floridatraveler

With mild weather and little rainfall this time of year is a great time for one of Florida’s favorite outdoor activities – food festivals.

In the summer almost every Panhandle town has a seafood festival and in the fall Walt Disney World’s Epcot houses the gigantic Wine and Food Festival, which erases the notion that the Fall is a more quiet time to visit Orlando.   In the late winter and early spring, Southeast Florida, however, holds the most food festivals.

If you like celebrity chefs and simply decadent cuisine and wild tastings, you’ll need to get tickets for the 18th Annual South Beach Wine and Food Festival, a five-day event starting February 20 this year.  SO big it is sponsored by  the Food Network, Cooking Channel, and Food & Wine magazine.

Over 100 food events at South Beach Wine & Food Festival

While some of the social events will break most bank accounts there are dozens of events around Miami that will cost under $100 and make your dining friends envious.  The Festival attracts some 60,000 people and presents over 100 events that raise millions in funds for charity.

If casual food is your thing, there are two food festivals in March that honor Florida’s favorite transplanted sandwich – the Cuban sandwich.  On March 2, at Kissimmee’s beautiful Lakeside Park, the 4th Annual Kissimmee Cuban Sandwich Festival will bring the top sandwich makers together in competition.

Orlando and Tampa have Dueling Cuban Sandwich Contests

There will be music, food of all types, and an attempt to oust the 161-foot long Cuban sandwich made by the Latin Times Media of Tampa.  And guess what?  On March 30, the Orlando winners will be facing the Tampa restaurants in the International Cuban Sandwich Festival at the Centro Asturiano in Ybor City. Some 100 food booths, live music, dance performances, and art will celebrate Florida’s Latin heritage.

More in line with the major Florida image is the 43th Marathon Seafood Festival, held this year on March 9 and 10. Some 20,000 visitors from Miami to Key West pour into the Middle Keys to consume huge amounts of stone crabs, spiny lobster, shellfish, and seafood.

An Ocean of Seafood At Marathon Seafood Fest

Marathon Community Park is filled with some 220 vendors and even if you don’t like seafood, there will be plenty of other selections.  For a small town, this festival is amazing!

The Bacon and Bourbon Fest in the Wellington/ Delray Beach area May 22 and 23 at the Wellington Community Center is a rather unique food blend.  The number of bacon and pork-related food selections almost matches the huge selection of bourbon and whiskeys to select.

There’s even bacon ice cream for the kids.  I’ll pass on that one.

April is the time for some historically large but different food festivals.  On April 5, Fort Lauderdale’s famous Las Olas Boulevard is closed so some seventy of South Florida’s most notable restaurants entertain in the Las Olas Wine and Food Festival.

This is an adults-only event costing $130 to $150 for the American Lung Association.  That price allows you to buffet away for five blocks of food and wine samples by some very expensive restaurants which may cost you that much for a full meal in just one.

I must say that A Taste of Saint Augustine held at the Amphitheater on Saint Augustine Beach April 28, is a more family-oriented affair, held in the daytime, but the diversity of cuisine from some twenty-five local restaurants is wonderful.

You purchase $1 “taste-tickets” and run around like a kid on Halloween.  There is music and activities for the entire family.

This is the time of year when Floridians, snowbirds, and visitors alike head to the warmer waters of springs and electric plants and even nuclear plant complexes to watch our favorite manatees.  While people call manatees sea cows, the female is the cow and the male the bull.

You can see them all year long in Florida waters and salt water bays, but in winter the West Indian manatees and their young gather in sometimes very large numbers in warmer waters.  I think we get so excited about this because we realize that it is essential for the manatees to seek out warm waters for their mere survival. Manatees have a hard time surviving water temperatures under sixty degrees.

Manatees usually swim alone or in pairs and occasionally in an aggregation, which is a group of around six of the gentle creatures.  To see dozens together is a rare except when the water temperatures start to drop to the lower sixties.

Tampa Bay is 56 degrees so the manatee head to Big Bend and warmer waters

It is difficult to not like the manatee, of which about 7,000 exist in Florida. Their survival is still endangered by changing world temperatures, speedboats, and possible diseases.  They are non-territorial herbivores that seem to except snorkelers and scuba divers provided you don’t touch them or get between the mothers and calves.

Where are the best places to find large numbers of manatees?

 TECO Manatee Viewing Center in Apollo Beach is where I take my visitors since I reside in Tampa and Northerners are surprised that manatees would hang out in a huge industrial complex like the Big Bend power plants.

The best place for winter visitors to snorkel and swim alongside manatees is at the Three Sisters Springs in Crystal River, 90 miles north of Saint Petersburg. The large spring area can get pretty bust with fishermen, boaters, and dive boats.

