Plan a road trip through ‘Old Florida’

DOTTIE RUTLEDGE
Contributing Columnist
dottie@lbknews.com

This coming Labor Day weekend, consider taking a short road trip—some of the most historical and ecologically important areas are just to our north and are full of cultural importance.

These destinations can easily make a perfect holiday weekend getaway with plenty of time for sightseeing.

Cedar Key
Cedar Key is about 135 miles north of Tampa. The best way to plan your drive is to avoid I-75 and keep to the country roads. Remember, this is a step back in time.

Cedar Key is one of the oldest ports in the state, and when Florida’s first railroad connected it to the east coast, it became a major supplier of seafood and timber products to the northeast. Today it has become a haven for artists and writers who find the unspoiled environment inspirational to their work. Many people visit each year to walk the historic streets, browse the shops and galleries, explore the back bayous and enjoy the world-famous restaurants featuring seafood fresh from local waters.

Cedar Key is a small, relaxed, island community three miles out in the Gulf of Mexico. Rich in small town flavor, it is said that Cedar Key is the island community where time stands still.

The Cedar Keys also make up one of the oldest bird and wildlife refuges in the United States. With its rich history and natural beauty, you may not want to leave.

Fanning Springs

A short drive northeast of Cedar Key is Fanning Springs, famous for the springs and the Suwannee River. It is also home to the 1836 site of Fort Fanning on a high Suwannee River bluff. One of the most beautiful and lush state parks in Florida, visitors come from afar to swim in the natural bubbling springs.

Fanning Springs now produces less than 65 million gallons of water daily, making it a second-magnitude spring. Historically, Fanning Spring was a first-magnitude spring as recently as the 1990s.

Fanning Springs is an ideal place to begin or end a Suwannee River canoe journey and is centrally located to paddle down river to Manatee Springs State Park (seven miles) or to numerous up stream locations. Those who like shorter paddle trips will enjoy exploring the spring run and river surrounding the park. Bring your own craft, or canoes or kayaks may be rented from the park’s concessionaire. This is a part of Florida that everyone should visit!

Cross Creek

Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings came to rural Cross Creek in 1928 to find a home and a place to write.

“I do not know how anyone can live without some small place of enchantment to turn to,” she later wrote in “Cross Creek.”

Kinnan Rawlings found that place on her small Florida farmstead and orange grove and in the nearby wilderness bordered by lakes and Cross Creek.

Visitors to this Florida homestead can walk back in time to 1930s farm life where Kinnan Rawlings lived and worked. Her cracker-style home and farm, where she lived for 25 years and wrote her Pulitzer prize-winning novel “The Yearling,” has been restored and is preserved as it was when she lived here.

Near the cracker farmhouse at the Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings Historic State Park are ornamental plants of the varieties she cultivated. A seasonal kitchen garden with herbs, flowers and vegetables is grown every year, just as Kinnan Rawlings would have done. A citrus grove of orange, grapefruit and tangerine trees surrounds the house.

Two 15-minute hiking trails move away from the farmyard and into the woods. The East Grove Trail is a wide trail that begins directly in front of the historic house. It was once the access road to a young orange grove that Kinnan Rawlings planted and now moves east through a hammock.

Behind the house, a narrow jungle trail leads through fern forests to a cypress grove. The walk north from the parking area to the farmyard is along a trail through the citrus grove.

Kinnan Rawlings explored cultural and natural life in Florida, something in which we should all participate.