Miami IV: Henry, Meet Trump

"Henry has a personality now," I told Michael, when I returned home from Florida.  "What is his personality?" Mike asked.  "Well....He's very sweet, but he won't be imposed upon.  When he's bored, he yells."  As I thought about it, that didn't seem like a whole personality, but Henry definitely has entered the world of real people.  On March 4, 2016, Dave and I returned to Miami from St. Augustine to spend a second weekend with Jonny and Jenny.  We had all sorts of adventures, including introducing Henry to Donald Trump and his assets.  We explored the Trump Miami resort during a PGA golf tournament.

When we arrived, Jenny had just put Sam and Henry down for naps, so Jonny took us to a Cuban fast food cafe for lunch.  It was authentic, with signs written in Spanish and great shakes and Cuban sandwiches.  We tried the specialty, chocolate wheatgrass shakes.  We then stopped by a Venezuelan cafe for tiny meat-filled rolls, served with three sauces--garlic, spicy avocado, and salsa.

When the boys awakened, we stopped by the Miami Holocaust monument.  It was very moving.  A huge bronze arm and fist thrust skyward, with a concentration camp number tattooed on the wrist.  Naked, starving men, women and children struggled in vain to climb up the arm.  "What does it mean?"  David asked.  Jonny read the inscriptions, which said that the meaning was left up to the individual.  We decided the monument represented Holocaust victims' courage (the fist), as well as their vulnerability and powerlessness (the figures trying to struggle up the arm).

In Florida, there are critters everywhere, zoo or not.  This fellow lazed near the Holocaust memorial pool.

We paused in the gardens nearby, which included a very pretty Japanese bridge.

On Friday evening, we ate at the Yardbird, a top Southern restaurant in Miami.  We had luscious biscuits, fried chicken, shrimp and grits, and barbecued ribs, as well as a couple of healthy salads. Sam made friends with the waiters and guests.

Sam loved the puzzle of the world that we bought him in St. Augustine.  With 25 pieces, it was just right.

Jonny and Jenny have a season pass to Zoo Miami, and they visit often.  "For Sam," Jonny says, "the zoo is not about the animals. It's about all the other stuff."  Sam loved to climb on the frog statue.

He loved to eat an ice cream bar.

He loved the "photo opportunities" that let him peek through animal faces.

He loved the mister that let him spray down his Daddy with the push of a button.

I think Sam is starting to love the animals, too.  The rest of us surely did.  I saw many creatures that I had never seen elsewhere, such as this plumed bird.

I fell in love with tapirs at the Seattle Zoo, and I was glad to see them again in Miami.

Zoo Miami has great monkeys.  Some swung on long arms from branch to branch and others hooted and hollered.

The eland is Jonny's favorite animal.

In the evening, we hiked to an island across from Jonny and Jenny's apartment complex, the Bel Aire.  Jonny and Sam threw stones, and we all gazed up at the bellies of jets roaring down to the Miami airport, a few miles away.

The Marriott Miami resorts are next to the elegant Bel Aire, on a private lake.  "When else will you live at a resort?" I asked Jenny and Jonny, with envy.

We finished the evening by walking through a large utility tunnel to the Trump resort.  The resort is hosting a PGA gold tournament all weekend, and we wandered past the bleachers next to several holes.  We also passed the outbuildings housing luxury rooms and suites.  We passed by the pool and the huge signs, in lights, with the brand:  "Trump."

St. Augustine III: Micanopy and Other Delights

On March 3, 2016, we roamed the Gaineville area, and then drove east to Panatka, at the southern end of the St. John's River.  First stop was the Florida Museum of Natural History in Gainesville.  I wanted a better idea of the ancient people of Florida, and its present plants and animals.  I wanted to understand what I had spent the last week seeing.  The museum was wonderful, with exhibits on the Calusas and Seminoles, the tribes of Native Americans who settled Florida.  There were also exhibits on the various natural areas of Florida--coastline, marsh, swamp, upland pine forest, caves and springs.  And, there was a great gift shop where we found a 25-piece puzzle of the world to satisfy Sam's new craving.

We then visited Micanopy, which made the Huffington Post list of "America's cutest towns."  It is 20 miles south of Gainesville, in Alachua County, and has 600 residents.  It is also festooned with antique shops, restaurants with key lime pie and banjo players, and picture perfect Southern homes and gardens.  

 Our lunch was--what else?--a Cuban sandwich and homemade key lime pie.

Many homes in Micanopy had been turned into antiques shops, which had different specialties.  The shops that called to me most yearningly were the one selling 1500 cameos and the one filled with stylish decorations for all the holidays of the year.

 The antique store filled with china and books also exerted a strong pull!

 We were in the American heartland, with flags and rockers.

