Homasassa Springs State Park
Sunday, chattycatsmeow viciously kidnapped me and took me to Homosassa Springs state park. (For the sake of her own safety, she allowed us to stop at a Starbucks along the way. This is the sort of kidnapping I approve of.)
As Florida state parks go, Homosassa Springs is a bit...odd. It used to be a privately owned tourist attraction, complete with a small and rather sad zoo. The state of Florida rescued the property, and is in the continuing process of restoring it to its natural state, and focusing on displaying Florida animals instead of, say, a hippo. As a result, the park still has a couple of ecological horrors that made me freak, but also has a number of rather lovely trails, and a boat trip.
Despite lousy looking weather, the park was packed, partly because the park also had a not very good art show going on at the same time. But, wheelchairs have an occasional advantage: we bought our tickets at the gift shop, saving time in line, just in time to find that wheelchairs also have an occasional disadvantage: the elevators were broken so we had to go round and round, just missing the boat that heads out to the zoo part of the park. Which meant more going round and round to the much less interesting tram, with a wheelchair lift.
(Those things are kinda freaky, by the way.)
So off we rolled to the other side of the park -- to run into the guy who had just sold us our tickets seemingly minutes before; for one terrible moment I thought my eyes were playing tricks on me, or that Florida had suddenly started a new project of staffing all of its parks with clones. Once that confusion was gone, we arrived.
Alas, the weather was not with us, so most of my pictures did not come out. But, at queerbychoice's request, here are a few:
One of the pathways around the zoo:
I thought this strangled tree looked pretty cool.
The native Florida hippo:
This particular hippo is actually a former movie star. You may remember him from Tarzan movies. Or not. Moving on:
Injured hawks:
You can't tell, but these hawks are eyeing a very evil squirrel. I tried to get a picture of the squirrel, but you will not be surprised to hear that the squirrel refused to cooperate with the camera. They train squirrels in that, you know.
Reflections:
We took the boat back. Alas, the combination of wheelchair, poor sunlight and moving boat meant that most of these pictures didn't come out well at all, although a couple would be excellent entries for some sort of bizarro exhibition. This, though, gives you a sense of the river flowing from the stream:
Afterwards, we had to fortify ourselves with Chinese food.
As Florida state parks go, Homosassa Springs is a bit...odd. It used to be a privately owned tourist attraction, complete with a small and rather sad zoo. The state of Florida rescued the property, and is in the continuing process of restoring it to its natural state, and focusing on displaying Florida animals instead of, say, a hippo. As a result, the park still has a couple of ecological horrors that made me freak, but also has a number of rather lovely trails, and a boat trip.
Despite lousy looking weather, the park was packed, partly because the park also had a not very good art show going on at the same time. But, wheelchairs have an occasional advantage: we bought our tickets at the gift shop, saving time in line, just in time to find that wheelchairs also have an occasional disadvantage: the elevators were broken so we had to go round and round, just missing the boat that heads out to the zoo part of the park. Which meant more going round and round to the much less interesting tram, with a wheelchair lift.
(Those things are kinda freaky, by the way.)
So off we rolled to the other side of the park -- to run into the guy who had just sold us our tickets seemingly minutes before; for one terrible moment I thought my eyes were playing tricks on me, or that Florida had suddenly started a new project of staffing all of its parks with clones. Once that confusion was gone, we arrived.
Alas, the weather was not with us, so most of my pictures did not come out. But, at queerbychoice's request, here are a few:
One of the pathways around the zoo:
I thought this strangled tree looked pretty cool.
The native Florida hippo:
This particular hippo is actually a former movie star. You may remember him from Tarzan movies. Or not. Moving on:
Injured hawks:
You can't tell, but these hawks are eyeing a very evil squirrel. I tried to get a picture of the squirrel, but you will not be surprised to hear that the squirrel refused to cooperate with the camera. They train squirrels in that, you know.
Reflections:
We took the boat back. Alas, the combination of wheelchair, poor sunlight and moving boat meant that most of these pictures didn't come out well at all, although a couple would be excellent entries for some sort of bizarro exhibition. This, though, gives you a sense of the river flowing from the stream:
Afterwards, we had to fortify ourselves with Chinese food.