A Weekend Jaunt To South Florida

Sorry I've been missing in action for the last few days.  Took a run down to South Florida to the Myakka River State Park near Sarasota.  The occasion of this jaunt was the annual Florida Envirothon competition.

In a nutshell, the Envirothon is an environmentally-themed high-school competition where students compete with each other in five knowledge areas:  Aquatics, Soils, Forestry, Wildlife, and a Current Topic, this year's topic being Non-Point-Source Pollution.  Non-point-source pollution is pollution that cannot be traced to a single source, i.e. runoff.  Currently, it is the single biggest source of water pollution in the U.S.A.

I serve on the local Envirothon committee and wanted to make an appearance at the state competition to cheer my team on.  The state winner goes on to the national competition and if they win there, international competition.  I don't know the results yet, but I do know that our team won one of the categories but finished out of the top three overall.  Oh well, it was a good effort and the perfect excuse to visit my old buddy Punch who lives in the area.

Mr. C's big adventure, in pictures:

First stop:  After a long haul down from Baja, a nap under a shade tree on beautiful Tampa Bay overlooking the Skyway Bridge before the final leg into Bradenton/Sarasota.

Got up early Saturday morning for the ride out to Myakka State Park for the competition.  A view of the Myakka River.  The water is lower in all Florida lakes and tributaries than I have ever seen it, but still a beautiful sight and still plenty of alligators to remind you of where you are.

Sunday morning Punch and I decided to take a ride to the Sarasota waterfront.  Sarasota is really a beautiful city and Sarasota Bay a favorite anchorage.

An old salt rows ashore.  In the cage in front of him is his Cockatiel, Lucy, his best and only companion.

On the return trip I couldn't resist a photo of this stunning field of day lilies in Citra.  This is the second time I have been fortunate enough to see this splendid sight.

Decided while in the area to scoot over to Cross Creek and the homestead of Marjorie Kennan Rawlings, author of The Yearling.  It's really a pretty nice cabin considering.  Rather larger than this photo of the kitchen door suggests, but not grand by any stretch.  Back in those days, no electricity, no indoor plumbing, no running water, unless you were fortunate enough to afford an artesian well which drew water from the high pressure Floridan aquifer.

The tenant cabin on the property gives you more of an idea how close to the earth most people lived in those days.  Scratching a living out of the central Florida jungle must have been close to living hell... or paradise depending on how you looked at it.  One thing's for sure, every time I visit one of these old homesteads it gives me a renewed appreciation of air conditioning.  I grew up in a house without any and can speak from experience.