It’s popular to mock Florida for any number of reasons, and there is plenty that is entirely bizarre that goes on in the sunshine state. I can’t say that I mind laughing at prototypical goofball Florida Man memes and the recent political advertisement hailing the Governor as God’s anointed savior struck me as laughably blasphemous but there again this is Florida. Blasphemy is just another meme. The bits you don’t hear about are what make this state extraordinary.
A wildlife refuge on water utility land is a feature of camping life in the Sunshine State. Make a reservation online and spend the night or the week absolutely free. Dinner Island has a vault toilet and that’s it. I drove in an hour before sunset and by 6:30 the campground was pitch black and silent. I buttoned up GANNET2 as there were a few mosquitoes about and spent a silent and night in the marshes.
My neighbors never really appeared from the three occupied campsites but I wasn’t up with the larks. By the time Rusty and I appeared the sun was giving the world a lovely golden glow.
This is a different Florida from the Keys, oak trees scattered in fields, mist and morning dew and fresh water only.
I like pastoral central Florida a great deal. One of my regrets is I never got to see a rodeo in cowboy country. Maybe when we get back.
A short drive in crushed limestone dirt roads got me back to pavement the way we came in the afternoon previous, this time with GANNET2 spattered with suggestive white mud. Hardcore off roading it isn’t but it could look like it!
Yes I know Florida’s back country has a lot of straight flat roads but in a van you got to look out from a higher vantage point. Cows grazing, scattered farm houses and you are a world away from condo covered beaches and eyesore advertising.
My goal for the morning was to check out the Ah-Tah-Thi-Ki museum, first visited by me in 2013
https://conchscooter.blogspot.com/2013/10/ah-tah-thi-ki-museum.html?m=0
The tribe decided to put the museum right in the village rather than seek to draw more visitors by sticking it in the casino they own on the east coast. The idea was to create a museum to illustrate the traditional life of the Seminoles in the place where they lived it.
I took a walk on the mile long boardwalk in back of the building and checked out the plants carefully labeled. And the crafts on display in the village.
I had the museum to myself and I enjoyed wandering the displays and dioramas.
Jimmie Tiger was elected chairman of the Seminoles when they first started demanding recognition as a tribe with claims to a reservation in the Everglades. He worked out a plan to force the reluctant Federal officials’ hands. By going to Cuba!
Not only did his plan to fit recognition work but once again the administration of President Nixon took action unimaginable today. In addition to protecting the environment with clean air and water acts he also recognized the Indian right to self determination and autonomy. You can read all about it in the museum. And no one ever described Nixon as anointed by God. Times and sensibilities have changed.
I enjoyed the museum as always and highly recommend it. They proud to have survived in the Everglades unconquered and to still be around with their own government and way of life.
Grinding corn was not a job for weaklings apparently:
Rusty was asleep under the air conditioning in the van. We set off north to our next reserved but free campsite near Inverness. More long straight roads into the heart of Florida.
