A visit to Lake Lotus Park in Altamonte Springs can be tricky, but it’s definitely worth the effort! For example, it’s only open Thursday, Friday, Saturday and Sunday. On weekends, you will have to park at the offsite parking lot and take the tram over to the park. Highlights of Lake Lotus Park include 120 acres of woods and wetlands, one mile of raised boardwalk, playground, education center, picnic pavilions, barbecue grills and a fishing pier.
If you have guests visiting Central Florida, the Lake Apopka Wildlife Drive is the ideal spot to take them to get a taste of Florida wildlife, including Florida alligators, Florida softshell turtles and an incredible diversity of bird species. In fact, more than 360 bird species have been spotted here. Operated by the St. Johns River Water Management District, the Lake Apopka Wildlife Drive is a 11-mile, one-way drive with a speed limit of 10 miles per hour (so budget about 2 hours of your time and get there early to avoid the crowds). By the way, Lake Apopka is the fourth-largest lake in Florida. The Lake Apopka Wildlife Drive is open 7 AM to 3 PM on Friday, Saturday and Sunday. Don’t miss it!
The perfect spot for a little extreme social distancing, Spring Hammock Preserve is located off-the-beaten path in Longwood, Florida. On this visit, I took the main trail up to the scenic Question Pond. I also explored an area of the Preserve that I had never seen before by heading up the Cross Seminole Trail and taking a little dirt path on the left just before I got to the first little bridge. It opened up to a very scenic area that I hope to explore next visit when I have more time. Don’t miss it!
“You could always find him at the Tropicana Motel. Hollywood, upstairs from Duke’s Coffee Shop. A room (actually, a suite) around a greasy pool; or a room (actually, a hole in the wall) overlooking the parking lot. Heads and tails. It summed up where he most felt at home, except for a dimly-lit bar on South Main St. in L.A. proper, down near the bus station. ‘Everybody was rushing off toward the farthest palm,’ Jack Kerouac wrote of Hollywood, ‘and beyond that was the desert and nothingness.’ Tom Waits went to the frayed and faded bar because he’d used up all his choices, rolled his dice, and whathell … He soaked himself in the after-hours milieu, a late-forties bohemian hep-cat whose jive-talking, finger-snappin’, be-bop voot-a-roonie rasp came from too many Old Golds and a lifetime’s share of busted love affairs. He was born in a moving taxi on Pearl Harbor Day, 1949, in Pomona, California. Twenty years later, he found himself as a doorman at the Heritage nightclub in L.A. In a sense, he never left that gig. Beginning with the appearance of his first album, Closing Time, in 1973, Tom would usher you into an underworld of clinking glasses and smokey conversation, peopled with Skid Row regulars and irregulars … Set up another round, bartender, and pour it like you don’t own it …” – liner notes, Anthology of Tom Waits (1985)
SIDE ONE
Ol’ 55
Diamonds on My Windshield
(Looking for) The Heart of Saturday Night
I Hope That I Don’t Fall in Love With You
Martha
Tom Traubert’s Blues
The Piano Has Been Drinking (Not Me)
SIDE TWO
I Never Talk to Strangers
Somewhere (from “West Side Story”)
Burma Shave
Jersey Girl
San Diego Serenade
A Sight for Sore Eyes
“Video Killed the Radio Star” – The Buggles
“You Better Run” – Pat Benatar
“She Won’t Dance” – Rod Stewart
“You Better You Bet” – The Who
“Little Suzi’s on the Up” – Ph.D
“We Don’t Talk Anymore” – Cliff Richard
“Brass in Pocket” – The Pretenders
“Time Heals” – Todd Rundgren
“Take it on the Run” – REO Speedwagon
“Rockin’ the Paradise” – Styx
“When Things Go Wrong” – Robin Lane and the Chartbusters
“History Never Repeats” – Split Enz
“Hold on Loosely” – .38 Special
“Just Between You and Me” – April Wine
“Sailing” – Rod Stewart
“Iron Maiden” – Iron Maiden”
“Keep on Loving You” – REO Speedwagon
“Message of Love” – The Pretenders”
“Mr. Briefcase” – Lee Ritenour
“Double Life” – The Cars
“In the Air Tonight” – Phil Collins
“Clues” – Robert Palmer
“Too Late” – The Shoes
“Stop Draggin’ My Heart Around” – Stevie Nicks, Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers
“Surface Tension” – Rupert Hine
“I am convinced that the only people worthy of consideration in this world are the unusual ones. For the common folks are like leaves of a tree, and live and die unnoticed.” – L. Frank Baum, The Land of Oz, as quoted in Freaks: We Who are Not as Others (1990) by Daniel P. Mannix
What was the name of Pat Morita’s character on “Sanford and Son”? Ah Chew
What is a gathering of ravens called? An “unkindness”
What does the word “ukulele” mean in Hawaiian? jumping flea
Who is the only actor to appear in both The Magnificent Seven and The Dirty Dozen? Charles Bronson
Who did Founding Father John Adams regularly refer to as “an old muttonhead”? George Washington
Which actress was chosen as the first Miss California Artichoke Queen in 1947? Marilyn Monroe
What do you call a giraffe’s horns? ossicones
What was the name of Al Czervik’s boat in Caddyshack? Seafood
What did Eddie Munster call his werewolf doll? Woof Woof
“Although the formal gardens are the centerpiece of this park, Washington Oaks is also famous for the shoreline of coquina rock formations that line it’s Atlantic Beach. Nestled between the Atlantic Ocean and the Matanzas River, this property was once owned by a distant relative of President George Washington.”
“The Tropic of Cracker survives in myth, memory and love of natural Florida. It exists more in the mind than in geography, more in the memory than in the sight, more in attitude than in the encounter … This book tells you about one man’s vision of a state struggling to remain true to itself. It mixes new essays with a span of earlier ones written during nearly a quarter century of roving the state as a columnist for The Miami Herald. All of them, in sum, help illuminate and explain the Tropic of Cracker.” – Al Burt
Wandering Florida 