Unofficial Guide To Florida Beachside Restaurants

Posted on June 13, 2016 by floridatraveler

It’s summertime in Florida and both tourists and locals are heading to Florida’s 663 miles of beach (not shoreline – beach). Part of the sandy excursion for many adults is a stop at a restaurant on the beach for burgers, seafood, and lots of cold refreshment.  The older you get, the more important the food becomes compared to the warm water and hot sun.

I have a few rules about what constitutes a “real beach-side restaurant” – first, it must be ON the beach.  Not across from the beach which is often the case in Miami and Fort Lauderdale and other urban haunts. You want to be able to go from restaurant to water in sixty seconds!  Restaurant owners are as sneaky as resort PRers when it comes to website descriptions.

FLORIDATRAVELER beach food

Beach food should come on paper plates: seafood, seafood!

“Waterfront restaurant” in Florida may mean it is on the Intracoastal Waterway or bayside.  “Ocean view” may even mean a narrow speck of blue water between two condos.  If the diners are wearing anything less than shorts and beachwear, you can be suspicious of its location. Even restaurant websites can disguise shortcomings so I like to examine the customer photographs in Yelp and Tripadvisor.

To my criteria, a good “beachside restaurant” is on a public beach, preferably near a pier and beach volleyball courts.  The view should not be buried behind twenty foot sand dunes and the menu should be Florida or tropical and the drink list as long as the food listings.

FLORIDATRAVELER frenchys 1

My Summer Hangout: Frenchy’s Rockaway on Clearwater Beach

My favorite nearby beach-side restaurant is Frenchy’s Rockaway Grill on Clearwater’s North Beach parking by the Art Deco hotel and the 1920’s beach pavilion.  Great grouper dishes, large menu, great views of volleyball and North Pier.  Like many places, you better arrive early to get the best parking.

Here are some of the best beachside restaurants I know:

Salute On the Beach on Atlantic Boulevard in Key West is not just distinctive in its funky open-air beachside ambiance, it makes seafood Italian style on its menu.

FLORIDATRAVELER Salute Key West

Salute in Key West is ON the beach

I love to vacation over at Lauderdale-By-The-Sea, a compact concave of hotels, restaurants, and shops with a downtown strip seconds from the beach.  There by the City Pier is the cool Aruba Beach Café, where as one might expect there is always a party going on.  Look for big tropical drinks, live Caribbean music, and good seafood.

FLORIDATRAVELER ArubaBeacLbytheSea

 

 

 

 

 

 

It seems that having a nice fishing pier sets the stage for the correct beachside restaurant.  That’s the case with Benny’s on the Beach by Lake Worth Pier on South Ocean Boulevard.  If you have ever visited Daytona Beach, you probably have heard about the Ocean Deck Restaurant and Beach Club.   The three-story complex has been serving seafood and loud reggae music since 1940.

FLORIDATRAVELER bennys lakeworthpier

Benny’s Is Not One of Those Expensive Pier Restaurants

Jacksonville Beach has several beachside places, but I like the outdoor seating and Mexican menu at The Pier Cantina and Sandbar.   A good margarita even enhances the nearby view of Jacksonville Pier.

FLORIDATRAVELERPierCantina margarita

I once lived in the Panhandle and its newly beachside communities attract younger families from the Deep South.  It’s hard to pick one in Panama City, but I’ll select the Hooked Pier Bar and Grill with all the necessary ingredients:  view of pier, on the beach, fish tacos that are killers, and lots of parking at a nearby shopping center.

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Since we started at Key West, we must end 700 miles away on Pensacola Beach.  The Casino Beach Bar and Grill down Fort Pickens Road serves up signature glorious seafood and drinks from 7 am to 2 am in the summer months.

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Casino Beach has a pier and a great seafood grille.

Have a wonderful trip to the beach and visit a beachside restaurant.

Posted in adventure vacation, beer, dining, Florida Food, florida history, Florida sports, florida vacations, food, Historic Buildings, Restaurants, travel | Tagged , , , , | Leave a comment

Craft Brewing Is Big Business In Florida

Posted on June 6, 2016 by floridatraveler

The craft beer industry has boomed in Florida in the last years, even in the Panhandle.

