Hotels/resorts |
Condos |
Car rentals |
Cruises
Gainesville surrounded by academia,
wildlife
Gainesville
blends the stimulation of a university burg with the small-town
flavor of Florida’s heartland for a rare destination that drew
some of Florida’s earliest tourists. Along its back ways,
roadside vendors sell boiled peanuts, country towns sell
antiques, barbecue pork and pine forests scent the air, and
crystal-clear springs make the landscape sparkle.
The University of Florida, the state’s largest and oldest, is
home to the Gators, Gatorade sports drink (invented here), an
art museum and galleries, and the Florida Museum of Natural
History, an ever-growing collection of fossils and habitat
replicas, including a walk-through underwater scene. Around the
university, restaurants and clubs cater to student budgets and
appetite for action. A sense of youthful, artistic energy
pervades the town, even in the old historic sections. Downtown
comprises 63 square blocks and 290 buildings listed on the
National Register of Historic Places, including Hippodrome State
Theatre. Housed in a classic-style old Federal building, it
hosts drama of a contemporary nature. Restaurants, sidewalk
cafes, clubs and shops surround it for pre- and post-theater
entertainment. Other historic districts around town are
residential, boasting gracious old homes and gentle hills.
 Gainesville
sits in the midst of striking natural features and rich
wildlife. For an easy look at critters local and exotic, visit
Morningside Nature Center, where costumed re-enactors
demonstrate 19th century farming lifestyles and trails travel
the habitat of deer and more than 130 species of birds; the
Kanapaha Botanical Gardens; and Santa Fe Community College
Teaching Zoo.
Gainesville-Hawthorne State Trail, a 16-mile converted railroad
track, takes you into the countryside and through Paynes Prairie
Preserve State Park, an amazing 21,000-acre expanse where
sandhill cranes, wild Spanish horses, and reintroduced American
bison run free around a marsh basin. An interpretative center
traces the area’s historical importance to early Seminole
cultures.
Limestone springs riddle this part of the state and San Felasco
Hammock Preserve State Park is a good place to witness this
feature, in addition to wild turkeys and white-tailed deer.
Bobcats also inhabit the forests but are less likely to show
themselves in the wilds. Devil’s Millhopper Geological State
Park offers a different view of one specific, dramatic natural
curiosity: a sinkhole. This one measures 500 feet wide and 120
feet deep with 232 winding steps to take you to the bottom and
its cool clime and riotous vegetation. The sinkhole formed many
millennia ago when the roof of a limestone cavern gave way,
leaving a massive dent in the earth’s surface.
Get interactive with the springs at Ichetucknee Springs State
Park, where you can inner tube or canoe the climate-controlled
(by nature, of course), constant 72-degee waters. Divers,
swimmers, picnickers, tubers and many forms of recreationists
take to the waters and underwater caves of Ginnie Springs on the
Santa Fe River.
Nearby, the old tobacco town of
High Springs has become one of the region’s most
charming small towns to visit for a day of antique shopping and
hometown dining. Victorian-style bed and breakfasts make you
want to stay the night, romanced by the sheer quiet and
old-fashioned hospitality.
Scattered to Gainesville’s south, towns grew up in the wake of
the steamboat and railroad era and today have settled into rural
retreats for the soul. The hamlet of
Cross Creek was
immortalized in the writings of a city woman who came for just
that reason. Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings State Historic Park
venerates the author of The Yearling, Cross Creek and
other works inspired by her life here. Visit her "Cracker shack"
home, farm and citrus grove, where rangers dress the part and
spin her yarns. Towns such as
Evinston and McIntosh
hold historic bed and breakfasts, general stores, honeysuckle
bushes, sandhill cranes and memories of the citrus boom years,
before winter freezes sent the industry to the south.
The town of Micanopy
itself is a living, breathing antique store. Ice cream shops, a
historic museum and antique stores line its one main street, the
setting for Michael J. Fox’s Doc Hollywood. |
|
|
|
