Dinner was scheduled for the Greek community of Tarpon Springs, a fishing community on the Anclote River. This is where Greeks came to live and make a living in the US in the early 20th century. So the main drag down the old fishing port is named for the origins of the first settlers:
Dodecanese Avenue meanders alongside the river and is home to the Greek theme of Tarpon Springs. The Dodecanese Islands in Greece have had a pretty mixed up history (Dodecanese means twelve in ancient Greek I am told) including a spell under Italian rule from 1912 to 1945:
Which probably accounts in part for the eagerness of some Greek sponge fishermen to emigrate to Tarpon Springs in the period of occupation to build a burgeoning industry in the New World. A red tide in 1947 killed off a large part of the sponges and the industry today is very much a tourist attraction. These are real sponges for daily use: 
Though there are of course ample opportunities for the shoppers in the family to add to their collections of dust catchers:
Language is of course the foundation of a culture and if the young'uns forget their roots the culture is lost:
And the Anclote River continues to be an active commercial fishing port:
Greek is the language spoken by people who operate the restaurants and tourist shops, though owing to the fact that I don't speak Greek I couldn't say exactly what sort of Greek it might be. Italian Americans who think they speak Italian handed down from their grandparents frequently are speaking a minor dialect incomprehensible outside the originators home towns. If it's the same with Greek I would never know.
I found Dodecanese Avenue surprisingly good to look at, with it's curved layout and relaxed open air stores. Perhaps in winter everything is more crowded but in summer it was really quite pleasant to wander, though not everyone seemed to find the wait for the shoppers to be so alluring:
The current inhabitants of these few historic blocks remember this man as the founder of the sponging trade:
And the way they used to do it was originally free diving and then by clumping around under water in huge diving suits:
Sponge fishing is also carried out in the Keys, by pulling sponges off the bottom with a hook into the boat. When you have squeezed a real silk sponge in your hand modern artificial imitations pale by comparison. My wife is also a fan of Greek food so we stopped off to take a look:
We picked up some camping supplies so the next bunch of people we camp with will find themselves sampling canned Greek food, grape leaves, sardines (yuck!) and assorted olives and peppers. The candy that closely resembles Turkish delight did not survive to make it home I am sorry to say. The wine did and we bought half a dozen bottles after Yanni gave us a taste. Interestingly there was a lot more on offer than pine cone flavored wines one hears so much about. Some of the wines were quite young and too tart for my wife, but there were more refined and smooth wines that can compete decently with modern table wines from the western states or France:
He was a youthful looking 75 year old and he attributes his good health not to genetics but to a nightly sip of sweet Greek dessert wine of which we took home a bottle. Very good it is too and I can quite feel myself growing more spry each day. Interestingly enough I noted he and his granddaughter exchanged commands in Greek so I hope Fisher Price is helping secure the culture for future generations. 
We resisted the shark but my wife could not resist some carved jewelry. She manages to make anyone smile including this saleswoman, a facility I am happily not endowed with.
This dude was prowling for pictures. I wondered what he got:
I snagged this guy wondering what he was thinking back in 1945 as he posed on his work boat:
We drove around a bit penetrating into the hinterlands of Tarpon Springs, the regular suburban tracts of ordinary homes and gardens that butt up to the few blocks of Aegean architecture in the tourist district and then we settled for Mama Maria's for a shared plate of Greek food and some rather toothsome Greek beer. 
It's not bad but to me it tends to taste like Italian food gone a bit odd. Most Italians would throw a fit of you presented them with lasagna made of soft pasta filled with unspiced ground lamb or over cooked macaroni mixed in with ground meat and no spicy tomato sauce to be seen. I am less hung up so I can dig in with the best of them and eat grape leaves and lamb patties and odd custard-like spinach pies. Nver having been to Greece I am not completely certain what it is they eat in the modern mother country (McDonald's, too doubtless). 
On the way out we passed this church which put in an appearance on a number of postcards but we were on our way to lake Wales and Bok Tower and the Nissan was urging me on. Ah, the Great Florida Road Trip. It was Monday so it had to be Tarpon Springs. And I had to be at work Tuesday night.
Dodecanese Avenue meanders alongside the river and is home to the Greek theme of Tarpon Springs. The Dodecanese Islands in Greece have had a pretty mixed up history (Dodecanese means twelve in ancient Greek I am told) including a spell under Italian rule from 1912 to 1945:Which probably accounts in part for the eagerness of some Greek sponge fishermen to emigrate to Tarpon Springs in the period of occupation to build a burgeoning industry in the New World. A red tide in 1947 killed off a large part of the sponges and the industry today is very much a tourist attraction. These are real sponges for daily use: Though there are of course ample opportunities for the shoppers in the family to add to their collections of dust catchers:Language is of course the foundation of a culture and if the young'uns forget their roots the culture is lost:And the Anclote River continues to be an active commercial fishing port:Greek is the language spoken by people who operate the restaurants and tourist shops, though owing to the fact that I don't speak Greek I couldn't say exactly what sort of Greek it might be. Italian Americans who think they speak Italian handed down from their grandparents frequently are speaking a minor dialect incomprehensible outside the originators home towns. If it's the same with Greek I would never know.
