Do you know someone in Tallahassee, or something? part 1

This past week Matt’s parents came to visit. It was great to have them here. Our list of places to see is now almost complete and we’ve even seen some places twice! When Mom and Dad got to the visitor center on the border they said, “We are the last Americans to have never been to Florida.” When asked their destination they answered, “Tallahassee.” Apparently, the lady looked at them with total disbelief and asked, “Do you know someone in Tallahassee, or something?” Yes. They know us!

At the visitor center they also found out about a small aquarium near-ish to Tallahassee called the Gulf Specimen Marine Laboratory. That was our first destination. This place is tiny. From the front it just looks like someone’s house with a couple extra out buildings. Inside it is decently large and the neat thing is that almost all the tanks are small so you can get up close and really see the animals. Also, the majority of the tanks are low and wide with no lids. To see the animals you just look down into the shallow water. Further making the place unique is that about half of the tanks are touch tanks. You can reach into the shallow water and touch crabs, sand dollars, starfish, shellfish and fish (but only the slow ones). That is, you are allowed to, if you want to. I think we had a mostly touch-free experience. Matt did touch one live sand dollar (which is brown while alive and covered by fine spikes). In the non-touchable tanks were seahorses, anemones, sharks, horseshoe crabs, rays, lampreys, a lobster and a sea turtle. Altogether a unique experience, much better than what we expected when we got out of the car.

After our visit to the GSML we drove yet further south and crossed Ochlockonee Bay on a causeway above the water and drove on down to the Gulf coast. There isn’t a great beach in the area but we stopped at a sail boat launch point and took pictures with the ocean (gulf) in the background.

Next, we headed over into the St. Mark’s National Wildlife Refuge which is a big estuary preserve right on the coast. There are also some man-made ponds that support various animals that have lost habitat elsewhere. There is also, and this is the real main reason we went, a lighthouse! Since Dad and Mom have a thing for visiting lighthouses this was a trip we’d been saving until they were here. It’s a nice lighthouse. Apparently it’s recently restored inside, although it was not yet open to the public when we were there. Other than looking at the lighthouse, which doesn’t take too long even if you really like lighthouses, there are lots of walking trails on the levees that surround the man-made ponds. Maya and Matt took a walk along a beach-front trail and we all tramped through the woods a short ways to an observation tower overlooking Headquarters Pool. We saw cranes (mostly as white shapes in the distance) and one confirmed alligator (others may or may not have been logs) and one pelican diving in the water (although he went behind a shrub before Dad could snap his picture). There was a lot more trudging through the woods and reeds that could have been done but by then lunch was long ago, the bugs and the heat were really getting to us and we decided to leave. We went to a place called Food Glorious Food for dinner. It was indeed glorious.