Florida, February 19/20, 2012

It was a very early morning. Our plane left Portland at 6:20 AM, so we needed to be at the airport by about 5 or earlier since we were checking a bag. And the taxi we had ordered was late. But we had no trouble getting there in plenty of time, even with a fairly long line through security.

The first leg was all the way across the country to Atlanta, a fairly smooth flight. But were a few minutes early and it therefore took a while to get to the gate. Then it was, of course, most of the way across the Atlanta airport, a big one, to our next gate. We did have plenty of time for the flight to Tampa. Only an hour and a half and again, uneventful.

We picked up our rental car and drove to Orlando, a little over an hour's drive, and checked into our hotel at a Hilton Grand Vacations Resort. It's a comfortable room.

This morning, Monday, we were up early to go to a time share presentation at another Hilton nearby. We were able to get out without buying anything, but it did get us the room where we are staying at a very reasonable price.

Heading back to our hotel, we stopped at Downtown Disney to wander around. Nothing was open when we arrived, but did open and get busy while we were there. We may go back later in the week for dinner. When we returned to our hotel, we took our reading material and went to one of the pools to sit in the sun or shade for a while.

Shakers

From our resort we drove in to Orlando to the College Park neighborhood and had lunch at Shakers American Cafe, an interesting local neighborhood cafe with a collection of salt & pepper shakers all around the room. And the food was good, too.

' nough said

Instead of trying to wander downtown Orlando, we decided to drive out to Mount Dora, a quaint small town a bit west-northwest of Orlando. (The AAA TourBook came in handy!) At the C of C they told us they were high enough to claim the title "Mount." But they didn't know how high that had to be. The town is about 185' above sea level.

Cormorant on a post

After walking around town, and finding a frozen Key Lime Pie on a Stick, and talking to the proprietor of a wine shop who knew a fair bit about Oregon wines and had been there, we drove to a park on Lake Dora. There is a boardwalk at and near the edge of the lake over the swampy area along the edge of the lake, with typical vegetation. We saw cormorants on posts, and maybe the back of an alligator near the shore.

A Florida Turtle

We followed the boardwalk as far as it went through the swampy area, passing several people fishing in the shallow water. Our wildlife sightings included a turtle, a couple of snakes, and a great blue heron. The turtle looked like ones we had seen in the Everglades. And the herons are fairly common. The pictured snake is pretty obvious, but the other one we saw was more hidden, and brown colored. At least we did see some native fauna and flora.

Just sunning himself

Great Blue Heron

After this adventure, we headed to a restaurant we had seen on the way in to town for dinner. Jeremiah's was another good local establishment with a very eclectic menu. We both had Gulf Shrimp.

After dinner it was back to the resort/hotel. All in all, a good interesting day in Central Florida.