Vicente Martinez Ybor not only brought the cigar industry to Tampa (Ybor City) in 1885. he constructed Florida’s first brewing company (1897), the Florida Brewing Company, on the Government Spring used by the soldiers of Fort Brooke.  It dominated beer sales for many generations in Florida since Northern brews were poorly distributed.

FLORIDATRAVELER Florida-Brewing-Company

Still an Ybor City Landmark The Florida Brewing Company

The next year Teddy Roosevelt and his Rough Riders partied at the brewery. The six-story business remained Ybor City’s tallest enterprise until it closed in 1961.

FLORIDATRAVELER BILL BOYD as TEDDY

The building now houses lawyers, but it seems appropriate that Tampa has Florida’s best known craft brewery, Cigar City Brewery.  The business is almost becoming a Tampa icon.

CCB’s taproom and plant is in West Tampa on Spruce Street, while their brewpub is up Dale Mabry Highway in Carrollwood.  You can even visit their bar at Tampa International Airport.  Today  young people in Tampa only think  Jai Alai is a beer in a bottle.

There are too many nifty craft breweries to mention even a small percentage of them in this article, but here are some of our favorites across the Sunshine State.

Over in Pinellas County in Dunedin is the Dunedin Brewery, Florida’s oldest craft brewery and besides crafting 15 barrels at a time and giving tours, the place hosts local bands and social events.   The cool interior, good food, great entertainment, and classy service remain high points here.

FLORIDATRAVELER DUNEDIN BREWERY

Dunedin is a small town with a lot of fine pubs.

It may seem odd a Florida brewery is producing award winning selections like Snowed In (Stout) and Last Snow (American Porter), but the Funky Buddha Brewery in Oakland Park is probably the most innovative brewery in Florida.

FLORIDATRAVELER FUNKY BUDDHA

 

This brewery has probably won more serious craft beer competitions than any other brewery in Florida.  This is a place for serious beer drinkers.

A special tribune goes to Miami’s first craft brewery, the Wynwood Brewing Company, for they had to fight half of the city and its zoning laws to get the business in Dade County. They also renovated an old garment warehouse, an important part of the birth of the Wynwood Art District.

Most importantly, Wynwood makes good craft beers, having won a GABF gold medal for their Pop’s Porter.  Their success boomed craft brewing in South Florida.

The funkiest brewery is the Swamp Head Brewery serving Gainesville. The quality of their beers, despite names like Wild Night and Big Nose, less I forget Cottonmouth and Saison du Swamp, attracts droves of Florida coeds and beer-thirsty locals.  It is the only brewhouse I have ever seen with outdoor tanks.

FLORIDATRAVELER SWAMP HEAD BREWERY

The people of Gainesville can’t miss this advertisement.

Green Room Brewing on Jacksonville Beach may be beachside casual, dogs allowed, and BYOF (that’s food), but it also has sixteen taps rotating as many seasonal and regular brews.  But, I’m not sure I want a Barleywine called Undertow.

FLORIDATRAVELER THE GREEN ROOM Jax Beach

The Panhandle has been adding craft breweries from Tallahassee to the Alabama State Line, but we give our hats off the Grayton Beer Company on Santa Rosa Beach.  They know their beer and have good food, and have a warehouse game-room that even meant kids had a good time.

Craft beer has become such a key entertainment and food industry that visitors don’t have far to look for a brewery.  Beerinflorida.com  and floridacraftbeerfinder.com will show you the nearest place and their specialties.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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Goody Goody: Return of a Florida Icon

Posted on May 31, 2016 by floridatraveler

Most cities have a restaurant or store that has become an icon because of its long history and its role in the lives of decades of loyal customers.  When a business like that closes, regardless of reason, it leaves an empty space in the hearts and minds of locals.  It is rare that such a place returns from the dead – particularly when the building is rubble.

But that is what is happening in Tampa – the Goody Goody Restaurant, complete with its original sign, is reopening in Hyde Park Village at 1601 West Swann.  More ironic is that its restorer is Richard Gonzmart, owner of the largest Spanish restaurant in the world, the Columbia in Ybor City.  Like so many Tampans, Gonzmart grew up eating at Goody Goody and loved the place. He not only obtained the brand, but located much of the place’s furniture and signs rusting in a dump yard.

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The New Goody Goody Soon To Open in Hyde Park Village

Goody Goody was actually born in 1925 in Hanibal, Missouri, by Oklahomans Ralph and Amanda Stephens.  It was their third try at operating a restaurant and when it folded, the Stephens came to Tampa during the Florida Land Boom.  They were so broke, they lived at first in a tent.

