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Gainesville surrounded by academia, wildlife
Gainsville 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.
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