#25 FLORIDA

The design of the Florida quarter incorporates a 16th-century Spanish galleon, a space shuttle and the inscription "Gateway to Discovery." A strip of land with Sabal palm trees is also depicted.
On Easter in 1513, while searching for the legendary Fountain of Youth, Ponce de Leon named the region "Pascua Florida," meaning "Flowery Easter." In 1539, Hernando de Soto and other explorers continued the exploration of the New World through the region.
Florida, home to the Kennedy Space Center, has been the starting point for most of the modern era’s most significant scientific space expeditions – from Man’s first moon landing to the Voyager probe currently exploring deep space outside our solar system. From 16th-century Spanish galleons to 21st-century space exploration, Florida has played a continuing role in humanity’s quest for knowledge and discovery. With the highest average temperature of any state, and the second longest shoreline, Florida is one of the world’s most popular tourist destinations. US Mint site


My 2008 Florida visit encompassed many highlights: a lighthouse tour with John, and family vacation at Disney World and a beautiful wedding on Cocoa Beach. I was excited to finally be spending several days in a state in contrast to our breakneck pace through New England.

The Sunshine State is known as a mecca for spring breakers and retirees. John visits Key West annually for a week of tarpon fishing allowing me opportunities to connect with him and explore. We really enjoyed the Everglades in June 2002. All I wanted to do at the beginning of that trip was to see an alligator. Well, by the end of our 10 days I concluded that Florida has a REAL alligator problem. I experienced only one gator sighting this time around, a stuffed monstrosity at a road side welcome center. It comes as no surprise that the alligator is Florida’s official state reptile. Do other states have official reptiles? The Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission has a page on their website entitled Living with Alligators where they tell us they remove more than 7,000 nuisance alligators per year. Hmmm…I’ll keep my nuisance raccoons thank you very much!


I met John in Jacksonville where he had flown from Key West via Miami after this year’s tarpon go around. Why JAX? It was so much less expensive to fly into than the more logical Orlando. My travel choices have always been shaped by airfare opportunities and it’s difficult to adjust to this world of diminishing bargains. I’m still locating a few but they’re getting scarcer by the gas guzzling minute. Starting our Florida trip in Jacksonville presented us with the opportunity to visit a few lighthouses that we’ve had in our sights. Details, an except from John’s Lighthouse journals, will be in my next blog post.

We spent an alligator free time in Jacksonville and had one of the funkiest meals ever at St. John’s Seafood and Steaks. I can’t recommend it but sometimes even the worst can be fun. Luckily we were in that frame of mind; don’t go there if you’re not! I just saw a quote from a restaurant review worth reading in the LA Times “It's terrible to gaze out to the ocean and imagine the volume of precious seafood being pulled out and ruined every day by this restaurant” . St. John’s was not that bad!

Our second night was spent in a Hampton Inn on Daytona Beach Shores. The hotel itself was no great shakes, a typical Hampton Inn, but it was really fun to be right on Daytona Beach. Between 1903 and 1935 fifteen automobile speed records were set on the beach racecourse. Today that racing tradition continues at Daytona International Speedway. We explored the beach in the morning and I easily could have spent the day parked under an umbrella watching the waves. Cars may be driven on 11 of 23 miles of hard packed sand but all we had to dodge were bicycles and a few vehicles more closely resembling golf carts that race cars. No beach cruising for us because we had to get to Orlando to meet family members arriving that day for our Disney World trip. Details on all Disney will also be in a future post – there’s just too much for one!

We were literally trapped within our Orlando hotel that evening by an incredible storm with thunder and lightning directly overhead. It lasted about two hours which seemed never-ending but in typical tropical fashion passed quickly and you would never know what had occurred just a few hours prior. There is close to a 50-50 chance that some rain will fall during any given day in the summer "rainy season." There has been a drought in the southeast the past two years and I suspect the locals were happy for every drop. It may have frizzed my hair but other than that it didn’t faze us. The power of an electrical storm is mesmerizing. It’s something I definitely miss living in San Francisco. Rumor has it, lightning strikes Clearwater, FL more often that any other city in the US. Luckily for me. Clearwater is on the west coast of the state near Tampa, several miles from us.