It was late 1925 when they reestablished Goody Goody as a drive-in barbecue joint at 1603 Grand Central Avenue (now Kennedy Blvd) at what is now a KFC/Taco Bell complex.  Later they moved the business to Seminole Heights and Florida Avenue.  In 1929, with the Boom over, the Stephens decided to return to Oklahoma. They sold Goody to William B. Stayer, a Pittsburgh insurance man, who came to Florida after his second divorce.

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The Downtown Original (pic by Tampapix.com)

Strayer and his new wife Sadie wanted to buy a restaurant in Tampa and the sale proved to be a perfect match.  They moved the restaurant just north of downtown on Florida Avenue on a spot where Goody stayed from April 3, 1930 to November 30, 2005.  It was an ideal spot before the Interstates for drivers took Florida Avenue to go to and from downtown jobs.  The drive-in was packed with automobiles for fifty years.

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1941 Business Hangout (photo by Tampapix.com)

The Strayers sold Goody Goody in the 1980’s to local lawyer Mike Wheeler.  The amazing thing I recall most about this restaurant was the fact that people worked here for dozens of years and visitors were treated like next door neighbors.   With the growth of downtown interstate highways and people moving away from the area, Goody began to lose its customer base.  Regulars who now lived miles away came just to celebrate famous occasions that took place at G-G.

FLORIDATRAVELER goody goody sign

People were hopeful when the restaurant got a total rehabilitation in 2004 and was even the location for a movie scene.   To the shock of many, Goody Goody closed its doors in 2005 and was soon a pile of rubble.   But Richard Gonzmart knew that the place was meaningful to thousands of Tampans and just needed a new home at the right time and in the right place.

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Goody Was The Scene In 2004 The Punisher

He was evidently right.  The Goody Goody restaurant Facebook site had over 6,000 likes months before the place was open.

Goody not only hopes to grow in its new Hyde Park upscale home.  In the near future people arriving at Air Terminal C at Tampa International Airport will see Goody Goody at the newly developing Marketplace.

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Palm Beach Is A Great Summer Vacation Spot

Posted on May 24, 2016 by floridatraveler

When May comes around in Florida, the snow birds and high rollers have departed and most of the automobile tourists are waiting for the kids to finish schools.  It is a time of year when vacationers can often avoid high prices and crowded summer beaches.

Palm Beach is a nice place to visit this time of year.  You can actually get a decent table at the island’s fancier restaurants and some of the most glamorous resorts are offering special deals.

The arrival in the 1890’s of the railroad of Henry Flagler opened up Palm Beach to the world  and hotels like the monstrous Royal Poinsettia and Whitehall became the winter playgrounds for the Victorian rich.  Yet it wasn’t until the Florida Land Boom and the Mediterranean Revival architecture of Addison Mizner that Palm Beach became the winter domain and hideaway of the very rich.

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Flagler’s Whitehall mansion is now a state museum

Flagler’s wooden Whitehall fell to the termites and his private railroad car complete with gold toilet fixtures is the only thing on the Whitehall Resort property.  Flagler’s legacy stands with The Breakers, now the 1926 version.  One May in the 1960’s I took a group of high school students to a convention here in the 1960’s and while the students attended meetings, I took off to the empty pool for a morning dip.

FLORIDATRAVELER the breakers

There was an elderly man having breakfast by the pool and he signaled me to join him. It turned out he was John D. MacArthur, one of the richest men in the world.  Things like this happen in Palm Beach.

The Florida Land Boom was the next great era for Palm Beach.  It was an age when great architects like Addison Mizner and Joseph Urban did their magic with Mediterranean Revival styling of fancy mansions, commercial districts, and public buildings.  The result: Palm Beach is today an architect’s dream spot.

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Mizner’s first project – the Everglades Club – started a PB Boom

When the streets and roads are less crowded downtown Palm Beach is a nicely compacted district with great buildings.  Two of my favorite ones are the 1926 Palm Beach City Hall

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and the 1927 Paramount Theater designed by  Joseph Urban.

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Perhaps today the greatest contribution to Florida architecture since everyone can enjoy it is the Worth Avenue shopping district with its share of Mizner buildings and neat alleyways.  Whether you can afford any of the merchandise or not, you love the atmosphere and recognize how upscale Florida shopping centers have tried to capture the Palm Beach look in their design.

