Remembering Famous Florida Tourist Attractions

Florida's major tourist attractions are closed for now, due to the coronavirus.  This includes Walt Disney's Epcot Center, which closed March 16th and will stay closed until at least the end of the month.  I took the photograph on the left of my then wife Lisa at that theme park in the early 1980s.  That was the first and last time I ever visited it.  As I recall, the World Showcase area featured cultures of other countries, but since that time I have focused on actually visiting those countries instead.  The other major area at Epcot was Future World, where I suspect I took that photo of Lisa.

Disney World is closed too, of course. Since my parents lived in Stuart, Florida, a mere two hours away, I have visited there several times, the first time back in the 1970s, where I took the photograph on the right of my sister Susan and mother Mary.  Susan, as I recall, was very enthusiastic about visiting the place.  My father, who thought that Stuart was paradise on earth, declined to accompany us on that trip.  These days, of course, if you want to take your family to Disney World, you have to mortgage your house to do so.  As an alternative, I would now suggest Stuart Beach, instead.

I went to visit my mother in December of 2001 down in Stuart, and she treated me to a bus tour to Cypress Gardens, which claims to be Florida's first tourist attraction.  In addition to the gardens, there were water skiing shows, some amusement rides, and a boat ride through the various waterways, where southern belles stood among the flowers in hoop skirts, holding umbrellas as they were sprayed by a light mist.  I took the photograph on the left of my mother standing in front of one of their Christmas displays.  Eventually, the park was sold and is now called Legoland, although I understand that the gardens are still there and they have even kept the water skiing shows.  Good for them.

Back in August of 1963, my mother Mary, father Nelson, and Grandmother Spillard (my mother's mother) and I took a road trip from Chicago to Pompano Beach, Florida, where we stayed on the beach at the Sun Castle Hotel for $8.00 per person per day (breakfast and dinner included).  It was quite the eyeopening experience for me, traveling through the deep south for the first time.  As I recall, we visited St. Augustine, an alligator farm, a roadside house of mysteries, and Silver Springs, where we took a ride on a glass bottomed boat all around those artesian springs.  A few years ago, when I was down in Stuart, I drove up to Ocala, Florida to visit my friends Ana Silvia and Joe, who moved there from Denver, and they treated me to another ride on those boats, where I took the photograph on the right.  Back in 1963, Silver Springs was privately owned, but it is now a state park.  And happily, they are using the same boats they used back when I visited the place as a 10 year old.  Hopefully all these tourist attractions will reopen soon and thrive.