Celebration was the order of day three being both Clare’s Birthday and Shelley & Joe’s wedding day. Shelley & Joe elected to marry on Cocoa Beach. The ceremony was beautiful and it made me so happy to see these two be officially joined together. Pictures are worth a thousand words so take a gander at how terrific they looked!. The post-wedding dinner was at Gregory’s on the Beach, just down the road from the wedding site at Lori Wilson Park.

The remains of the week were spent embracing the commercialism of all things Disney. More amusement park visitors come to Orlando than any other city in the U.S. Not a startling fact when you consider that Orlando has more amusement parks than any other city in the U.S. with the granddaddy of all theme parks: Walt Disney World reigning top of the pack.

My state book choice was Their Eyes Are Watching God by Zora Neale Hurston

Below from Book Club Classics:

"Whenever I drive around Florida I am haunted by the images of Hurston’s lake rising up and all living creatures running for high ground. She captures the experience of living at an elevation of 6 1/2 feet above sea-level better than any other Floridian I can think of, and I truly am reminded of her prose when I, too, am eye-level with the swamps and critters of this complex, fascinating state.

As the host of Bike Week, the Daytona 500, Disney World, Miami, the Keys, millions of retirees and hedonistic college students alike, Florida has a lot to offer and much to fear. The hurricane scene in Eyes masterfully creates suspense and a sense of place – it is as if you are reading the book with your skin. This is especially true when Janie, Tea Cake, and Motor Boat decide to ignore the exiting Native Americans and critters and decide to wait the storm out. What ensues is surprising, horrifying, and heartbreaking, but certainly not forgettable.

Here’s a passage from this section:
“The wind came back with triple fury, and put out the light for the last time. They sat in company with the others in other shanties, their eyes straining against crude walls and their souls asking if He meant to measure their puny might against His. They seemed to be staring at the dark, but their eyes were watching God.”

Hurston’s ability to engulf vivid characterization with her poetry and prose is deft and even thrilling at times. This novel can be approached from many angles and in many contexts — from Richard Wright’s derision to Alice Walker’s resuscitation — but I think I will let Hurston speak for herself.

Here is a sampling of lines from the novel:
“They made burning statements with questions, and killing tools out of laughs…Words walking without masters; walking altogether like harmony in a song.”
“An envious heart makes a treacherous ear.”
“They sat there in the fresh young darkness close together…Janie full of that oldest human longing — self revelation.”
“There are years that ask questions and years that answer.”
“She knew the world was a stallion rolling in the blue pasture of ether. She knew that God tore down the old world every evening and built a new one by sun-up. It was wonderful to see it take form with the sun and emerge from th gray dust of its making.”
“She turned wrongside out just standing there and feeling.”
“She didn’t read books so she didn’t know that she was the world and the heavens boiled down to a drop.”
http://bookclubclassics.com/Blog/2008/03/13/50-states-50-books-florida/

I loved the book so much I just had to rent the Halle Berry movie of the same name. As is so typical the movie did not live up to the book, although it warrants watching.

Another Florida book about a woman living in Florida during the same time period is Charlotte’s Story by Charlotte Arpin Niedhauk It’s a beautiful, riveting read of her life on an isolated Florida Key culminating with her struggle to survive the Labor Day hurricane of 1935. I highly recommend it.

Two other Florida classics in my mind are Marjorie Stone Douglas’ The Everglades: River of Grass and Joan Didion’s Miami. Douglas writes a poetic environmentalism tribute while Didion tells us of the political saga of Cuban exiles living in Miami. Together the books present a multi-faceted Florida and open many lines questions even years after they were published.

More about Florida to come…