EXPLORING CEDAR KEYS 4/12/11

 Last night we spent at Camp Wal-Mart in Perry, FL.  It was a nice evening and night after a full day of driving.  Then today we headed out for more driving south to Orlando today.  The trees here are lush and wild!  It is amazing how beautiful this stifling humidity makes this place!

 We crossed across the muddy Suwanee River.  Then we had that song stuck in our heads the rest of the day!!

 The trees with the southern style moss hanging down is amazing!  It is hard to imagine we are actually seeing the sights we saw only in books!!

 There are lots of huge majestic oaks everywhere!  By the way, we are driving down Hwy 19 today, between Perry and Inverness.

We decided to do as we always like to do.... see a road and wonder where it goes.... then turn on it and find out.  Hwy 24 went out to Cedar Keys, a small little tourist town on a small little island in the Gulf of Mexico.  What a fascinating place to explore.  We spent several hours here just wandering around and meeting the locals.  The buildings, some were from the 1850's!

 And some were newer and prepared for hurricanes.

 The beaches were beautiful and surprisingly empty.  It was the middle of the week after all.

 There were several tile sculptures.....

...interesting signs.....

 ...and tile doorways.

 Some areas were not good for driving the trailer through!

Some of the locals were less than conversant....

 ...some just hung around.

 Some of the restaurants were very quaint.

 We came upon this deserted shark that someone had apparently caught and then just left on the grass.  It was interesting to get up close and touch.  It was very dead.

 Couldn't resist adding this beautiful pelican.

 Here is where we parked for the day as we wandered around.

 Can you find Ann in this picture?

Ann loves taking pictures of birds.

 Wayne loves standing in the street.

 This, we were told was once the honeymoon cottage of the town.

 I guess they were a little rough on the place!!!

 Ann liked this one better!!

 The restaurant row on the bay!

Saw this one on the way off the island.

We then drove on to Inverness, FL and spent the night at Camp Wal-Mart again.  We had a very secluded spot in a quiet corner of the parking lot, right next to some beautiful lush lawn.  We thought we had picked the perfect spot..... until 4:30 in the morning they began mowing our lawn.  Oh well, it's free and it was a big lawn. so we only heard him each time he came around to our trailer every 7-8 minutes.  We slept in between.
Wednesday, 4/13, we drove to Orlando, FL and parked in the Orlando Thousand Trails Preserve in space D153!