Mysterious and Fascinating Florida

Since 1979 when I first set foot in Florida, I have been in love with its beaches and historical sites. To say that Florida is mysterious, fascinating, weird, intriguing, historical, beautiful, dangerous, colorful, sunny, and magnetic, is an understatement.

One of my favorite comedic reel digital creators is “#OnlyInFlorida.” He finds hilarious videos highlighting Florida’s fauna and flora and sometimes the bizarre quirks of the human species. He is “Floridaing” every day and is glad that “I’ve got it on my flip phone.” The said phone often matches the color of his t-shirt.

Florida’s fun in the sun residents do not stop at displaying trash cans and mailboxes that are elaborate and beautiful works of art; they decorate with giant concrete or fiberglass creatures of the sea, dotting the landscape in the most unusual places.

Where else can you find more gators and pythons than you can shake a stick at while stepping on shifting wet grass and trying to capture that perfect photo of a white crane balancing on top of a dead tree, surrounded by murky water?

There are 1.3 million gators in all 67 counties in Florida. The estimated population of Burmese pythons across more than 1,000 square miles of the Everglades is 30,000-300,000. The invasive species of snakes have caused significant ecological destruction.

Driving on the Tamiami Trail across the Everglades, a sign pops up now and then indicating a panther crossing. I have never seen such a creature cross the highway but its existence in the surrounding swamps with thick and lush vegetation and palm tree forests is fascinating.

Florida may hide the famous fountain of youth and its burial grounds in St. Augustine. La Florida was the magical land where Ponce de Leon and his Spanish conquistadors landed in their search for eternal youth. The place where Ponce de Leon and his crew first arrived a thousand years ago is now the Fountain of Youth Park.

There is a coral rock castle and garden in Homestead, Florida, built out of 1,100 tons of rock for a mysterious purpose that only the Latvian American eccentric builder, Edward Leedskalnin, understood. He had hoped that his labor of love work of oolite limestone would eventually attract his beloved who had spurned his marriage proposal previously in Latvia. Sadly, he died alone in his castle.

Where else can you come in contact with invisible and stingy no-see-ums, with sharks, manatees, sting rays, man-o-war jelly fishes, see-through moon jellies the size of UFOs that sting even when dead, and other dangerous creatures right at the water’s edge?

Where else can you visit the opulent mansion of the Barnum and Bailey Circus Museum with its gorgeous grounds, flora, and statuary, but in Sarasota, Florida?

Only in Florida, between Arcadia and Bradenton, you find in the middle of nowhere, passing by swamps, more swamps, and pastures, Howard Solomon’s medieval residence. The sculptor built a 12,000 square foot castle from refuse. Resplendent with a moat, towers, and eighty stained-glass windows, his castle is silver in color because it is covered with aluminum printing plates from a local newspaper.

His shiny castle, which has a real, full-sized Spanish galleon, was built by necessity as his property flooded during the rainy season and he did not factor that in when he bought the land. A real gator is “guarding” the tenth century galleon.

Sadly, Floridian Horse Creek would never rise high enough to float the galleon out to the emerald, green ocean. Howard not only turned recyclable trash into a local curiosity, but he also became the “Rembrandt of Reclamation.”  Nobody knows the effect that so much aluminum has on the surrounding swampy environment.

Only in Florida can you sit on the sugary white sand, watching the green waves crash against the pristine shore and suddenly you start coughing with hundreds of other beach goers surrounding you in a giant coughing unison.

It is the unpleasant and dangerous side-effect of red tide, an algae bloom, being blown from far out at sea. This toxic red tide bloom constantly affects Tampa Bay and its vicinity, and it is caused by poor water quality and pollution from fertilizer plants and other sources. It increases if the Gulf water happens to be warmer than usual. The east coast has an equally toxic algae bloom called the blue-green algae, sometimes affecting the St. Lucie River estuary.

Caren Schnur Neile wrote about the online headline of February 14, 2019, news story from WBGO public radio from Newark, “After 16 months of Dead Fish, Manatees and Dolphins, Florida’s Red Tide Ebbs.” How much it ebbed is revealed in the photo underneath with a row of dead fish on the pristine white beach.

Only in Florida you can find an apple tree that can kill you and gators love its fruits when they fall in the swamp. The Tree of Death, Hippomane mancinella or manchineel grows in South Florida’s coastal areas, South America, and the Caribbean.

Growing in brackish water, the manchineel thrive in mangroves. The name comes from the Spanish word manzanilla, “little apple” or manzanilla de la muerte, “little apple of death.” Touching it causes severe blistering and allergic reactions that could lead to death in some people.

There are many areas in Florida that claim the existence of ghosts, no one more famous than Henry Flagler, the tycoon who built the railroad between Jacksonville and Key West. Although he died in 1913 in Palm Beach, his body was shipped to St. Augustine by train and laid out in the rotunda of his beloved Ponce de Leon hotel. He vowed never to leave his hotel. A janitor found a mysterious tile with his portrait on it. To this day tourists are enthralled to search for this tiny tile that is alleged to have Henry Flagler’s face on it.

People would be surprised to know that Florida has an 800-year-old building, built 300 years before Columbus discovered the New World. Located on the Dixie Highway in North Miami, known as the “Old Spanish Monastery,” this building is part of St. Bernard de Clairvaux Episcopal Church. How did it make its way to Florida?

William Randolph Hearst purchased the monastery in 1925 and had it dismantled and packaged with hay in 11,000 shipping crates, carefully numbered. Two sawmills were built to make the crates.

Because of the outbreak in Spain of the hoof-and-mouth disease which could have been spread by hay, the shipment was quarantined by Customs. The crates were opened, the hay was burned, and the blocks were repackaged randomly. The crates were stored for 26 years in a warehouse in New York. Hearst sold the shipment of crates, and two men moved it in 1952 to Florida with the idea to make it a tourist attraction. Unfortunately, the entire now misnumbered shipment became a giant and expensive jigsaw puzzle.

According to the Archives, twenty-three men spent 90 days to open all the heavy crates, some weighing more than a ton. The wooden crates were then burned, and 7 tons of nails were salvaged from the ashes.

The 800-years old monastery was reconstructed in 19 months at a cost of $1.5 million. The bankrupt investors sold the building to the St. Bernard de Clairvaux Church. The baptismal font and the original iron bell are still part of the former monastery. Each stone block has the mark of the stonemason who cut it 8 centuries ago.

Florida has a true medieval structure which the Spanish began building in 1672. It is the Castillo de San Marcos in St. Augustine, a fort built out of coquina, a bonded composition with seashells that can resist cannon balls. It took 23 years to complete.

La Florida is beautiful beyond description, a remarkable place to explore.