Northcentral Florida: It's The Land That Time Forgot
Alesha Corwin
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Article Title:
Northcentral Florida: It's The Land That Time Forgot
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Article Description:
If you are one of those people who has given up on Florida,
I encourage you to venture about an hour and a half north of
the Magic Kingdom, into Marion and Alachua Counties, where
Orlando's ravening grid falters and the landscape stops
looking like something loaded off a truck.
Additional Article Information:
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662 Words; formatted to 65 Characters per Line
Distribution Date and Time: 2010-02-24 11:00:00
Written By: Alesha Corwin
Copyright: 2010
Contact Email: mailto:alesha...@thephantomwriters.com
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Northcentral Florida: It's The Land That Time Forgot
Copyright (c) 2010 Alesha Corwin
Find Vacation Rentals
http://www.findvacationrentals.com/
Driving through the Fabulous Fun Capital of the World at Orlando,
I was struck by the thought that Florida should probably add to
the list a planetary title for human perversity. There is
something wondrously upside-down about a state to which people
flock, purportedly for its climate and natural loveliness, but
where most of that loveliness has been drained and covered in
Rooms to Go's and Scratch and Dent Worlds, and where most
residents feel about air-conditioning the way astronauts feel
about spaceships.
If you are one of those people who has given up on Florida, I
encourage you to venture about an hour and a half north of the
Magic Kingdom, into Marion and Alachua Counties, where Orlando's
ravening grid falters and the landscape stops looking like
something loaded off a truck. A green edema of hills rises from
the coastal flatness. Tire dealerships give way to boiled-peanut
stands. Artesian springs the color of glacial ice spill from the
earth.
Horses that are not on theme-park salaries stalk rolling acreage
beside the highway. South of Gainesville on Route 441, my friend
and I passed McIntosh and Evinston, unassuming whistle-stops
where Victorian clapboard houses sit alongside trailer parks
under such dense canopies of Spanish moss that it looks like
someone dragged a squeegee down the view while it was still wet.
As dusk ripened, we stopped in Micanopy, a one-boulevard town of
aged brick and log buildings, a place so steeped in old-style
charm it's hard to stand on the main drag without a faint
anxiety that at any minute movie studio security guards are going
to roust you off the set. And while Micanopy surely has one of
the highest number of antique shops per capita in the nation, the
town is sufficiently rust streaked and mold spangled that the
place somehow pulls off the feat of not seeming too commercial.
"This is Florida like it used to be," said Monica Beth Fowler,
the owner and operator of Delectable Collectibles, a shop
specializing in rare cameos. "It's one of the few places in the
state that hasn't been ruined yet." Past Micanopy's antiques
strip sits the Herlong Mansion, a bed and breakfast of commanding
elegance - Corinthian columns the size of grain silos, verandas
exploding with ferns. But at my friend's suggestion we'd made
plans to stay the night 20 minutes to the east, in the settlement
of Cross Creek.
My friend is an editor who lives in North Carolina but who
proudly descends from Florida "cracker" stock. In north
Florida, "cracker," a reverent sobriquet for the area's
swamp-dwelling pioneers, is far from an epithet. Cross Creek �
home of Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings, the novelist and chronicler of
the Depression-era cracker monde who died in 1953 � could
probably be described as the Florida Cracker Capital of the
World. Our destination was the Yearling Restaurant ("Home of
Cracker Cooking"), named after Rawlings's 1938 Pulitzer
Prize-winning novel.
A plain, roadside building of sun-scorched boards, the Yearling,
we found, was extremely serious about its rustic bona fides. A
varnished gator hide, a Confederate flag and a rack of historic
outboard motors trimmed the restaurant's walls. A local blues
musician presided in the dining room, crooning to his dobro,
while diners tucked into a menu of traditional fare. We ordered
the "cracker appetizer plate," which included fried mushrooms,
fried ingots of gator tail, fried green tomatoes and fried frog
legs whose girth and musculature would have put a speed skater to
shame.
The Yearling's owners also operate the nearby Lodge that rented
Cabins, where we'd booked accommodations for the night. The
lodge consists of seven humble cabins arrayed under a hangar of
live oak limbs and echoes with the lusty belchings of bullfrogs
in the nearby creek. "That's what's so great about it out
here. This could never be Orlando. You could never get rid of all
the banana spiders, palmetto bugs and snakes." "So awesome,"
she said. "It's the land that time forgot!"
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Step off of the vacation fast-track of Orlando,
Florida, and explore the rural cabin rentals or
stay at a rustic bed breakfast inn in North-central
Florida. Alesha Corwin writes about travel for:
http://www.findvacationrentals.com/ and
http://www.findbedandbreakfast.com/
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