I found Dodecanese Avenue surprisingly good to look at, with it's curved layout and relaxed open air stores. Perhaps in winter everything is more crowded but in summer it was really quite pleasant to wander, though not everyone seemed to find the wait for the shoppers to be so alluring:The current inhabitants of these few historic blocks remember this man as the founder of the sponging trade:And the way they used to do it was originally free diving and then by clumping around under water in huge diving suits:Sponge fishing is also carried out in the Keys, by pulling sponges off the bottom with a hook into the boat. When you have squeezed a real silk sponge in your hand modern artificial imitations pale by comparison. My wife is also a fan of Greek food so we stopped off to take a look:We picked up some camping supplies so the next bunch of people we camp with will find themselves sampling canned Greek food, grape leaves, sardines (yuck!) and assorted olives and peppers. The candy that closely resembles Turkish delight did not survive to make it home I am sorry to say. The wine did and we bought half a dozen bottles after Yanni gave us a taste. Interestingly there was a lot more on offer than pine cone flavored wines one hears so much about. Some of the wines were quite young and too tart for my wife, but there were more refined and smooth wines that can compete decently with modern table wines from the western states or France:He was a youthful looking 75 year old and he attributes his good health not to genetics but to a nightly sip of sweet Greek dessert wine of which we took home a bottle. Very good it is too and I can quite feel myself growing more spry each day. Interestingly enough I noted he and his granddaughter exchanged commands in Greek so I hope Fisher Price is helping secure the culture for future generations. 
We resisted the shark but my wife could not resist some carved jewelry. She manages to make anyone smile including this saleswoman, a facility I am happily not endowed with.This dude was prowling for pictures. I wondered what he got:I snagged this guy wondering what he was thinking back in 1945 as he posed on his work boat:We drove around a bit penetrating into the hinterlands of Tarpon Springs, the regular suburban tracts of ordinary homes and gardens that butt up to the few blocks of Aegean architecture in the tourist district and then we settled for Mama Maria's for a shared plate of Greek food and some rather toothsome Greek beer. It's not bad but to me it tends to taste like Italian food gone a bit odd. Most Italians would throw a fit of you presented them with lasagna made of soft pasta filled with unspiced ground lamb or over cooked macaroni mixed in with ground meat and no spicy tomato sauce to be seen. I am less hung up so I can dig in with the best of them and eat grape leaves and lamb patties and odd custard-like spinach pies. Nver having been to Greece I am not completely certain what it is they eat in the modern mother country (McDonald's, too doubtless). On the way out we passed this church which put in an appearance on a number of postcards but we were on our way to lake Wales and Bok Tower and the Nissan was urging me on. Ah, the Great Florida Road Trip. It was Monday so it had to be Tarpon Springs. And I had to be at work Tuesday night. 
Here as elsewhere the notion that "slower traffic keep right" goes by the board and vehicles cluster in little clumps traveling at three miles per hour below the legal limit in both lanes, which is tedious in a state that only allows for written warnings for speed violations five miles per hour above the limit. I like driving, not as much as I like riding, but I like to pay attention to the road and to be surrounded by people fiddling with their GPS units, or text messaging or fumbling with sandwiches while they try to control their two ton machines freaks me out. I'd rather speed and find myself a quiet piece of roadway between herds of heffalumps not paying attention to their driving. With all that highway commotion arriving in Weeki Wachee was a pleasant change.
For those men who weren't breast fed in infancy and thus have a breast obsession in old age, there are topless women everywhere in Weeki Wachee State Park. Yes indeed, the Sunshine State took the park over in 2008 and it is no longer a private attraction. It operates quite nicely under government auspices too, and you get free parking courtesy of the Great State of Florida.
The mermaid theater was closed but we could hear the rather peculiar strains of music emanating, and they sounded like a 1950's soundtrack played on a Theremin. Clearly we will have to return to see the show and my wife has decided we will have to see the 1:30pm Underwater Spectacular, whatever that is.
With an empty park before us we had time to goof around and stretch our legs. I found the photograph above to be rather disturbing and include it for reasons I cannot recall. August in Central Florida is water park time:
I suppose the advantage of a water park is that the water is supposed to be sterile and there aren't any animals in it for the comfort of the faint hearted, but I cannot but feel that a state with so much extraordinary coastline isn't well served by these artificial watering holes, even one called Buccaneer Bay which suggests bloodletting on a grand scale.
