Great Fun On The Gulf Coast

Oysters pop open in a fire.

Steam builds up inside the shells as the flesh cooks so they are easier to open and eat. The prehistoric peoples of Florida harvested tons of easy to gather shellfish as a staple of their diet. Once they ate the sea creature, they cast the shells aside; years and years of this practice built up massive shell mounds called kitchen middens.

Ginny and I explored one of these middens while on our vacation near Chiefland, Florida.

Here’s a photo of me looking at an eroded spot in a mound which covers acres of ground:

Here’s a photo of one restaurant where we enjoyed some fine sea food ourselves in Cedar Key on the Gulf Coast:

A sign announces that, “Cedar Key is a quaint little drinking village with a fishing problem”. These crab traps stacked along the sidewalk show that the Gulf waters provide employment for the fishermen when they’re not drinking:

The Gulf waters claim many boats. Here is a derelict buried in estuary mud:

But not all Florida waters are muddy. At Fanning Spring the water is so clear that the rocks on bottom that Ginny is looking at lie 18 feet below the surface:

At Fanning Spring, we also explored a cypress swamp bordering the Suwannee River. Cypress knees grow up from the roots of the trees:

God created cypress knees to fulfill some biological purpose for the tree but I can’t remember what it is. Usually, water covers the base of cypress but because of the long drought here in Florida, the swamp was dry enough to explore.

Such a swamp forms form a habitant for mosquitoes, ticks, cottonmouth moccasins, raccoon, possum, bobcats and deer; and, quite possibly unicorns, centaurs and fairies:

I took several photos of this beautiful dryad looking over her forest grove:

Beautiful as the enchanted grove is, you still need to be careful walking in a Cypress swamp watching birds and looking at air-plants high in the branches. No telling what you may run into. Snakes are not the only thing to watch out for.

Other dangers lurk.

Cypress knees per se can cause serious damage to the unwary. Those things hurt when you walk into one of just the right height:

But we did not spend all of our time traipsing through swamps. I continued waking up at 4 a.m. and reading through the Bible’s historical books; I’m up to the book of Second Kings now, and as I read I learned more about God and man and me.

Great fun.

Besides that a local tv station (which we do not get in Jacksonville) aired 17 James Bond movies back to back to back. We left the tv going day and night so that at any time we could see James bond doing James Bond stuff.

Great fun.

To top off our trip we bought bargains at a huge flea market in Chiefland. On weekends, scores of vendors bring in stuff to sell and stock booths with items ranging from birdhouses to beer mugs to books to boats to airplane parts to sewing patterns, tires, watermelons, jewelry and .farm tractors.

Naturally I bought a bagful of books (just like I need another book) including a copy of Margery Kempe’s autobiography This English lady lived in the 1300s and kept a diary of her pilgrimage to Jerusalem; she just may have been the first female blogger.

I also bought some neat metal statues and a souvenir coffee mug from Vermont with moose on it.

Vermont?

Yes. No reason. The mug just caught my fancy.

When I buy treasures at a flea market, Ginny always says, “One man’s trash is another man’s trash”. (P.S. — I bought the covered candy dish — Ginny)

The woman has no taste. Look who she married.

Here’s a photo of some treasures Ginny and I bought:

When I asked the old farmer how much the statue of Venus cost, he said, “Five dollars”.

But I said, “Don’t you think five is a bit too much? After all her arms are broken off and missing”.

Catching my joke, the old man got to laughing and said, “Well, ok. Since her arms is broke off, you can have it for three”.