Edward Ball Wakulla Springs State Park may be a mouthful, but it is a wonderful place to visit. It’s also only about a half hour south of Tallahassee, so it makes a wonderful day-trip from the Capitol city. There are several reasons to visit Wakulla Springs beyond the obvious namesake springs, which provide a great place to swim year round. The 1930’s era Wakulla Lodge is a peak at yesteryear, offering 27 guest rooms (book early), a full service restaurant and a neat soda fountain where you can try the park’s signature soft drink, the Ginger Yip. A ranger-led boat trip down the Wakulla River was the real highlight for me though. At just $8, it may be the best bargain in the state. Our captain/guide gave a wonderful running commentary on the flora and fauna of the area and we really saw a lot on our trip. We saw hundreds of birds, dozens of alligators, a few snakes and even a pair of manatee. You can see why this area was chosen to film the Tarzan movies and Creature From The Black Lagoon. While most of these photos were taken on a cloudy morning, it did clear up in the afternoon for a few of them. This was one of my favorite state parks which I visited in the state, and I would definitely recommend it if you are in the area. I hope you enjoy these photos from Edward Ball Wakulla Springs State Park.
In the late 19th Century, Dr. Cyrus Teed founded a communal society called The Koreshan Unity in New York. He later moved to Chicago where he expanded his following. The society was based on the ideas of communal living, reincarnation, and eternal life and on a universe which occurred inside of the hollow Earth. In 1894, Teed led his followers to Estero, Florida where they began building their “New Jerusalem” Utopian commune. Those who joined him were promised security, order and a sense of achievement in return for all of their worldly possessions. On this new site they fought hard to clear the land through heat and humidity and mosquitoes for many years. They planted crops and fruit trees to help feed themselves. They built a “Planetary Court”, where the seven women who made up the governing body lived, a bakery, a store, a school, an art hall, two machine shops and several private homes and cabins. It certainly wasn’t an easy life, but they were all in it together, and that sense of community meant something to them. During the first decade of the 20th century, their commune included over 250 members…
Whitehall was the winter residence of Henry Flagler, the father of Florida tourism. Having made his fortune in Standard Oil, Flagler set out to build a railroad from Jacksonville to Key West and a hotel and tourism empire along the way. Bringing tourists too Florida was one thing, but he also brought fruit and vegetables from Florida as well, making tourism and agriculture the two foundations blocks of the Florida economy. One of his signature hotels, The Breakers, is located in Palm Beach very close to Whitehall.
Built in 1902, this Gilded Age, Beaux Arts mansion boasts 75 rooms including a grand ballroom, a spectacular music room, a wonderful library and a beautiful dining room. When it was built, Whitehall included all of the modern amenities of the time including electricity, indoor plumbing and even a telephone. They also had central heat which was surprisingly used mostly in summer to dry the building out from the damaging Florida humidity. It is a beautiful home, inside and out with some phenomenal detail work (albeit most of it was created with plaster casts). I really enjoyed my visit, and I hope you enjoy these photos from Henry Flagler’s Whitehall.
St. Augustine was founded way back in 1565 as part of the Spanish colony of Florida, making it the oldest continuously inhabited colonial city in what is now the United States. It is a beautiful city to wander around and I enjoyed taking these photos in the historic area. I wasn’t there long, as my goal is to spend most of my time in Florida out of the cities instead of in them, but I enjoyed the time I was there. Many of the buildings in St. Augustine are more modern than they look with the most iconic being built by Henry Flagler to attract tourism to the state at the end of the 19th century. Tourism was an excellent industry to choose, and has become a major industry for the state over the last century. This has left St. Augustine crowded, and a little over-touristy, but still a charming place to visit and spend a few days. Its proximity to lovely St. Augustine Beach is a bonus. I hope you enjoy these photos from St. Augustine: The Ancient City…
Happy New Year everyone! I hope you all had a wonderful holiday season, no matter what and where you celebrated it. I was at home in Washington D.C. with my family, trying to catch my breath for a minute, fix some of my equipment and enjoy some holiday cheer. It is, of course, always a good opportunity to look back at the year gone by, and look ahead at the year to come.