FLORIDATRAVELER PB Worth Avenue

I took this Worth Avenue photo at 10 am Saturday morning

I love to visit historical areas early to take photographs that are not crowded with tourists and automobiles.  One morning in Palm Beach I entered a music shop and found myself one of only two customers.  The other person was Rod Stewart.

FLORIDATRAVELER PB mizner alleyway

The Mizner Alleyway

Be sure to visit all the narrow alleyway streets off Worth Avenue for they house some delightful shops, offices, and even a few places to grab a casual meal.

 

 

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Hot Times In Summer At Lesser Known Hotels

Posted on May 17, 2016 by floridatraveler

It is summertime in Florida and while we have a large population of Floridians going North to the North Carolina mountains and visiting family, more and more Floridians are exploring hotels within the state.   Summer is also the time that the Panhandle and North Florida resorts have warm water and more activities.

I suggest people explore around the entire state of Florida for you will be amazed at the diversity and quality of Florida resorts, which many people have never visited.

Do you want a family vacation in a recreational Disney World atmosphere minus the theme park crowds?  Sandestin Golf and Beach Resort on South Walton Beach will astound you: four resort areas with 30 neighborhoods with every kind of accommodation at varying price ranges.  From hotel rooms to condos to villas and town houses, all visitors get to use the seven miles of beach, four golf courses, and marinas.

FLORIDATRAVELER sandestinair

Sandestin Resembles A Resort City

If you want to stay in South Florida, your family might enjoy Hammock Beach Resort at Palm Coast.  The 311-unit upscale family recreation resort has two golf courses, tennis courts, five restaurants, a private beach, and my favorite relaxation spot: a lazy river.

If you are a couple and want an urban experience with great shopping and attractions, you might want to book a weekend at The Alford Inn in Winter Park.    Located in a classy Orlando area town with the lakefront Rollins Collins, this hotel is surrounded by shops and quality restaurants, several shockingly good art museums, and a must-take boat tour through the winding canals connecting all the lakes.

FLORIDATRAVELER winter park dining

Just Outside The Alford is downtown Winter Park

Saint Augustine is always a different vacation place and the Casa Monica Hotel on a Square near the Cathedral is one of the last Victorian resorts once owned by Henry Flagler.  Beside a great restaurant, you will be in a location between the historic district and the wonderful residential area south of the downtown Square.

FLORIDATRAVELER Casa-Monica-Hotel

Return to Victorian Florida at the Casa Monica

If you want to vacation by the beach this summer and try an area you have never seen, you might look up The Pearl Hotel in Rosemary Beach, with its wild architecture and top-rated facilities and four star restaurant.  This area has some of Florida’s best outdoor attractions.

FLORIDATRAVELER thepearl

The Pearl Combines Modern and Eclectic Architecture

Another choice is the Water Color Inn and Resort on Santa Rosa Beach.  It is a water sports paradise with a Water Camp for kids. There are three golf courses, restaurants, spas, and some of Florida’s nicest beach-side dunes.

FLORIDATRAVELER WaterColorInn

The Water Color Inn has beach and dune scenery.

Here in the Tampa Bay area, I have friends who like to go over to Saint Petersburg Beach but are not sun-worshippers.  They stay at the Hotel Zamora, a fancy retreat on the Intracoastal Waterway just minutes from the shops and restaurants.

FLORIDATRAVELER hotelzamora

For people who want more traditional choices in familiar places, take a look at the Ocean Key Resort and Spa on Key West and the Palms Hotel on Miami Beach.  Not as famous as nearby resorts but great oceanfront rooms and suites match anything in the area.  At the Palms you can have a five course meal in the privacy of a romantic garden.

FLORIDATRAVELER viewfromthepalms

The Palms in Miami Beach Is Very Tropical At the Beach

Posted in attractions, dining, florida history, Florida sports, florida vacations, food, Historic Hotels & Inns, Recreational Experiences, Restaurants, travel | Leave a comment

Florida Boardwalks Go More Native In The Summertime

Posted on May 9, 2016 by floridatraveler

For a state with so much beachfront, it is shocking how few Florida coastal communities have Victorian style waterfront boardwalks, complete with restaurants, souvenir shops, and amusements.   Excluding inland lake frontages (WDW’s Boardwalk) and river-walks like the new one in Tampa, here are my favorites.

