Happy Mardi Gras AND Year of the Fire Horse!

 

Today I worked from home, and just after Travalon walked out the door to go to work, he came back in with his new conductor bear.

His name is Lionel, like the trains. 

Tonight we wanted to go out for Mardi Gras/Lunar New Year, but the New Orleans jazz show at the North Street Cabaret was sold out, and the birthday party for the local fiddler was starting so early that we figured it would be over by the time we got there (since I had adoration and Travalon works late), and we forgot about the big Mardi Gras party they always have at the Essen Haus. We often go out for Chinese on Lunar New Year, but sorry, Mardi Gras overshadows Lunar New Year for me. We ended up going to the New Orleans style restaurant that used to be called Liliana's for a romantic dinner for two in mood lighting, with jazz playing in the background. I wore a bunch of beads and found even more beads there. Travalon had blackened catfish, but I got the four-course dinner and gave him one of my two oysters Rockefeller. Those are so good! He had never had them before, and I've only had them on the East Coast, never around here. My second course was gumbo, with okra in it, of course. Travalon had no interest in that. My third course was blackened chicken on a bed of cheddar grits, and I could only eat half of it, so I have lunch for Thursday since tomorrow is a fast day with no meat allowed. My final course was a praline cheesecake, but Travalon also ordered beignets, so we picked at the cheesecake and brought most of it home, and I did succumb to a beignet and thus got powdered sugar all over myself. Everything was so delicious! Oh, and I also had a lavender Moscow mule mocktail, so I had enough sugar to carry me through at least half of Lent. Tomorrow we fast!

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Viking Ships with Hands

 

Today I worked on campus, and Hardingfele and I walked in Allen Centennial Gardens during our lunch break. We thought it was funny that everything in the garden has long explanations except the most mysterious things: these two Viking ships with hands in them. 

Hardingfele thought the hands were configured in sign language, but neither of us knows sign language, so they just looked like weird contortions to us. I said it seemed like a real "if you know, you know" situation, becuase if they're going to explain rain gardens and cranberry bogs, why wouldn't they also explain what the hands are doing?

In the evening I went to the Moldy Jam jam, and this time I was sitting by another fiddler who is apparently a bit of a beginner, so she had an iPad with the music on it. I have to admit that I cheated and looked at the music for all the tunes I didn't know (or didn't know well), and it was kind of fun to sightread them. Might as well keep that muscle as strong as the one for learning by ear. I wore Mardi Gras beads, and the co-owner of the music club asked if it was Mardi Gras. When I said no, it's Mardi Gras Eve, he said, "It's New Year's Eve too," and he's right - it's Lunar New Year's Eve. Can you believe they fall on the same day this year? It's also the birthday of a local Irish fiddler tomorrow, and he noted the coincidence, and also that he will be 63 when he was born in '63. An auspicious birthday indeed!

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Road Trip North 2025, Day 4: Panther and Manatees

 

After standing and walking for hours yesterday, I was really sore, especially my left foot. After breakfast I took some ibuprofen and put my feet up, and Travalon - that prince among men - ran to the pharmacy and got me an ace bandage. Between all that, I was able to walk enough to hobble around one of our favorite places in Florida, Homosassa Springs. (I have been to Florida enough to have a strong opinion about the best gas station bathrooms - Wawa, no question.) Every time we have gone there, they had some reason we couldn't take the boat, and today the water level in the creek was too low, so we had to take the tram. Then they let everyone on up to us (shades of yesterday), but the guy did take pity on us and let us sit in two empty seats that weren't together. This park never disappoints. The only sad note is that Lu, the very old hippo, died this past summer, so they had a memorial to him. Here are some photos. First, some sort of fish.

We have wood ducks like this back home too.

And foxes like this.

And even white pelicans.

But no flamingos, except for the time a tiny flock of five got very confused and ended up in Port Washington.

We have sandhill cranes right in our backyard!

But we definitely do not have white herons.

We have whooping cranes now and then at Horicon Marsh.

And we have black-crowned night herons. But maybe not as grumpy as this guy.

We definitely do not have brown pelicans.

This is a juvenile black-crowned night heron.

And here is one that is fully mature.

More brown pelicans.

We did not see spoonbills in the wild this trip, but there were plenty at the park.

Speaking of juveniles, this young wood stork was sitting on top of an enclosure where the birds that can't be released into the wild live, as if it would like to join them.

Here is an adult wood stork inside of the enclosure.

Another spoonbill.

Sadly, most of the creatures at Homosassa Springs are there because of mankind: injured in vehicle accidents, raised by well-meaning humans as pets and unable to survive in the wild, you get the idea. However, the Florida panther was abandoned by its mother, and although he was raised by experts, he still never learned enough hunting skills to live on his own. Travalon was ecstatic to see him. At first he was snoozing.

Another white pelican.

There are two panthers, but this must be Yuma, because when I said his name, he looked at me and meowed, while he didn't respond to the other name. Isn't he a gorgeous creature?

Here are the wood ducks again.

And there were so many manatees around, even babies! I had never seen baby manatees before.

We also saw a wild little blue heron.

And wild ibises.

More manatee pictures.

We went to the underwater observatory and saw so many fish.

Then we drove to Three Sisters Spring, which confusingly is in the parking lot for a strip mall, or at least the center is. Then you take a shuttle (or walk, but I was not up for walking today) to the boardwalk around the stunningly beautiful lagoon full of manatees.

We hadn't eaten lunch other than splitting a soft pretzel with nacho cheese at Homosassa Springs, but by the time we got to Cedar Key, it was dinnertime anyway. The place we love on the water was closed for the holiday, but we found another seafood place that was really good. Travalon got to pick three, so he had fried oysters, steamed clams, and blackened grouper, along with two sides of hush puppies and cheesy grits. I had a Southern Seafood Boil, which was full of crab legs, clams, mussels, shrimp, corn on the cob, potatoes, and sausage that I could have lived without. I forgot how much work seafood boils are to eat! But oh so good! (And messy.) Then we had Key lime cake for dessert, because we have had plenty of Key lime pie in our time, but never cake. And was that ever delicious! 

The restaurant had an extravagant light show set to music. Here are some photos.

And here are lights on the streets of Cedar Key.

Here are a couple of videos Travalon made of the light show at the restaurant.

Then we drove to Tallahassee, passing lots of Christmas lights. There are some photos on my phone of those, as well as the beautiful remnants of the sunset we saw on Cedar Key, but right now they are not loading to Boethius my computer, so I'll post them tomorrow.

We are staying at a swanky hotel in Tallahassee that was having a fancy New Year's Eve party on the roof. We thought, we were at a party on the top of a swanky hotel in a capital city last year, why not do it again? The room is gorgeous and overlooks the old Capitol building and lots of Christmas lights (photo to come), but our key cards didn't work, so the maintenance guy let us into the room, and now we can't leave. This happened to us some years ago in a fleabag hotel outside of Memphis, but you'd expect more from a fancy hotel. They're too busy with the party to help us, and honestly the people coming for it were a lot younger and more glamorous than we are - I did not bring fancy clothes for this cold weather. Not thinking ahead, I guess. So we just watched the ball drop in Times Square on TV, and for once we are in the same time zone so it really was 2026 for us at that moment. Then a lot of fireworks went off all around us that we could see from our hotel room window, since we are reasonably high up, so that was lovely. And my New Year's toast was with a bottle of water they left for us in the room that hopefully they don't charge me for drinking. It didn't say there was a charge, but it didn't say it was free, either. Ah well, it was still a lot more exciting New Year's Eve than our usual ones that we also spend in a capital city.

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