A year ago, I was getting ready to set out for the second time on this trip. I had had a fascinating month in West Virginia at the end of 2017, learning about the wonderful history of the Mountain State and seeing some truly spectacular scenery. I had never taken such a deep, in-depth look at a state before, and I really connected with West Virginia on so many different levels. From deep in the heart of coal country to their wonderful state park system to the little big cities of Charleston, Huntington and Wheeling, West Virginia had so much to offer. On the other hand, it was December, so it was cold and the sun was going down at around 4:30 in the afternoon. These were probably not the best of conditions to try and learn the ins and outs of my new van and my new lifestyle, but then again I am a big supporter of a trial by fire. The challenges I faced in my first month of this journey were real, but I persevered as there was no way I was giving up...
Hello everyone. I hope y’all have had as good a week as I have. This week, I had a great time finishing out my visit to Georgia traveling to Jekyll Island, the Okefenokee Swamp and Cumberland Island National Seashore. From there, I crossed the border into Florida and have spent a wonderful few days in The Sunshine State, mostly just chilling out and hanging out with one of my best friends. I’m headed home to Washington D.C. for the holidays, and really looking forward to a few days off the road. It’s time to recharge my batteries, fill up on Christmas cookies and good cheer and catch up with my family and friends for a few days. I haven’t always been able to make it home for Christmas over the years, so I’m grateful to have that opportunity this year.
After we met last week, I spent Thursday on beautiful Jekyll Island, just south of Brunswick. One of my very good friends who I used to work with on St. Thomas, had lived and worked on Jekyll for a while, and gave me all kinds of great places to visit while I was there. I started with a walk out to somewhere she referred to as “bird pond”, although I don’t think it actually had a name. There were a ton of pretty birds there though, so I can see why she would call it that. The area I parked in to make the walk was beautiful as well, with amazing oak trees draped in Spanish moss. From there I made my way out to Driftwood Beach, stopping to see some cool old tabby ruins from some of the island’s earliest settlers on the way. Driftwood Beach was a beautiful beach on the north side of the island which was covered by massive dead trees and, obviously, driftwood. It was awesome and I had a wonderful walk up and down the beach, spotting tons of birds along the way…
I first went to Cumberland Island National Seashore now almost 30 years ago. We went on our 8th Grade class trip on a tour that included Charleston and Savannah, and perhaps our favorite at the time, Kings Dominion amusement park near Richmond. I’ve often thought about Cumberland Island and how much I wanted to go back. Since I was there, I’ve visited 320 or so units of the National Park Service, but Cumberland Island has eluded me. Because you have to get there and back by ferry, it takes more than a few hours of commitment and at least enough planning ahead time to make a ferry reservation. But finally I made it back to the wild island off the coast of Georgia, and it was spectacular. One of my friends asked if it was as beautiful as she remembered and I told her one of the most beautiful things about a National Park site is that it doesn’t change much - that is, in fact, the whole idea! So while I am older and bigger and perhaps a touch wiser, Cumberland Island is much the same…
Having spent most of my life either working in travel and tourism or traveling myself, I have grown tired of organized city tours and rarely go on them. There are plenty of resources available in cities and I can usually sift through what I want to see and do pretty easily. Enlisting the help of the staff at the Visitors Center, the brochure racks around town, old standbys like Yelp and TripAdvisor, and maybe an outlier like Thrillist or Atlas Obscura, I can find the best that a city has to offer, custom tailored to my personal likes and dislikes. I don’t like the standard cramped bus tour and I’ve done enough ghost tours that they have started to sound the same to me. Unless it is an in-depth tour on a specific subject I’m interested in or it provides access to something I want to see but can’t unless I’m on a guided tour, I usually give them a miss. But every now and then something will catch my eye which I simply must try.
And so it was that I stumbled across a tour which I couldn’t leave without checking out: Savannah For Morons. Savannah For Morons is an irreverent look at Savannah history and culture hosted by the Moron Twins, Johnny and Danny Moron (actually John Brennan and Dan Gilbert of the local Front Porch Improv Group).
