much for the history as the underwater views. Silver Springs was a major tourist destination up until the 1960’s, prior to Disney World and its theme park brethren moving in. You can still see the remnants of what a fun destination it would have been, like old roadside motels in various states of (dis)repair and the architecture of the buildings at the state park. In fact, we are convinced that the Jungle Cruise ride was modeled on the glass bottom boat ride at Silver Springs, just taken to the Disney-fied steroidal level. It also turns out that a large number of movies and TV shows were filmed at Silver Springs, including The Creature from the Black Lagoon, Sea Hunt, Tarzan (the old black and white ones with Johnny Weismuller and Maureen O’Hara), and other shows that were reruns before we were born (the tour guide / captain of our boat kept asking if people had seen this episode or that episode of different shows that we barely remembered and we were amongst the oldest of the tourists!).
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 That is a happy turtle |
 That is a several mile deep crevasse! |
The state park also boasts walking trails around the fresh water springs that are very cool. We were hoping to see wild capuchin monkeys which apparently live there but didn’t spot any. We did see a giant alligator on the boat tour though!
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After the state park, we stopped for a visit at the Appleton Museum of Art, affiliated with the College of Central Florida. It’s a small art and artifact museum built on the collection of Arthur and Martha Appleton (Arthur made his fortune in electronics, Martha was a Hollywood starlet in the 1940’s prior to marriage), very wealthy art collector and horse-breeder denizens of Ocala circa the 1970’s. We pretty much had the place to ourselves. Plus air conditioning - aaaahhhhhh.
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In the evening, we had dinner at the Stirrups restaurant at the World Equestrian Center. Two cools things. One, they had paintings of thousands (ok, maybe hundreds) of dogs up all over the Equestrian Hotel (which is, go figure, the name of the hotel at the World Equestrian Center and in which Stirrups is located). And two, Dave didn't die from horse allergies, his childhood memories of almost choking to death from entering a horse barn apparently either imagined or mitigated over time (according to an allergist, who said he’s about as allergic to horses as he is to dogs, cats, elm trees, hay, bad whiskey, and modern and performance artists).
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The next day we headed to Tampa, where as our first stop we visited the Imagine Museum in nearby St. Petersburg. The museum probably should have a more descriptive name because it's actually a museum of glass art. Yes, glass! Which you might think would be somewhat limited, but was in fact stunning in both the exhibitions’ variety and complexity. Highly recommended for a visit!
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Next stop, the famous Columbia restaurant in Tampa, where we had a balcony table overlooking the main dining area, enjoyed Mojitos made table-side and tried a variety of Cuban dishes, all of which were fab. If we all look a bit sweaty (including the waitress), well, Tampa in July. Hot, humid. And humid and hot.
Did we say hot and humid? Hard for the a/c to keep up!
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We did a short (hot, humid) walk along Tampa's River Walk, which was actually very enjoyable. Across the river, though, we spotted a set of odd metal minarets towering over a line of brick buildings. We had to explore! Turned out they were perched on the Henry B. Plant Museum, located in the middle of the University of Tampa, which we wanted to visit. That has been put on hold because it, like a lot of tourist sites (most, actually) were closed due to Covid. But we did walk around it, and the larger Henry B. Plant hotel, which now contains University administration offices (but not, as we had kind of hoped, freshman dorms, because it all felt a bit Harry Potter-ish). The architecture was amazing and what we could see of the old hotel’s inside through the windows evoked the bygone era of grand inns and Victorian railroads, which was the era when it was built.
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And that was our long weekend in Florida. In a couple of weeks, we'd be on to another adventure, to the gentile Saratoga Spa State Park in upstate New York for some mineral spa baths and horse races.