 We spent the afternoon on a tour of author Marjorie Rawlings' home, also near Gainesville.  As a shop owner told me in Micanopy, "There is beauty in Northern Florida, but it is a quiet beauty.  You have to search for and find it."  Marjorie Rawlings lived a quiet, beautiful life, as recounted by our charming guide, dressed in 1930s farm clothes to look like Marjorie.  Marjorie was originally a journalist from New York State, who visited Northern Florida and immediately felt at home.  She bought and tended an orange grove, raised farm animals--and wrote nine novels.  "The Yearling" won the Pulitzer Prize.  Marjorie was also a friend of Robert Frost and other notables, who visited her in this wood frame house.

 We saw the table where Marjorie wrote her novels, the indoor toilet which was an incredible luxury in 1930s rural Florida, and Marjorie's bedroom and clothes.  She had red curtains throughout her house.

 We finished the day in Panatka, a town at the origin of the St. John's River, one of the few rivers that flows from south to north.  Panatka has a fine collection of Southern homes, a tiny railroad museum, and great "catch of the day" at an unprepossessing cafe.  My flounder was flaky and delicious.  Dave and I were so worn out, after supper, that we took the freeway back to St. Augustine, rather than meandering along the St. John's River shore.  Another time.

St. Augustine II: Florida Outback

Dave and I loved our 2012 trip to the Australian outback, which felt very isolated and remote.  As we crossed the "red heart" of Australian by plane, we looked down and couldn't see any roads.  We had a that same feeling on February 29, 2016, a we took a boat trip through the Okefenokee Swamp, just over the Florida border into Georgia, The quiet was broken only by bird calls and the hiss of alligators when our "good old boy" ranger nosed the boat too close to them.  We were away from the world.

I bought a book, compiled by a naturalist who lived in the swamp during the 1920s and 20s, before it became a national wildlife refuge.  The book is full of stories of the "Georgia crackers" who settled there.  They were Scotch-Irish, so I felt kinship!

Northern Florida is covered with sparse pine forests which, every once in a while, erupt in forest fires.

We paused to eat lunch and take pictures in White Springs, Florida, on the Suwannee River.  That river was immortalized by the pre-Civil War song composer, Stephen Foster, in "Old Folks at Home," which begins, "Way down upon the Suwannee River, far, far away..."  White Springs is faded and empty now, but it has a colorful history.  It was filled, during the Civil War, with the families of Georgia and Florida plantation owners fleeing to safety from the fighting.  In the early 1900s, it was a hot springs resort, with 15 hotels and huge bathhouses visited by Teddy Roosevelt and President Taft.  During World War II, it housed a prison camp for German soldiers.

We hoped to eat at the Telford Hotel, the last of White Springs' resort hotels.  It was listed in the guide book, but it had shut down by the time we arrived.  Our second choice was Fat Belly's, advertising catfish, burgers, and shrimp.

The house specialty was "buffalo shrimp salad," with fried shrimp tossed in hot sauce and layered on a bed of lettuce.  The appropriate side was, of course, fried onion rings.  Interesting.

We walked through White Springs, admiring the white clapboard houses, all built between 1900 and 1910, in White Springs' hey day. I paused to talk with the owner of the house below, who was lovingly restoring it.  He said he had grown up at the Telford Hotel--his parents had owned it.

We were sorry to miss the grand old Telford Hotel.  The guidebook raved about its Southern buffet, with ribs, fried chicken, two flavors of cake, and banana pudding.

Next  stop was the Stephen Foster Folklife Center.

Stephen Foster was a songwriter from Philadelphia who wrote such wildly popular pre-Civil War songs as "Oh, Susannah," "Old Folks at Home," "Camptown Races," and "I Dream of Jeannie with the Light Brown Hair."  He never visited White Springs, Florida, and pulled the name, "Suwannee River" off a map for his song.  Still, he is revered in White Springs.

The Folklife Center hosts craftsmen and folk artists from around the South.  This woman from Columbia, Missouri, played hauntingly sweet music with her mountain dulcimer.

There were hand-crafted leather items for sale, dulcimers, and shawls woven on a triangular loom.

We also stopped at the Olustee Battlefield, where the Union Army unsuccessfully charged into Florida in early 1864 in an attempt to cut off the Confederate Army's supply of beef, which came from Florida.  Olustee had the third highest casualties of any battle in the Civil War--30% of 10,000 soldiers--even though it is unknown today.

We were fascinated by the monuments constructed by the Daughters of the Confederacy in 1935. They extolled the bravery and shrewdness of the Confederate Army.

We drove back to St. Augustine via Amelia Island, a barrier island north of Jacksonville.  The beaches were endless, and sunset fell on an old plantation house which served as a school for former slaves after the Civil War ended.

We also visited Ft. Clinch, an old Civil War fort, with an interpreter dressed in Union battle gear.  Part of Florida was controlled by the Confederates, and part remained with the Union army.

We ended our trip in the main city on Amelia Island, with its quaint main street and historical marker for the Revolutionary War!  Who would have thought--all the way down in Florida!

 Florida sunsets are breathtaking.