Farm Animals along the Seminole Wekiva Trail

When traveling along a section of the Seminole Wekiva Trail in Lake Mary, Florida, horses and cows are a regular sight...

Daytona Beach Boardwalk Adventure

After seeing a movie in the Ocean walk Theater and eating, I took a walk around the Daytona Beach Boardwalk and pier. It was a busy place compared to the last time I was there. To start, here is the Ocean Walk shopping area. The bright paint colors, tall buildings, and blue sky make this place nice to take pictures of...



Walking towards the boardwalk, you see the Daytona Beach stage...

Walking along the street running along the boardwalk, you pass by this Slingshot ride. It's one of the few working rides still on the boardwalk...


Next to the Sling Shot is this empty spot along the boardwalk. This is where there used to be arcades, go kart tracks, kiddie rides, and all sorts of good stuff. It was all knocked down a while ago, and not much has happened since leaving this large scar along the boardwalk...

Coming up is the back side of one of the remaining Arcades, the Mardi Gras Family Fun Center. Next door is the giant swimmer...



Coming up on Main Street, you come to a group of interesting older buildings. This building for example had nothing in business in it, but had two green men on the second floor balcony. The myths behind green men are that the faces should bring weath, good luck, and fertilty to the building that the faces hang on. In the case of the Beachside Cafe, it apparently didn't work...


On to the pier. The first thing you come across is this sky tower ride. It all looks good as you are approaching the ride. As you get closer though, it becomes apparent that the ride isn't actually running. Instead, the cabin is being used as a digital photo booth of some sorts...



The Cable Car ride on the pier was working. This ride is actually kind of scary when you think about it. You are hanging high above a wooden pier, high above the Atlantic Ocean, all from a rather thin cable that it constantly exposed to the moist and salty ocean air, encouraging rust. The ride has survived when the end of the pier didn't during hurricanes. It's been through a lot, but is still going.



See the guy sitting on the platform in the black? Following in the footsteps of the larger Orlando theme parks, he takes your on-ride photo while you are riding the cable cars over the Daytona Beach Pier.

Leaving the Pier and walking back towards the Ocean Walk along the boardwalk, you see the front side of the Mardi Gras Fun Center with it's wonderful giant paper machie jester heads...



On the other side of the void from the removed amusements along the boardwalk, you come to the other remaining gift shop/arcade with the sling shot on the roof...


Past the amusements, you come to this park in front of the Hilton Hotel with the Clocktower in it. There were some street performers doing shows in this section of the boardwalk. There was a magician that did some pretty good slight of hand as well as some guitar players. It was cool to see, but from the reaction of the police officers, it didn't seem like they were very welcome...

I was then back to the Ocean Walk, where I crossed the pedestrian bridge over A1A to the parking garage, and left the Daytona Beach Boardwalk.

It was fun...

Return to Ginger Ale Springs...

I wrote about Ginger Ale Springs here previously. It is a small natural spring in Longwood, Florida that was possibly used in a Ginger Ale bottling plant, hence the name. Very few people seem to know about it even though it is just a few meters from the road.

Recently I returned to Ginger Ale Springs to see if anything changed from my last visit. Stuff did change. Much of the foliage between the spring and the road has been trimmed back. There were no longer any ginger plants along the path leading up to the spring either. Much of the random junk that surrounded the spring pool also disappeared. The Virgin Mary and the Barbie Dolls in the trees are all gone.

It seems like all of this has been replaced though with a new collection of junk around the spring. I spotted a decorated CD, an angel up in a palm tree, and flower pots...



The flower pot is sort of perplexing, trying to grow domesticated plants in a jungle-like environment. Whoever puts all of this junk around the spring must be tenacious to have replaced the old collection of junk with a new collection rather quickly.

As for the spring itself, not much has changed. It's still flowing strong. The guppys are still there. The water still smells. All is good...




I also came across this response to the original video that I posted on Youtube of Ginger Ale Springs that somebody made. By the look of it and the clear view of cars passing by, this was filmed after the trees around the spring were cleaned up and trimmed...

Stiltsville

Stiltsville is a group of houses built off of the coast of Key Biscayne in Miami, Florida. The houses were built back during prohibition so that the owners could drink and gamble while technically being outside of the United States. Seven houses still survive today...

An I-4 Vehicle's View of Downtown Orlando

I took some pictures while riding through Downtown Orlando from I-4 last weekend. What you see here are the results of taking pictures out the passenger window of a speeding car...