The 2.5 mile 1925 terracotta-colored Hollywood Beach Boardwalk is still special and unique. It caters more to nostalgia and is more adult-oriented as a beachfront.  Some of its long time restaurants like the Sugar Reef Grill and Istanbul are popular with people who remember the debut of “Where The Boys Are.”

floridatraveler hollywood broadwalk

In the winter, armies of French-speaking Canadians give the beachfront a more cosmopolitan sound.  Recently there was great fear that the Fall 2015 opening of the gigantic Margaritaville Resort, with its 349 rooms and music venue would overwhelm the old atmosphere and image of the Boardwalk.

The resort is getting great reviews and the people are still coming to the Boardwalk despite the loss of one of the site’s largest parking lot.  Imagine this: in Florida they replace a parking lot with Jimmy Buffett.

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My favorite “young family” boardwalk is the 1938 somewhat modernized Daytona Beach Boardwalk, even though a street separates the shops from the walkway and beach.  A 1000 foot pier, fun arcades, mini go-carts, slingshot rides, and overpriced saltwater taffy reminds me of Atlantic City or Ocean City.

On the West Coast Pier 60 at Clearwater Beach makes the 1080 foot pier the focal point for a “Key West” style sunset, complete with stilt walkers, magicians and live music.  You have to cross the street for the huge selection of restaurants and shops, although both ends of the park have large beachside resorts.

FLORIDATRAVELER Pier-60

Waiting For The Sunset Rituals

I give half-credit to nearby Johns Pass Village and Boardwalk with its huge marina, complete with a pirate ship, loads of decent seafood restaurants, numerous festivals, and tourist shops.  It’s only problem is it is not on the ocean directly, but on a pass a short walk to the Gulf of Mexico.

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For a relaxing and low key boardwalk atmosphere, I top my hat toward Times Square at Fort Myers Beach, where good parking next to the pier, lots of live entertainment restaurants, and good shopping give visitors a good time.

FLORIDATRAVELER TIMES SQUARE ft myers beach

Where-ever you vacation in Florida for old fashioned beachside fun.

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New Southern Cooking Is Growing Across Florida

Posted on May 4, 2016 by floridatraveler

Ask a visitor about food in Florida and they will probably first mention seafood – stone crabs, grouper, mullet, shrimp.  Thanks to Miami and Ybor City, Cuban and Latin American food will be mentioned by some tourists.

Southern cooking is just not something that is identified with Florida.  There are no “Florida style BBQ restaurants or Florida fried chicken dives.”  Most down home Southern places are mainly associated with small towns in Florida just off the Interstate highways.

But recently there has a tremendous boom in Florida of award-winning “New Southern” restaurants often located in the least likely spot, such as in the middle of trendy South Beach.  There stands the Yardbird Southern Table and Bar with the delightful URL of runchickenrun.

FLORIDATRAVELER yardbird

This doesn’t look like Miami Beach.

For a person who remembers eating at Wolfies in Miami Beach, it is hard to imagine the sun-tanned South Beach in-crowd dining on exotic Southern comfort food loaded with bourbon.

No less food guru as Anthony Bourdain said it’s Southern comfort food the way Southern comfort food gets prepared in my dreams.” The place is even going West.  There’s a new Yardbird at The Venetian in Las Vegas.

floridatraveler SHRIMP and GRITS at yardbird miami beach bourbon everywhere

Shrimp and grits at the Yardbird.

Over on my coast, on Central Avenue in downtown Saint Petersburg, diners line up like a Disney World ride at The Mill for Ted Dorsey’s Sunday brunch where you can munch down fried trout benedict or cornbread waffles, and pancakes mixed with every vegetable produced in Florida.  The place is packed all week with fans of Southern-fried frog legs, wild game, and cider mussels.