Normally underwater visitations with manatees is not promoted in Florida but the area’s experienced divers assure people are not trying to feed the manatees or interrupt their slow, casual wanderings around the warm springs.

Down in Southwest Florida the Lee County Manatee Park in Fort Myers offers a front row seat of manatees seeking warm waters.  Prior to the park, people required a good canoe or kayak trip around Lovers Key State Park or a tour boat up the Caloosahatchee River to appreciate the large numbers of manatees in the region.

Manatee Park in Fort Myers

in Miami cooler weather seems to send the manatees southward toward the Florida Keys, but I have been told that some brave manatees are seen in Oleta River State Park and along the Miami River. In summer manatees are all along the canals of Coral Gables.

 The large manatee groupings are found at the power plant locations by the Atlantic.  West Palm Beach’s Manatee Lagoon is by the Riviera Beach Next Generation Clean Energy plant of Florida Power and Light.

Palm Beach County Manatees Love Warm Waters

This is a real viewer friendly spot with a two-story museum, a gift shop, a snack center, and even a manatee webcam if it’s too cool outside the building.   There are dozens of programs for people wanting to know more about Palm Beach water life.

Equally interesting is the Manatee Observation and Education Center at Fort Pierce on Moore’s Creek on the Indian River Lagoon near the big power plant.  The neighboring Lisa’s Kayaks will put you into the middle of the action.

Of course, Florida’s many warm springs have waters over the 70 degree mark and are always popular with tourists.  I think Homosassa Springs (the river) and Blue Springs at Orange City are great spots for a nature trip.

So when it gets cold in Florida – give the manatees a little love.  #florida  #manatees

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When my family first came to Florida, we landed at Tampa Airport, rented a car, went over the causeway and then “took a ferry” across the mouth of Tampa Bay from Saint Augustine to Bradenton.

Today, the “second” Sunshine Skyway bridge has long eliminated the ferry, but you can take some interesting trips – long and short – by ferryboat in Florida.  Some of the craft may resemble more speedboats than the old fashion ferries, but the feeling of a seaward trip is still an exciting addition to a vacation..

People in Southwest Florida (Fort Myers and Marco Island) and Key West share the Key West Express, a three-hour cruise between the three locations. The route skirts the Everglades and Ten Thousand Islands.

Blasting Along the Gulf and Fort Myers Beach

Travelers can spend the entire day visiting the sites of Key West or relaxing on some of the best beaches on the Gulf of Mexico.  The jet-powered catamarans ships are large vessels that offer a bar and food galley, flat-screen televisions so you miss no sports, and an open-air sundeck for those who want a tropical tan.

We all know that Miami is the “cruise capital of the world” but it might also be the ferry trip center of the nation.  FRS-Caribbean offers a fast $69 cruise from Miami to nearby Bimini island in the Caribbean.  You can also obtain use of the facilities at the Hilton resort in Bimini.

I wouldn’t worry about the waves of the Atlantic for the HSC San Gwann is a 170-foot long 400-passenger catamaran that makes the 50-fifty trip in two hours.     You get seven hours to visit Alice Town to enjoy the beaches and outdoor facilities or else visit some of Ernest Hemingway’s favorite dives and seafood spots.

While we are in Miami, I should mention the most exclusive ferry ride in Florida – the short sail from South Beach to Fisher Island on the Fisher Island Club Transportation Ferry Service.

 The bad news is this is a private ferry that will accept you only if you have made hotel reservations or are visiting some of the exclusive island’s famous celebrities or millionaires.  I’ll let you look up the costs of staying here.

The Biscayne Xpress is the water taxi for Miami and Miami Beach and for $30 daily ticket you can spend the entire day cruising from the Bayfront shops to the Hyatt on the Miami River to South Beach and other popular attractions.

Florida is dotted with islands which require a ferry ride to visit.  Here in Tampa Bay day-trippers have two great options.  You can ferry from Honeymoon Island State Park to Caladesi Island, the #7 beach in the USA in 2018.

During your four hour stay you can hit the warm waters, rent a kayak for a mysterious trip into the interior swamplands, or rest on three miles of pristine beach without sight of the high rises of Clearwater Beach to the south.

Another favorite ferry ride is leaving the huge Fort DeSoto County Park, an attraction of beach and Spanish-War fort in itself, to go to Egmont Key island.  The 25-minute trip puts you at the entrance to Tampa Bay on an island with a 150-year old lighthouse, the ruins of Fort Dade, and other buildings.

The island is a great place to go shelling, snorkel in clear waters, swim, or explore the interior where huge tortoises roam.  You will note that on weekends Egmont is surrounded by private yachts.  #florida  #trips  #ferry  #vacations