Now a Florida State Park, it’s still a favorite getaway. Here’s a peek at what Rainbow Springs used to be like back in the 1960s, courtesy of my mom, Linda Friend. And yes, that’s me in the photos.

I’ve been chasing pirates across the Ancient City the past couple days, and I’m finding their echoes everywhere. “On Stranger Tides” at the IMAX has folks looking for the Fountain of Youth. Memorials to Ponce De Leon. And best of all, in the vibrant new St. Augustine Pirate & Treasure Museum across from the Castillo, where you can immerse in the age of the pirates, the sights, sounds, and smells. Be there with Blackbeard. Lift a bar of gold. And peer into the faces at the Rogues Tavern, the men who brought terror to these sunny shores. Among them, Sir Francis Drake.

The posters are up. Drakes Raid is coming! June 4! Would it have been that the good people of St. Augustine had such warning before Sir Francis Drake swooped in and burned the city. Here”s your heads-up for the biggest pirate event of the summer.

The Museum:
http://www.thepiratemuseum.com/
The Raid:
http://searlesbucs.com/drakes.html

Fairchild Gardens

This Friday is National Public Gardens Day, and no better time to take a stroll – or better yet, take your mother for a stroll – at your favorite public garden. With our temperate and tropical climates, Florida is blessed with some of the most colorful and beautiful gardens in the United States.

Better Homes & Gardens is a sponsor of the event and is providing two free tickets for the following Florida gardens if you go to their website and claim them. The gardens include:

Bok Tower Gardens, Lake Wales
Botanic Gardens at Kona Kai, Key Largo
Cummer Museum of Art and Gardens, Jacksonville
Fairchild Tropical Botanic Garden, Coral Gables
Heathcote Botanical Gardens, Fort Pierce
John C. Gifford Arboretum, Coral Gables
Lakes Park Botanical Garden, Fort Myers
Milton Gardens of NW Florida, Milton

See slide shows from gardens throughout Florida at Botanical Florida
Find your way to Florida’s Gardens with my iPhone app!

Inside Bambi's Butterfly House

On my first visit to a big butterfly conservatory – the Key West Butterfly and Nature Conservancy- stepping into the swirl of winged beauties, flowers, and inspiring music, I felt like I’d stepped into the movie Bambi.

Right now at EPCOT, during the annual International Flower & Garden Festival, a Bambi-themed butterfly house is one of the don’t-miss stops as you roam the colorful gardens, now cloaked in summer blooms. Filled with music from the movie and a bright array of butterfly-attracting blossoms, the butterfly house evokes the wonder of stepping into animation.

It’s one of numerous inspiring spaces throughout EPCOT during the festival.  Storybook topiary and floral sculptures grace the gardens throughout Future World and World Showcase, with your favorite characters rendered in shades of green, yellow, and red.  Topical displays provide pointers on low-flow gardening, outdoor rooms, and growing veggies in small spaces. Inside the festival pavilion, sponsor HGTV is broadcasting numerous shows live while Florida growers show off our state’s bounty, from honey and orchids to mushrooms and peanuts.

The enchantment of the floral displays scattered throughout EPCOT  means more for the children to enjoy, too, including a spider’s web to prowl and Pixie Hollow – filled with blooms, delicate pixie houses, and topiary friends of Tinkerbell – to clamber and slide through.

The festival continues through May 15, so catch it while it lasts!  More details at disneyworld.com/flowers

Black Hammock Fish Camp

One of the first genuine Florida adventures I was introduced to upon arriving back as a resident after a long absence was the crazy quilt of outdoors and dining that is Black Hammock Fish Camp, not far from Orlando along Lake Jesup in Oviedo.

The restaurant is down-home and tasty, featuring farm grown alligator and seafood. At the time I visited, you had to slip and slide down a sand road, much like driving in snow, to get there. The road’s since been paved but rambles through old orange groves in a blissfully agricultural district of Seminole County.

Beyond the restaurant, it’s a complex of entertainment and outdoors: a marina and boat ramp, waterfront tiki bar and shop full of trinkets and Ts, an alligator pit, and airboat rides on Lake Jesup. Now I’ve experienced for a fact that Lake Jesup is full of alligators. So if you’re hankering to see some, either hatchlings in a tank, gator tail on your plate, or the big guys in the lake, this is the place to be.

Black Hammock Fish Camp
2356 Black Hammock Fish Camp Road
Oviedo, FL 32765
407-365-1244

Egret in mating plumage at Gatorland

It’s amazing how many years it took me to get to Gatorland for the first time – my first visit was less than a decade ago – given my family’s love of natural attractions. I took the occasion of my mother’s birthday to take my parents their for their first time, and boy, were they sorry we didn’t go there back in the 60s.  Founded in 1949, it’s not an enormous park, but it’s so packed with wildlife that if you’re an avid photographer like me, you’ll easily spend most of the day there. It’s a birders delight, too. We arrived at the peak of breeding season, with the birds in bright and showy plumage, and spotted some species that we rarely see, like roseate spoonbills winging their way overhead.

No doubt about it – if you’re headed for Orlando, make sure you get to Gatorland. Set in a natural cypress swamp – in a spot where most of the natural habitats are now erased from the landscape by development – it’s an immersion into what this part of Central Florida used to be. Walk the boardwalks, marvel at the ancient reptiles, savor the birds, and bring the young ones, who can play in the splash playground, ride the train, go “oooh” at snakes, and hold a baby gator.

Learn more about Gatorland

Shiny antiques at Muscle Car City

Now here’s a new attraction worth a roar down the interstate:  Muscle Car City, which opened this spring in the old Wal-Mart just south of downtown Punta Gorda along US 41.  It’s the only example I’ve witnessed of a former Wal-Mart being put to use – fixtures and all – to become something entirely different.

It’s the rows and rows of sleek, high-powered driving machines, however, that’ll catch your attention. The demographic of visitors is undeniably male, and yet that didn’t keep me from admiring the cars I grew up with and around – Dad loved a good muscle car.  Many have their well-detailed engines open for inspection, like a 1967 Corvette Stingray sport coupe in deep green. Each vehicle is immaculate and identified, enabling visitors to form loose social networks as they gather around their favorite memories. Muscle Car City also includes a diner, open at 7:30 AM, a massive gift shop with auto memorabilia and classic car parts, and even a handful of restored beauties for sale. Brought to you from the personal collection of Rick Treworgy, with assistance from his wife April, this is one sleek museum.

Muscle Car City
Open Tues-Sat 9-5, $10 admission
3811 Tamiami Trail, Punta Gorda

A tour inside the lighthouse revealed a museum-in-progress to recount the history made here. Quite a crowd attended the event when we visited yesterday morning, the weather just perfect and skies so clear you could see the village of Panacea off in the distance across Dickerson Bay.