On our way out of south Florida, we visited the Coral Castle.
It was built under mysterious circumstances by eccentric sculptor/physicist Edward Leedskalnin in the 1920s and ’30s. He may or may not have built the castle to impress a girl and/or to work out girl-related anxiety. It’s all kind of unclear. But the Coral Castle is clearly awesome.
Some of our favorite areas were the dining room:
… the bedroom:
… and a place called “Repentance Corner”:
And in case all that isn’t enough for you, the patently awesome Billy Idol wrote a song about the Coral Castle and filmed a video there. Nice!
After all the hustle and bustle of 8 non-stop theme park days, Brian and I needed some of this:
So we headed down to the Florida Keys!
Now, I have to tell you guys, the last time I booked a hotel on Hotwire, I ended up sleeping in a conference room with a Murphy bed, but I am so glad I gave them another chance because this time, they delivered me this:
This is the Coconut Palm Inn in Tavernier, Florida, on Key Largo. We had an adorable little room with a private screened-in porch overlooking the pool and the water. It was so lovely we decided to stay three nights!
To the right of the hammocks above, there’s a little breakfast bar thing where the inn serves breakfast on the beach every morning. When we arrived, it was past office hours, so our keys and info were in a little envelope taped to the door (in a much more obvious place than when we had a similar situation in Big Bend, by the way); we didn’t talk to anyone. But there was a little juice dispenser on the breakfast bar with orange juice in it, so we helped ourselves. However, it turned out not to be orange juice, but rather a very strong cocktail!! Long story short, a couple had gotten married the weekend before right there on that very beach, and they were trying to use up their leftover liquor from their wedding reception by sharing it with other hotel guests (luckily — accidental cocktail theft would have been really embarrassing!). It turned out that the groom’s mom graduated from Delta State in 1972!! Small world, right??
Key Largo is the northernmost Key you’ll find on Highway 1, which we took down from the Everglades area, so we drove south to explore a little more.
One of the first things we did was meet Betsy, possibly the world’s largest lobster:
As you can see, Betsy is a Florida lobster or Caribbean spiny lobster… she’s native to the Keys. She lives in front of an art co-op!
Next, we went to visit some tarpon!
Tarpon are the cool-looking fishies you see above. They congregate at this one particular pier in Islamorada, and you can buy a bucket of fish to throw to them. Legend has it that the owner of the pier rescued and rehabilitated an injured tarpon there, then set him back in the water when he was all healed up; the tarpon kept returning back to the pier to get food, and I guess he told all his tarpon friends and now here we are!!
The water is very clear, and the tarpon are pretty aggressively interested in getting fish, so it’s a really unique experience. The tarpon will actually jump up out of the water to grab a fish out of the air or someone’s hand (and you have to be careful — they bite!!). We kept our hands a safe distance from the water, but others are more daring:
Thanks, tarpon!
Of course, tarpon aren’t the only wildlife in the Keys. There is a whole deer sanctuary for the special breed of Key deer:
The Key deer are endangered, but they are protected. They’re small — around the size of a German shepherd. Cute!
Key West (the southernmost Key) boasts a flock of wild gypsy chickens.
The southernmost point in the United States is in Key West.
Okay, so, technically this monument is not located exactly on the southernmost point, which is actually on a military base inaccessible to civilians, but it’s still pretty crazy to be closer to Cuba than to Miami.
I should mention that in our time in the Keys, we had a lot of really great food. We particularly enjoyed the Old Tavernier Restaurant in Tavernier and Island Fish Company in Marathon. Also, we got key lime pie at almost every opportunity (which added up to a lot of key lime pie!!). I really liked the pie at both Kermit’s Key West Key Lime Shoppe and at the Blond Giraffe Key Lime Pie Factory, but since the woman manning the Blond Giraffe was the rudest, meanest, most horrible customer service person I’ve ever met in my entire life (!), I have to give the edge to Kermit.
After our fun week in Orlando, Brian and I decided to head south to explore a bit more of the Sunshine State. Our first stop was Everglades National Park!
It was really hot out, but we did walk a couple of trails to check out the landscape and some impressive wildlife, including many anhinga:
We saw a ton of alligators, both young…
… and mature!
