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Cedar Key, FLNov 19, 2007
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A boating trip with a porpoise
Sea Horse Island lighthouse
Gator Nation is Everywhere
Sunday we did some geocaching with the kids at Oleno State Park. The cache consisted of two micro-caches and one main cache. The two micro-caches had the latitude and longitude of the main cache. We located the first micro-cache easily off of Dogwood Trail. But we could not find the trails that contained the other two caches (nor could we find a map that would show us where the trails were in the park). Defeated, we settled for lunch and some playground time.
Monday we headed out with the family to Cedar Key. Cedar Key is a sleepy little coastal town on the west coast of Florida. We took a two hour boat tour where we learned a bit about the history of Cedar Key: Cedar Key was so named because of all of the cedar trees that used to be indigenous to the area. In fact, a pencil company used to farm the trees on the island and send them to Pennsylvania to be manufactured into pencils. The town was the terminus for the railroad line that started in Fernandina Beach (our destination just a few days ago). Cedar Key is now the location of the largest fish farmed clam population in the country - taking the place of the fishing industry that was vibrant in the area prior to the ban on net fishing in 1994. Dolphins abound in the waters as do beds of oyster; eagles and loons cut through the air. Loons, we were told, settle here in the winter (at first I was sure our guide was referring to the "snow birds" who take up temporary residence from more northern climates in Michigan, Ohio and New York) and lose their feathers, making them temporarily unable to fly. The loons' feathers grow back by spring in time for them to return north. Cedar Key also housed a fort where confederate soldiers were imprisoned during the Civil War (Florida was the second state to secede from the Union, but apparently was unable to hold its forts for very long during the Civil War). And today, the University of Florida has a laboratory on Seahorse Island just off the coast of Cedar Key that resides inside an inactive lighthouse.
After our two hour water tour we searched high and low in town for some ice cream. The closest we got was a store that said their ice cream machine had broken over the weekend due to high demand. That was it, that was all we found - one lonely ice cream store that could not even keep up with demand. I saw this as a huge opportunity - sleepy, tourist town in Florida with no real ice cream store?!!!