Weeki Wachee was a post World War Two invention of a former Navy diver who used the aqualung techniques developed during the war to stage a spectacular underwater show using the new breathing techniques. Self Contained Underwater Breathing Apparatus was a French invention known by the rather more romantic appellation of aqualung rather than the modern acronym of SCUBA, and I expect that seeing beautiful young women swimming around like fish must have looked miraculous, and I dare say it was a pleasant relief from using aqualungs to blow up things. Nowadays the trick is known and the spectacle continues. The park itself is as cheerful and corny as the mermaid notion itself. Perhaps I am too suggestible but I find the empty black hole where Neptune's face should be, rather creepy:
Mermaids generate trash by the bagful apparently on a more down to earth note:
They also generate weddings by the bagful apparently. I thought this was a mermaid cage for air transport but my wife poked me and told me not to be silly, it's for brides to pose in:
It almost restores your faith in human nature that people with 500 channels of cable TV can enjoy the simplicity of a world dreamed up in 1947 and keep it alive and well and full of fun. Of course you can take the mermaid theme too far in my opinion. A sign like this brings up all sorts of physiological questions in the mind of a curmudgeon like me. I wonder how parents reply to the questionings of eager young minds:
But the gift shop alas isn't the place to find a reply to the burning question of how do mermaids pee, because this is the land of dust catchers and good cheer. My wife went shopping and I went outside to see how the mermaid photography was progressing:
An altogether entrancing State Park, not to be missed by anyone traveling US Highway 19 north of Tampa/St Pete:
My wife insisted Dock Street was two way from her more recent visit last winter so I pulled through the launch ramp area and dutifully stopped at the new No Entry signs. Oh she said and we turned around to look for somewhere to park, of which there is an ample supply in August in Cedar Key as there is in Key West.
I found further evidence of the late lamented boom years in Cedar Key's fishing pier. This was an elaborate structure, a public work of surprising sophistication in such a small town. I was more convinced than ever that my wife's assessment was correct. Some expert grant writer had retired to Cedar Key and offered his/her services to raise money for city projects.
Dock Street is a hundred yards long slightly offset from the rest of the island and joined at each end to the rest of the city by bridges. It is a row of wooden structures each involved in selling whatever knick knacks a tourist feels they cannot do without.
These women stopped to ask me if I had seen Jack Riepe and I answered, No, why? What did he do? and my wife cuffed me. Not one of them offered to raise their shirts for me so I'm pretty sure I misunderstood them. Dock Street has some pretty corners.
With enough window shopping under my belt to last the rest of the trip we took off again to see what's what, and immediately hit upon another elaborate public works project. We parked alongside a golf cart at the city's swimming beach. The man resting in the background was renting out beach apparatus:
The all purpose golf cart, gasoline or electric, these are the mainstay of the island:
Cedar Key has the air of a small village and with a thousand full time residents that's hardly surprising. I guess I was a bit surprised by how parochial the place seemed. Cedar Key is pretty, and unsophisticated and very rural. It's part of Levy County which puts it in that northern swath of Florida that some people think resembles Alabama more than the Sunshine State. Which I suppose would be true if Florida were just the beaches and condos of the southern coasts. Florida is also an enormous area of open woodlands and fields, full of country people of conservative mien. Count Cedar key in with that lot and don't expect Fantasy Fest or gay bars to be on the itinerary if you come here. This really is isolated living at a slow pace. Even The Bank looks cute rather than simply purposeful: 
We usually stop in local grocery stores when we travel but we didn't bother for some reason this time. I limited myself to snapping a quick picture before we headed in to lunch around the corner at Tony's Famous Clam Chowder Place. This is Cedar Key's scooter rental fleet:
Tony's looks the part in some sort of historic building, called the Hale Building and I am reliably informed it is a fresh young thing compared to the hotel as it was built in 1880 fully twenty years later.
My wife and I have a habit of trying odd things on the menu when we come across them. So here we ordered deep fried green beans which were crispy and were offered with ranch dressing for dunking. My wife woofed all the spicy dressing and I left her to it as she 
demands peppers with almost anything. She left it to me to order the main dish, and as we didn't know anything about the place I/we went with something safe in a seaside town; a fish sandwich. And because she let me order the whole shebang I went with the weirdest side which were baked beans and didn't seem the least bit compatible with fish:
The grouper was fried but it was well done.The beans were rated excellent by my wife who thought they might actually be home made and so Tony's passed muster. Naturally I forgot to photograph our cup of clam chowder which apparently won first prize this year at some Chowder Cook Off in Newport Rhode Island, which is a big deal apparently. The soup really was good, all creamy and chunky and full of clam flavor as chowder should be. I guess it really did earn first prize. Because I forgot to photograph the white soup I had to make an artistic photographic effort to show the empty bowl and the delivery golf cart in the background.
However the grand curmudgeon himself was not in residence. A neighbor saw me looking in at the windows and came over, small town style, to kindly let me know he probably wasn't coming back as his wife had had a major operation.
The bottom of the sign carried a message advising that he thought his wife's illness was more important than his business. Which seemed like such an obvious message I wondered why he had to mention at all. Perhaps he has a truly monumental reputation as the curmudgeon to end all curmudgeons. I hope his wife has solid health insurance.