These guys were really huge!! At least twice the size of our friends on Avery Island.
Did you know that Disney has a greenhouse in Epcot?
It’s a ride, too, of course. That’s how we found out about the behind-the-scenes greenhouse tour called… Behind the Seeds! It’s one of those little extra activities at Disney World. They use some exciting new experimental gardening techniques! For example:
These Brussels sprouts aren’t planted in any soil!! They move through on the track (they are hanging from above) while the enclosed area sprays nutrients and water directly on the roots.
Some plants are arranged in stacks:
They do a lot of this space- and resource-conserving kind of planting. It is very interesting! Everything moves around and gets sprayed with nutrients and water through an elaborate-looking pipe system.
Our tour guide told us that the food they grow in the greenhouse makes up… 2 to 3 percent of the food in the park. Still, that is a LOT!
We got to release some ladybugs onto a strawberry plant:
And we got to sample some cucumbers from the greenhouse:
Our particular cucumbers were not shaped like Mickey Mouse, but they do put some cucumbers in these little tubes to make them grow that way:
And it’s not just limited to cucumbers…
Thanks, tour guide Brandt from Birmingham, Alabama!
You can probably guess what brought us to Florida.
Brian’s mom surprised us all at Christmas with plans to take the whole family on a magical adventure to Disney World!! We all realized May would be a good time for everyone, so after a few months of planning, Brian and I met all my new in-laws in the happiest place on earth. We spent 8 days together exploring the Magic Kingdom, Epcot, Animal Kingdom, Hollywood Studios, and Universal Studios and Islands of Adventure. Whew!! Obviously, it was awesome. It was a very busy trip, so there wasn’t time for tons of photography, but we do have a few photos to share!
It was just a couple of weeks, but we had many adventures and took lots of pictures. On our way, we met this rooster made of car bumpers in Brundidge, Alabama!
Now, prepare yourself for a victorious moment…
We now have photos of state signs for all 45 states we have visited! One giant, 45-image post coming soon.
Did you know that when you go to the Florida welcome center, they give you OJ?
Thanks for the refreshing and nutritious treat, Florida!
They take their citrus pretty seriously down there. When we went south, we drove down the coast so we could see this:
Then, when we headed back up north, we took a different route to avoid tolls (which, incidentally, they also take pretty seriously in Florida), and we ended up driving through a bunch of groves:
This was just a quick trip, but we went off the path a bit to do some exploring. We went up to Bishopville, S.C., to check out Pearl Fryar’s topiary garden — both because my mom recommended it after seeing the documentary A Man Named Pearl and because we certainly couldn’t resist anyone who shares a name with our Pearl. This Pearl apparently has no training in the art of topiary, but he just felt moved to start doing it and suddenly he was doing topiaries for the whole neighborhood and people were making movies about him. The garden is just in his yard and is quite extensive. In fact, his work is everywhere on the whole street:
Then on Pearl’s actual property, the topiaries just go on and awesomely on:
That’s just a small corner of the yard. Amazing!!
After that, we decided to head over to Congaree National Park, home of the continent’s largest old-growth floodplain forest, champion trees, swampy goodness, and so many mosquitoes that they have this sign:
Eek. As you can see, we were pretty safe to go enjoy the park, so we walked for a bit out on the elevated boardwalk through the forest.
I really loved Congaree even though we only spent a tiny amount of time there. The air was sooooo fresh (thanks, trees), and there was this lovely balance of silence and lots of thriving forest activity sound (woodpeckers, squirrels, falling leaves, etc.). Plus we got to see a bunch of cypress knees:
The next day was Halloween and we spent most of it at the wedding (which was, after all, the point of this trip). Look at this beautiful location:
We had a great time reconnecting with old friends and making new ones. Plus, the bride and groom left on a boat as we all stood on the pier ringing tiny wedding bells. So lovely!
We headed out the following day and didn’t make very many stops because we had some lame, rainy weather (the worst for a meandering road trip). However, we can always make time for a giant Solo cup:
I mean, come on.
So! We are back in Cleveland, Mississippi, for now. Further bulletins as events warrant!