Tybee Island is a cute little beach community just 18 miles from Savannah. It is the easternmost point of Georgia and has wonderful a wonderful beach, a nice fishing pier and a cute downtown area. The highlight for me though, as I’m sure you will guess, is the Tybee Island Light Station. A lighthouse was first built on the site in 1736, and the bottom half of the current structure dates from 1773. The top half was replaced in 1867. It is the oldest and tallest lighthouse in Georgia.
Helen, Georgia is a fascinating and beautiful place and a real tribute to creativity in tourism initiatives. With a population of around 500, Helen is the third most visited city in all of Georgia. Helen was a dying lumber town in January of 1969 when three local businessmen met to discuss the future of their town. They wondered how they could attract tourism to the area, and thought maybe if they spruced up Main Street a bit, they might entice people to stop for a night or a meal on their way to or from the mountains. One of these men contacted John Kollock, an artist whose family had roots in the region. They asked John if he could make a few sketches and suggest a good direction for the town. John looked at the town, nestled in a beautiful mountain valley, and it reminded him of Bavarian towns he had seen in Germany during his time in the service. His sketches were well received and by that fall, the town had a new facade. Tourists started to come, and have kept coming. Today, over three million people visit Helen every year, so I’d say tourism is working for them. There is plenty of normal tourist trap hullabaloo around town, but some really beautiful buildings as well. Heck, even the Huddle House looks like it fell out of a Fairy Tale. You can get a pretty decent German meal, and definitely a Liter of good German beer. I really loved seeing this place sprucing up for Christmas and my camera loved it as well. I thought I was going to make this a quick stop and ended up there for hours. Helen is a charming little town, well worth a detour. I’m glad I visited. I hope you enjoy these photos from Helen!
As I made my way into Bluegrass State, I asked all of my Facebook friends what thoughts came to mind when someone mentioned the word “Kentucky”. Some things, like bourbon, bluegrass, fried chicken and horse racing come quickly to mind, but some people went deeper and came up with things I hadn’t even considered – like the fact that every Corvette in the world rolls out of a factory in Bowling Green or that Kit Carson was a Kentuckian. I even had one friend from Europe who said quite honestly that he didn’t think much about it at all – that it was just another boring state in Middle America. For my part, I had an amazing month in the Bluegrass State, learned a lot about Kentucky history and culture and met some wonderful people along the way. While I have moved on into Georgia at this point, I wanted to write one final post wrapping things up from Kentucky.
I’ve spent a decent amount of time in Coal Country in the last year and it is an area of the country that fascinates me. This region of Appalachia that stretches from far southeast Ohio down to the Carolinas and the very far north of Georgia is full of rich history and tradition. The mountains are majestic and the woods are full of game and recreation opportunities. Families that live there have often been there for generations and the whole area can sometimes seem frozen in time. Unfortunately, times are often tough in Appalachia. Poverty is rampant, which is doubly sad because poverty was usually what drove these families there to begin with. The opioid epidemic is taking a huge toll on the area, although the problem started when miners with genuine chronic pain got hooked on prescription pain pills. The years have taken their toll on buildings and houses and many are slowly dilapidating into the ground giving many areas a “ghost town” like feel, but if you look closely you can see that this wasn’t always the case. There was a time that these buildings were brand new and that these communities were thriving. As the coal seams have dried up and mining has become more mechanized, there hasn’t been much industry to take its place. Many people have just picked up and moved away while others are fighting to stay. These areas are remote and hard to get to, despite the transportation links which once brought millions of tons of coal to market. Many of these communities across the region are aging and struggling and some have all but given up the ghost. In Kentucky’s Coal Country though, there are rays of light as these communities are trying to rediscover themselves and reinvent themselves and move boldly towards the future. While I have loved visiting communities across the region, it is those in southeast Kentucky which seem to be pushing the hardest for new ideas and change. While this entire region is deeply religious and many communities have just leaned back and put their faith in God, Kentucky’s towns seem to know that God helps those who help themselves. I was impressed with a lot of the efforts I saw in my time there and wanted to share some of those today.
