Big Freeze

The fields are covered with frost. For three nights there has been a hard freeze warning. In all my forty years here there has never been such a happening. All the orchids are dead, the palms have been hard hit, the ferns are toast. I can see that we have lost some citrus trees. I did not plant anything in the vegetable garden that couldn't tolerate frost, and I have dutifully covered the salad beds.
But we smell that acrid smell of bursting cellulose. Maybe this is an opportnity!
My brother and his wife are visiting us from California. They wanted warm and tropical weather, and at the last minute they included sweaters. Little did they know! We have unearthed all the shirts and jackets we have.
Undaunted, we went on a field trip to north Florida, leaving the plants covered and the dog warm with the house sitter. Our destination was Wakulla Springs Lodge where we would spend the night and welcome friends from Tallahassee for dinner.
Wakulla is a fascinating place, a state park. Our family has been there many times, only in the warm weather. We arrived in time to take the famous boat tour up the St. Marks River. It was not much over 40 degrees but the boat went slowly so we were not buffeted by wind. This boat trip is just as interesting as a trip on the Amazon; there is so much natural flora and fauna to see, and in such magnificent numbers. Alligators, deer, hundreds of birds, fish, turtles, wonderful aquatic plants, ancient cypress trees. We loved seeing the anhingas spreading their wings, an eagle soaring overhead, ibis looking for food, coots and moorhens bobbing about on the clear water. We loved seeing many manatees enjoying the warm spring water. Mothers and young came up with their funny snouts next to the boat.
The lodge itself was an adventure. We had engaged the two 'best rooms' that overlooked the spring. The building itself is lovely, the Ball Estate originally. It is now part of the State Park system. As I say, it was an adventure. In the vast lobby there is an ancient alligator in a case, "Old Joe", well varnished, maybe 20 ft. long, maybe fifty years old. Then there is the huge fireplace burning bright and hot. There are a few communities of sofas, some strange aggregations of high backed chairs, a few tables where checkers can be played, a large t.v not playing to anything, and some stacks of tables. The floor is wonderful and cold marble tile with not a suggestion of a softening area rug. When you look up the ceiling is beautiful carved wood, dark and colorful. This is not an intimate place, but it has possibilities.
Our rooms were gigantic, way larger than in any motel or hotel.( and a lot cheaper) My brother read the guest log in his room and found a recent entry that said, "Warning! Warning! There is a mouse in the bathroom! My wife has never packed so fast! This was at least a mouse, or maybe a squirrel with a bald tail!" We all laughed but my sister-in-law said the next morning that she'd heard some scrabbling in the bathroom..
The dinner provided by the lodge was wonderfully awful. We had known not to expect anything gourmet, maybe true southern (and all white) at best. But the main thing was the company which was stellar. Richard, at the far end of the table, and I, had ordered the pecan crusted grouper. Both of us love fish. Heavy brown logs arrived before us, nothing anyone could imagine other than the bubbly buttery nutty sauteed grouper we were expecting. Dismayed at finding that our entrees looked more like a second rate Spanish moss fabric art form than actual food, we soldiered on, and pushed it from side to side on our plates. The others were struggling with strange chicken parts, small game birds, and (Yikes!) liver. My brother had to remove the hard casings from his southern fried chicken and they lay on the edge of his plate, thick exoskeletons.
This morning we awakened to the fact that the power was off. Our car was covered with frost and ice. We left, thinking we'd get breakfast along the way, and could decently leave the lodge and the breakfast of leaden biscuits with gray gravy.
I love these road trip adventures. Not your usual motel. But I do think that in this new era of CHANGE, we might be able to make this special place, Wakulla Springs Lodge, a state park, into a really spectacular destination with at least acceptable food and decent accommodations (no mice).