Nov. 5 Flamingo Gardens (hope this is not a duplicate)

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Thursday, Nov. 5, 2009

Looks kinda cloudy and windy again; fixed broccoli omelet for breakfast and then headed out. Woke up early again, darn it -- had hoped to sleep in, nothing in particular on schedule for today. Started the day at Flamingo Gardens ($13.60 for a senior) -- it’s very pretty and worth a visit after you’ve hit your main highlights. The animals and birds appear to be fairly well taken of, with decent habitats (could be roomier of course, but better than I was expecting). Lots of huge, very interesting plants and trees. Fortunately I had my umbrella, because the skies opened up mightily, but it was still fairly warm, so I plugged on ahead. The Wray house on the property (the original developers of the gardens) is quite charming; I could move right in -- lots of my kind of moderate antiquey stuff. The shop is also lovely, if you like flamingo stuff and other nature-oriented goods. You can get nose-to-nose with a roseate spoonbill in their aviary; I was in there before the rain started and was tempted to raise my brolly for other concerns. The Caribbean flamingoes appeared to be bright orange, altho the school group leader was calling them pink as usual. Gorgeous anyway.

The weather pretty much cancelled my plan to spend the afternoon at Hollywood beach -- never did make it into the ocean on my fly-through So. FL road trip. It’s been warm enough, up until today (it was 95 yesterday, 88 at 5 p.m., even with the rain squalls). But time in the ocean wasn’t really on my itinerary anyway, so it’s okay.

I stopped at the Hard Rock Seminole Casino to check it out -- mostly very smoky. It’s pretty big, but surprisingly there are no directions into it from the huge parking structure -- you wander through a restaurant row in order to find it. I don’t like the overly complicated video slot machines, so I wasn’t tempted, and figured I couldn’t afford the poker room, so I didn’t even go in there (expect it‘s also smoky, including cigars). There is one small “nonsmoking” video slot room, but it’s not closed off completely from the main floor. There is a bar on the main floor, but didn’t appear to be drinks service at the machines. The inside food court is also smoky.

So, I got back to my room mid-afternoon after driving through the Hollywood area a little; am maxed out on driving for a while -- just one more long leg tomorrow to Orlando, and then it will just be short hops back and forth to Disney World (WDW) for a week (and a couple of other local places). It’s nice to have some leisure time to get laundry done and get repacked, instead of just throwing everything in the car and being in a mess when I get to my next home-away-from-home.

I am pleased that I was able to see everything I had hoped to while down here -- could certainly come back and see and do more, but feel that I may not need to, since there are so many other places yet to see. It’s too bad that Dry Tortugas NP is so inaccessible; it’s very expensive to get there, and is a day-long trip. It almost seems a shame that it’s an NP, altho there are others that are just as inaccessible; obviously I will not be able to visit all the designated National Parks (even if I had started trying to when I was younger). I have been to a lot of them, as well as many other sites managed by NPS. Oh well, isn’t that what reincarnation is for?!?!?!

(I posted a duplicate here, so replaced it -- guess I'd better wait to get home to put up any more of these).

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