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It’s lambshank pot pie at The Mill

Central Avenue downtown Orlando is the home of another booming new South restaurant called Soco, the brain child of former Emeril chef – Greg Richie.  Robert E. Lee would be stunned to watch Richie grill watermelon with rock shrimp, turn boiled peanuts into hummus, and make Mornay pimiento cheese on pork chops.  On Thursday crowds show up for Build-a-Biscuit.

floridatraveler soco pork chop grits

Pork Chops Take a ride at Soco

Even the conservative Panhandle is whistle Dixie with a new beat.  The Golden Spoon winning Restaurant Iron in Pensacola grows its own herbs and vegetables and uses them across the menu.   Head Chef Alex McPhail gets national acclaim for his ancho chilli rubbed Muscovy duck and salt and vinegar crusted triggerfish roulade.

floridatraveler pensacola the iron

In case you think this New Southern cuisine is mainly an urban, yuppie thing, let me pick out one of my favorite Tampa Bay places.  In a rustic cottage on St. Joe Road outside Dade City is Pearl in the Grove.

floridatraveler pearl in the grove dade city

Don’t Expect Seeing The Colonel at this Pearl of a restaurant

It looks like a down home fried chicken spot, but it is a Golden Spoon winning restaurant that attracts diners fifty miles away.   People love her catfish meuniere, chicken liver with pecans and rice, and a pork belly roulade with Granny apples and a molasses glaze.

floridatraveler pork bellies the pearl dade city

The New Pork Bellies

Food-wise, The Old South is becoming the New South.

Posted in attractions, dining, Florida Food, florida history, florida vacations, food, Restaurants, travel | Leave a comment

Floridians Love Their Swimming Pools More and More Gigantic

Posted on April 26, 2016 by floridatraveler

Despite having 700 miles of sandy beaches to swim and play on, Floridians have always loved their swimming pools.

Even that workaholic Thomas Edison had a Portland  Cement pool put into his winter state and lab at Fort Myers in 1910.  Visitors to the Edison complex want to jump into it today, but it’s off limits.

FLORIDATRAVELER Swimming Pool at Thomas Edison

The Old Edison Swimming Pool

During the Florida Land Boom of the 1920’s, having a large swimming pool was an important addition to a resort’s success.  The largest resort pool in the world was built at the Biltmore Hotel in Coral Gables and the site almost symbolized what became the South Florida lifestyle.

FLORIDATRAVELER Biltmore pool

Speaking of Coral Gables, where I once lived, the fancy development lacked waterfront so founder George Merrick converted a coral rock quarry into an 820,000 gallon public pool fed with spring water from an underground aquifer.

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 Designed by artist Denman Fink and architect Phineas Paist, Venetian Pool is a masterpiece with its two Mediterranean towers, signature bridge, grottos, and a forest of palm trees.  I always found it amazing that in summer, the giant pool is emptied and refilled every night.

Today, in the world of giant water parks, people who don’t sit directly on a Florida beach want more pool for their money.  The 400,000 backyard pools in Florida are not enough.

Thanks to the Crystal Lagoons Corporation of Chile and Florida, Florida will be the home of some of the world’s most gigantic swimming pools.  At the Old Epperson Ranch site in Pasco County Metro Development Corporation is building a 10,000 home development and with Crystal Lagoons a lagoon the size of seven football fields, complete with zero entry for small kids and nine foot depth for water sports.

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A Drawing of Pasco County Lagoon

The well-serviced lagoon will have water you can actually drink like bottled water.  This is well water  that is self-cleaning with an ultrasonic system which you can’t say about the Gulf of Mexico a 45-minute drive away.

Other Crystal Lagoon pools are going up near Orlando outside Lake Nora and down in North Fort Myers by Prichett Park, where an eight acre lagoon is planned.   These projects are so vast that the Army Corps of Engineers has to be consulted on the construction.

Even more spectacular is the 183-acre North Miami community of SoleMia where two 10-acre Crystal Lagoon pools will go up east of Biscayne Boulevard.

FLORIDATRAVELER crystal pools MIAMI

The most amazing thing about these gigantic pools is they are relatively environmentally friendly.  Water needs to be replaced just for evaporation making them thirty times more water efficient than maintaining a large golf course.   They use up to 100 less chemicals than traditional disinfection systems of drinking water and pools.  They are energy efficient.

FLORIDATRAVELER Lake Ray Hubbard miami Bayside-Crystal-Lagoon

It looks like Florida is becoming the state of gigantic lagoon-like swimming and recreational pools.

 

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CORAL CASTLE – The Stonehedge Of Florida

Posted on April 19, 2016 by floridatraveler

Over thirty years ago I wrote an article for a magazine called PSYCHIC WORLD on Coral Castle, a unique castle structure located in Homestead off US 1.  There were lots of unexplained questions about this unique structure back then and none of them have been answered by engineers and scholars even today.  I received a belated email from an engineer in Pakistan who wanted the directions to this mystical place.

