The Weird of Gainesville

Of course, being who I am, I had to do more weird things. An unexpected event was when I was walking home with a couple people from dinner. This young man ran up and started picking loquats from a tree. He gave us samples (very good and juicy) along with a lecture on the loquat tree. Very unexpected.

Every morning I took a hike. The stated purpose was to geocache (and I found quite a few), but mostly it was to just walk. One morning was to Depot Park. The building is a science museum.

The final morning I did a longer hike of 6 miles total to the University of Florida. This is the 10-ton chert Turlington Rock (that is Turlington hall in the background). It’s common name is the Turlington Turd!

Statues at the stadium.

And the bat houses!

After John picked me up, we drove out to Cellon Oak Park. The Cellon Oak is the co-champion (largest) live oak in Florida. It was definitely big!

Kayaking with Road Scholar

This is my 4^th Road Scholar trip and definitely the closest location. I signed up for a kayaking trip based in Gainesville which is less than 1.5 hours from home. My purpose was to see if I wanted to buy a kayak and go on the many rivers of Florida. Of the group of 14 people, I was the youngest (just 3 years younger than a couple of them) but the least experienced on a kayak. The answer to my question was that, while I really had a good time this week, I enjoy backpacking more.

We stayed at an inn located in several older homes. I was amused that one of the oldest houses in Gainesville was the McKenzie House where I stayed. It was built in 1895. The house I grew up in was built in the late 1860’s or maybe 1870’s. I never considered it “historic”.

The trip included three kayaking 3 different rivers, Ichetucknee River, Santa Fe River, and Silver River. Each are popular and a bit different for kayaking. The Ichetucknee River had clear water with a fast current so not as much work was needed to kayak it.

It also seemed like each day the leaves were greener and more flowers were blooming. This is the Sante Fe River from the next day which was a blackwater river with a slower current (more work). Plus, we got to swim in a spring. It was 72 degrees which is cool but still fine for swimming.

One day was spent hiking at Paynes Prairie. This area had LOTS of alligators along with different birds.

Plus more alligators at Sweetwater Wetlands Park.

This cool part of this park is that is was a man-made wetlands to treat water for Gainesville. It was less expensive than a water treatment plant and much better for the environment. The water is sent through a settling pond, this piece of equipment to skim off floating trash, then into different cells full of water plants.

At Silver Springs, we kayaked and saw several manatees swim past us. We also had time to walk around. There were several shows filmed here long ago including several Tarzan films, Creature of the Black Lagoon, Moon Raker, and Sea Hunt.

The trip also includes a lot of lectures, talks, and films. This included springs, the Floridan Aquifer, underwater caving, wetlands, water treatment, birds, pine trees, cedar trees, and plants. This is a picture of a limpkin (which I’ve never heard about before this trip).