This is one side of Florida. The other side looks just like this, except instead of trees there are strip malls and instead of bushes there are cars and instead of underbrush there is litter.

When our friend Evan found out we were going to Florida, he sent me an email that made me feel like he thought we shouldn’t even go there. Specifically, he said “honestly i can’t believe you are even going – it is a horrible state.” When I got his email, I was in St. Augustine and it was beautiful and old and the state park we were staying at was lush and verdant and it was hot and muggy and lovely. “Oh, it’s just Evan being his cute little cranky self,” I thought. Fast forward a few days, however, and we’re in Blue Spring State Park, which is also quite nice, but the town attached to it is not. In fact, it’s not even a town, even though it calls itself “Orange City.” The main drag is what I had pictured Florida being, and what Evan probably has seen lots of here – miles of strip malls selling junk, needless items, lotions, potions, baubles, used cars, etc. Jacob and I drove down the strip….6 or 7 times? Winding in and out of side streets, trying to find “the town” in the midst of the strip malls, and finally, after seeing almost every street, we realized that the town was just that long drag of shops. No town hall, no town square, no little coffee shop*. The town did boast that it had a “historic district” – the strip malls and shops were it! Nuttyballs is what I say. I think we need to stick strictly to the state parks. And I’m going to ask Evan to send me a list of places that we definitely should not go to.

(* Actually, our GPS did find a coffee shop, and it brought us up to the gates to a nice little gated community, where the guard insisted that there was no such thing as a coffee shop. Rejection.)

I’m super excited about the rest of the parks and trails we’re going to be seeing in Florida. AND – woop woop! – it’s supposed to be in the mid to high 70s for like the next week! There’s this 46 mile bike trail that we’re going to hit a few times in the next week, as we slowly make our way down to Tampa. But first we’re going to see more manatees, and I might pay a large sum of money to swim with them, because they are completely irresistible. Maybe I’ll give up food for a week or so to pay the the extravagance. (But not beer. No way.)

Where’s Waldo?