Taken from the back deck a few minutes ago. Incredible. View large.

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Tags: mammatus, nevada, photos, reno, skies, storms, weather

Picnic on Indian Key in the Florida Everglades. I should have written
this entry six weeks ago.

I apologize, Florida, that I didn’t give you a chance. That I indulged in preconceptions, I dismissed your potential, I shrugged you off. Lesson taken. Friends?

In mid-April Shane, Sarah and I traded our SmartWool mountain socks for sandals and flew to Florida to see my dad and grandmother. Sarah had never been, and Shane and I hadn’t been since we were kids, so we tacked on a few days to explore. Pressed for time and money, we had to whittle our choices down to one area. We picked the Everglades.

Now, I’d always had about five words for Florida: hot, humid, tourists, bugs, expensive. But Florida quickly shut me up. It was April, the snowbirds were gone, spring break was over, the gaggles of summer families hadn’t yet arrived (nor had the bugs, heat and humidity), and it ended up feeling like we had the whole, glorious, breezy, quiet, sunshiney, virtually-bugless state all to ourselves.

We flew into Tampa and drove out to central Florida to spend a couple of days with family, and to take Sarah to Sea World and the Kennedy Space Center. A few days later, we said our goodbyes and headed south to the Everglades and Naples, where we motored along beside the colorful, sunny wetlands with all our windows down, got up close and personal with beautiful hawks and other birds, trekked down a long, winding boardwalk through jungle-like canopy and watched baby alligators swim in the marshes, had Key Lime pie in a funny little local cafe, and watched an incredible sunset over the ocean on a long, soft stretch of Naples beach.

The next day we rented a small skiff and took it up haunting, mangrove-lined Halfway Creek, then out in the Ten Thousand Islands area where we found and picnicked on a tiny deserted island, entertained and enchanted by a dozen or so dolphins that followed us around the bay on our way out there and back, breaching and playing just a few feet away. We could almost touch them. I’ll never forget what that felt like…overwhelming, magic.

That night we drove up Florida’s west coast, had dinner at Cha-Cha Coconuts on St. Armand’s Key, a good night’s sleep, and then spent the day walking the beaches of Sarasota, collecting shells, watching the gulls and pelicans and wading in the bright, blue-green water. The next morning we had a short drive back to Tampa, and were on our way home that afternoon – sunkissed, well-rested and very, very happy.

Not bad for a Florida vacation for a family of three, all for under $1,400 – thanks in large part to great deals we got from La Quinta (lodging), Hotwire (car rental), Southwest (flights) and Glades Haven (boat rental), and of course to my dad and grandmother for treating us to some Orlando fun.

You wouldn’t have convinced me I’d be saying it even a year ago, but if you’ve ever got four days at your disposal and you need a re-centering experience, I’d recommend some time in southwest Florida.

Check out the Florida photo + video set for more.

Posted by tee in photos, wandering
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Tags: birds, bliss, boating, dolphins, everglades, florida, good stuff, hawks, orlando, photos, travel, vacation, wildlife

I’m a late-comer to Hemingway. I didn’t start reading his stuff until a few years ago when I got interested in his contribution to the cultural shifts in fiction around the 1920s. Like most who do the same, I’m sorry now that I shrugged his work off for so many years for its popularity – I was into underdog literature – because it really is that bare, it-is-what-it-is style that I appreciate.

I picked this one up because it’s lesser known and because it was his last work — published after his suicide when his son, Patrick Hemingway, resurrected the manuscript, edited it and sent it to press. And aside from the prolific hunting that bugged me (though I’ll say that a high respect for wildlife was clear) and a lapse of character continuity on pages 228-229, I was happy with it.

The Gist
Hemingway calls this a fictional memoir, which makes me curious where the omissions and embellishments are, but it’s a page from the story of his life in Africa (Kenya) with his fourth wife, Mary. Set against the backdrop of The Mountain, I assume Kilimanjaro to the south, Hemingway and Mary make a good and basic life on the plains among complex conditions and tribal politics. As is his way, he makes no judgment on his environment, and tells the story through the day-to-day interactions of its characters.

I went outside and checked the weather. There was just the steady building up of cloud over the Chulus and the flank of the Mountain was clear. As I watched I thought I heard the plane. Then I was sure and called out for the hunting car. Mary came out and we scrambled for the car and started out from camp and on the motor car tracks through the new green grass for the landing strip. The game trotted and then galloped out of our way. The aircraft buzz the camp and then it came down and for a moment we were keeping almost abreast of it before Willie, smiling out through the Plexiglas as the blue of the prop passed us, touched the aircraft down so that she landed strutting gently like a crane and then wheeled around to come fanning up to us.

Willie opened the door and smiled, “Hello, you chaps.” He looked for Mary and said, “Get the lion yet, Miss Mary?”

He spoke in sort of a swinging lilting voice that moved with the rhythm that a great boxer has when he is floating in and out with perfect, unwasting movements. His voice had a sweetness that was true but I knew it could say the most deadly things without a change of tone.”

Twice the size of the last book, True at First Light was a fast, week-long read. You can grab a copy for yourself over here for less than a dollar.

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Tags: africa, book reviews, books, ernest hemingway, literature, memoir, true at first light