Florida's Sunshine State: Home Sweet Home

Travel writer Dee Farrell currently lives and works in Australia - when she's not renewing her driver's license and post office box and voting in her former home state of Florida. She's lived in the capital city of Tallahassee, once a sleepy college town, and at the furtherest tip in Key West, a.k.a. The Conch Republic. She's been gone for 15 years, and things have changed. Not to mention the impending "high test" oil slick hitting her beloved beaches on the Panhandle in the Gulf of Mexico. Paddle on!

Here in North Florida, the weather can change every 10 minutes. I've even experienced simultaneous rain in the front yard and sunshine in the backyard. This visit has been pleasantly cool, not too humid or "buggy." I ventured to the far beaches, paddled down a river, went lake fishing, and erstwhile drove around visiting my former abodes of 35 years ago. Seeing friends and family has been warm, as if I never left, but the traffic congestion and crime has been a shock. Oh well, progress, eh?

St. George Island is still pristine (pre-oil spill arrival), and the local catches of shrimp, mullet, and oysters plump and tasty as I remember. (I paid $4 for a half-dozen versus $4 each in NYC at the Fresh Oyster Bar in Grand Central Station last month!)

Other favorite foods I've been goughing on? Boiled Peanuts, Smoked Mullet, Crayfish and farm-grown trout in lieu of local catfish that I devoured regularly with lots of hush puppies on the side. (The source - Lake Talquin Inn - is closed. So is world fanous Poseys at St. Mark's Refuge and Lighthouse Point where I used to peel pounds of shrimp at a sitting with my local seaf00d-loving mates.)

Venturing OUT under moonlight

I joined the Venture OUT Florida group last night for a once in a lifetime experience on a beach: turtle nesting.

To everyone's amazement, the MacArthur Beach State Park - a small strip sandwiched between condo developments in wealthy Palm Beach County - attracts the largest number of logerhead, green and leatherback turtles in the world save Oman.

Our quest was to find a female turtle waddling out of the water and crawling to the dune, where she would lay a hundred eggs, then close the deep hole and camoflauge the spot. We waited about two hours to find our girl and watch her produced the ping pong ball-size eggs while in a trance. She was in a trance, and so was I at sand level, watching with an infared filtered flashlight.

This was the first - but not last - outing I will do with this LGBT group. Fun things to do in Broward and Palm Beach counties with fun men and women. Nice to see the age span from the 20's to the 60's.

THe Island Nomad resurfaces in the Island City of Wilton Manors - Florida

Funny, how I keep island hopping. Tasmania, an island off the island country and continent Australia, North Island of New Zealand, to Manhattan, to Key West (AKA The Conch Republic since it seceded from the mainland of Florida), and little ole Wilton Manors.

This tiny, tidy town is surrounded by three rivers, cutting it off by bridges from Greater Fort Lauderdale in sunny Florida. Hence the moniker Island City.

No, Wilton Manors is not the name of a nursing home, though many of us semi-retirees are not far off from moving into one. The village is populated by mature or ailing ex-New Yorkers and ex-Denverites, many of whom I knew when I lived in those states. In a sense I came here because I was ailing - for the ocean, the seabreeze, the sandy shores. Taking my scooter to the beach every day is my idea of paradise. And I'm feeling better just after three months of imersion here.

Stay tuned for tales of my next Island Dee-Tour: Little Torch Key in the middle of the Florida Keys.