Wildlife galore

I promised to show you some of my wildlife photos from Florida.  I whittled  a couple of hundred images down to 60 and then started to blog.  So be warned.  This is a photo heavy blog post today.

However I am expecting to remove some of them as I go along!

A manatee in the wild at Wakulla Springs

Dolphins off Cedar Key

Pelicans

 Butterflies

We visited the Ellie Schiller Homosassa Springs Wildlife State Park which was basically a zoo.  The birds and animals are on the endangered list for the most part but we were unimpressed with how they kept the animals.  Most of the speicies were herd or pack animals but there was only one of each kind.   The birds had a much better deal.

 

 

 

There was a free boat ride back to the car park where we saw these:

And now back to the wildlife in it's proper environment.

 

 

You will have to take my word for this.  A photo of a mullet jumping.  Or rather just disappearing into the water having jumped!

It was very windy on the beach so the birds were all stood on the sand facing into the wind.

The birds are so used to humans that I had to run at them and make noises to get them to fly.

Well I managed to cut it down to 45.  Congratulations if you stuck with the whole lot to the end.

Old Florida

If your view of Florida is Orlando Airport, International Drive and Mickey Mouse then you have missed out on a whole lot of Florida.  There are numerous State Parks and a phenomenal amount of wildlife - I'll blog the wildlife photos another day.

As you drive through towns in Florida you will see notices about the Florida Heritage districts and we stayed in or visited several.

We stayed in this 1905 house: White Springs B&B

And this was the church across the road

We stayed in this beautiful house in Quincy: McFarlin House which was built in 1895.

This is the house opposite.

We also stayed at the Port Inn rebuilt in 1948 after the original 1909 inn burned down.

We visited Tallahassee where we toured the Knott House Museum.  This house was built in 1843 by George Proctor, a free black man, and the house later became home to Florida's first black physician.

This was the house next door.

We visited the Old Capitol building built in 1845 and remondelled in 1902 which now houses an excellent museum of the history of Florida.

The new Capitol Building is a hideous 22 storey 1970s structure.  However you are allowed to go to the top to look out over Tallahassee.  And the foyer wasn't too bad!

Micanopy was a funny little place with 2 cafes and several antiques shops and not a lot else going for it!

We visited historic Downtown Pensacloa on a Sunday morning which meant we got it totally to ourselves.  The downside was that neither museum opens on a Sunday!

Wakulla Lodge in Wakulla Springs State Park turned out to be a 1930s gem.  Sadly we didn't look it up on the internet to see if we could stay there because in my mind it was going to be a hostel rather than a hotel.  How wrong was I when we actually saw it!  A beautiful hotel which wasn't much dearer than the Best Western we actually stayed in 10 minutes away.

Our favourite bit of Old Florida was Cedar Key.

 

And our final visit to a bit of Old Florida was the Gamble Plantation State Park in Ellenton.

Come back soon to see photos of Florida wildlife including Pelicans, Egrets and Alligators.