Exploring Florida

A few weeks ago I decided I needed to start exploring Florida beyond its beaches. Since it is the height of summer, many of the tourist attractions, such as the Everglades, are out. I have heard horror stories of the heat, humidity, and mosquitoes in the Everglades this time of year and I have no desire to confirm them. Sad to say, there was a reason so many swamps in Florida were drained, and while I'm happy that swamps still exist, I'll be waiting until cooler weather to go visit them.

The first stop on our day trip was for the purpose of fortifying ourselves with frozen custard. The verdict: not bad, but not amazing. In the past I done all of my local food research using Chowhound, but the southern Florida section of said website is rather new and this limits my ability to locate really terrific food.

The primary goal of our trip was to visit a historic lighthouse a few hours north of Miami. In one of the gardens there I saw something I had never before seen: pineapples. I knew they grew low to the ground but somehow I never imagine that the immature versions would be such tiny, perfect versions of the full-size pineapple. Each of the fruits pictured here are about four inches long. They seem so exotic to me.
Here is the Jupiter Inlet Lighthouse. It's not very tall, but since Florida is very flat we had a good view from the top. Our guide had lots of historical tidbits to feed us. The one that stuck with me, perhaps because it was so sad, was the fact that at one point in the nineteenth century, all the Native American tribes indigenous to the area were wiped out, either due to disease, war, or deportation. The tribes that are now in Florida originally came from Georgia and Alabama.
This weekend we're going to Key West, which I expect to offer less in the way of history and more in the way of fruity cocktails.