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It is easy to remember: just head down US 1 from Miami toward the Keys and slow down as you near Homestead.  The more you know about construction, the more you will be surprised.

What makes Coral Castle so weird is it was built by one 130-pound man with no machinery or equipment except a mule.  Coral blocks, larger than the blocks of the Great Pyramid in Egypt, were pulled from the ground and transported to this site (not once but twice).  One ton rocks were turned into doors that can be swung by a small child.

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A one ton picnic coral table shaped like Florida

Coral Castle combines astrology and psychics and ancient construction secrets, all motivated by a heart-broken immigrant whose bride-to-be jilted him at the altar.  EDWARD LEEDSKALTON left Latvia after his failed wedding and after drifting around the land came to the Florida wilderness in 1910.

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Moved it?  He moved tons of Coral rock!

He was a private, lonely person, who started to build his masterpiece near Floral City, but when civilization crowded his project, he moved the entire plant ten miles away toward Homestead.  He worked until his death in 1951 and only told people he knew “the secret of the pyramids.”

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For a person with a fourth grade education, he knew something to move 1,100 tons of coral rock from the earth into position to carve his works.  His crude house only shows assorted levers and pulleys and several water-moving devices.  There is only one Coral Castle in the USA.  Go to its website at  http://coralcastle.com.

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Florida’s Top Aquaculture Product Comes In A Can

Posted on April 12, 2016 by floridatraveler

Florida is the only state in the nation surrounded on three sides by two major bodies of water  – the Atlantic and the Gulf of Mexico. Fishing, both commercial and recreational, is big business in the Sunshine State.

Pound for pound Florida’s greatest aquaculture crop doesn’t come from the ocean, but from tanks and man-made ponds on shore. It is true that along Florida’s shoreline are 154 aqua farms raising oysters and clams.  Oysters from Apalachicola Bay are quite notable.

floridatraveler sea asparagus

Florida sea asparagus is a aquaculture crop

But inland is where the farming fish boom is headed with 96 bass and tilapia farms, 34 catfish farms, 22 shrimp and crawfish farms, and even six baitfish farms.  While these are growing industries, Florida takes in more revenue per pound from its 155 ornamental fish farms which lead the nation in producing tropical fish and ornamental water plants for millions of fish tanks around the globe.

The eastern shoreline of Tampa Bay is lined with ornamental fish ponds in farms that range from 10 to 100 acres of rare tropical fish.  The fish farms in the Miami area house their tropicals in above ground tanks due to coral rock in the hard ground. When a cold wave hits Florida, it is not just strawberries and winter vegetables that get covered and warmed – tropical fish need protection too.

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Tampa Bay fish farms produce tropical fish

In a good week at Tampa International Airport some 10,000 boxes of tropical fish are flown out.  This is one living crop that is shipped in a box.

Recently, an even more valuable aquaculture product is coming out of Florida.  Florida may one day be the world’s largest producer of the top grade of caviar in the world.  At a time when Russian species of surgeon are on the endangered list and restrictions are being applied to that industry, Florida has complete sturgeon aquaculture.

The 100 acre Evans Farm, located in Pierson, Florida, is the home to the first American Russian Sturgeon operation with Ossetra, Siberian, and Sevruga sturgeon.  Their Anastasia Gold Caviar is a true, premium caviar that rivals the Caspian caviar without affecting the survival of the wild resource.

floridatraveler cavair from evers farm

Over in Bascom, Florida, in the Panhandle, is Sturgeon AquaFarms, the largest Beluga aqua farm in the world.  In fact, their 100 tanks contain more Beluga sturgeon than what’s left in the Caspian Sea.  The farmers here grew up in Russia making caviar and now on 120 acres of Florida real estate, they work with over 100,000 Sevruga, Sterlet, Osetra, and the critically endangered Beluga sturgeon.

floridatraveler surgeon farm bascom florida

These tiny fish will soon produce black gold

Already the top restaurants around the world are lining up for purchase the few special batches of Anastasia Special Reserve, a smooth and buttery caviar that must be shipped only Tuesday through Friday to reach its global destination at its awe-inspiring peak of flavor.   It isn’t an inexpensive item.  It is Florida’s most expensive aquaculture product.

 

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