Hey, y’all. We’re on our way up to South Carolina for what is sure to be a delightful weekend including a lovely wedding! This is going to be a quick trip, so we each packed one tiny little bag and shared a garment bag and that’s it. Quelle différence! Packing, getting into our en-route hotel (a lovely Ramada Limited in Douglasville, Georgia), etc etc etc is a million times easier without a stuffed-to-the-gills Pearl. She’s got room to spare this time!
We’ll update more when we have more fun tales to share. Today was just driving; the most interesting thing we saw was a bowl of Halloween candy at our hotel’s front desk.
We had so much fun today at Avery Island, home of Tabasco!
This is one intense, Tabasco-loving place. Our adventure began at the Tabasco Visitor Center, where we were treated to a few small exhibits and a brief talk and video explaining Tabasco’s history and how it is made.
Okay, between you and me, I’ve never been that big a fan of Tabasco, and neither has Brian. But how it’s made is really interesting! First it starts with these peppers:
They are Tabasco peppers and they are grown there on Avery Island and also in South America (where there is a similar climate and they can grow year-round). They save seeds, though, so even the South American peppers are originally from Avery Island. All the peppers are hand-harvested, and workers are each issued one of these:
That is le petit bâton rouge, a stick painted the correct shade of red for perfect pepper ripeness. When the peppers match le bâton, they are harvested, then they are ground up along with a small amount of salt (also from Avery Island; there is a huge salt mine underneath the island — allegedly the salt mine is as deep as Mount Everest is high) into a “mash” :
The mash is then placed into these white oak barrels to age (at this point, at the South American pepper farms, the barrels are transported to Avery Island — all Tabasco ages at the warehouse there). The barrels are topped with a thick layer of salt from the island and allowed to ferment. The salt layer allows gases to escape without letting any impurities in. They sit there aging for about 3 years!
Another interesting aspect is that they are a no-waste company (which they reminded us many times!). When the barrels are no longer usable, they are chopped up into wood chips for cooking and sold in the extensive on-island gift shop.
Anyway, after aging for 3 years, the mash is then strained, mixed with vinegar and more salt from the island, and placed into another barrel where is it stirred intermittently for the next 28 days:
And then, finally, it is bottled and sent all over the world!
We got to walk through a wall of windows into the bottling plant; they were bottling the jalapeño variety that day. Yay!
The original Tabasco flavor is the only one that goes through the aging and everything, by the way.
After all that, we visited the gift shop where we could sample a bunch of products. They had all the Tabasco flavors, of course, but also some products made with Tabasco, including chili and ice cream. Brian tried some Tabasco cola, and I think the pictures tell the whole story:
We also learned that the word tabasco is actually from a Native American word meaning “land of hot and humid,” which quite aptly describes the climate on Avery Island. Check out the steam on Brian’s glasses and the camera lens from this photo snapped on our way out of the chilly, air-conditioned gift shop into the Tabasco-like outdoor climate:
Now, that was a lot of fun for one day, but it wasn’t over yet!!
The dude who invented Tabasco, Edmund McIlhenny, has spawned generations of family members who remain heavily involved in Tabasco sauce production. They select the best pepper plants and still own the company and live on the island and everything. But seeing how they are all zillionaires due to the wild success of Tabasco, it’s no wonder that some of the McIlhennys have chosen a slightly different path. One such McIlhenny was Edmund’s son Edward, who ran the company from 1898-1949. He did a good job of managing Tabasco, but he also pursued his other passions as a naturalist and conservationist, and he established Jungle Gardens on Avery Island as a refuge for the snowy egret (the refuge helped pull the snowy egret back from the brink of extinction). Jungle Gardens also contains many interesting exotic plants, a nearly 1000-year-old Buddha statue, and a lot (and I mean A LOT) of these:
YAY! I love an alligator. They are so cute! These are just little ones, too, so they are not very scary, although I’m sure they could hurt you if they felt like moving, which they did not because it was nine million degrees out. We didn’t see any snowy egrets because they had already migrated south, but we saw some other exciting birds:
And some really large bamboo:
After all that, we finally headed north toward Jackson, Mississippi. We have family events going on for the next few days, then we’ll be regrouping. Stay tuned!
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