A visit back to "Old Florida"

Last Thursday was all about "Old Florida."

The "Hike It, Bike It" leader of Citrus Newcomers Club, a social women's club that I'm a member of, planned something a little different for the May and June outings. In May, the group went zip lining in Ocala. Not that I'm a chicken or anything (or maybe I am...), I was afraid of any impact to my already bad left knee. I went to Epcot that day!

The June adventure was tubing at Ichetucknee Springs State Park, not quite an hour northwest of Gainesville, in Fort White, Florida. We normally go for lunch after a hike or bike ride or zip lining... or tubing! The organizer figured that as long as we'd driven so far... and since tubing is such an "Old Florida" thing to do, we might as well eat at a restaurant that shows up on many lists if you google Florida Historic Dining. We ate at the Yearling Restaurant in Cross Creek, Florida. After dining on "Old Florida" favorites like fried green tomatoes, venison burgers and gator tail, we took the short drive to the Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings Historic State Park.

Prior to the outing, carpools were organized and from the starting point for my group, it was an hour and a half up to Fort White. As is typical for most destinations, we had 3 choices of routes, each taking about the same amount of time. Our group opted for what seemed the most direct route, taking the interstate north. If you choose to go tubing at this park, please check the website to see where you need to park and what you need to bring. You do want to enter the park through the south entrance. You do want to have $6 in cash for parking. If you'd like to take the shuttle to where you get in with the tubes - and then shuttle back to the parking lot, you need $5 plus tax (so $5.35 in total). I wasn't the driver so I really can't remember what the fee was for car key holding at the concession stand.

I hadn't tubed since I went tubing on the Weeki Wachee River in the early 80s so I really can't compare this tubing site to others. I can tell you that Itchetucknee Springs were beautiful. (There's some history to the location of the springs. The state of Florida purchased the property in 1970 from the Loncala Phosphate Corporation for $1,850,000. From Wikipedia: A 17th century Spanish mission site has been identified in the park, next to a short tributary connecting Fig Springs to the Ichetucknee River, about one mile (1.6 km) downstream from the head of the river. The mission has been provisionally identified as San Martín de Timucua, which was occupied in the first half of the 17th century. Plans to reconstruct the mission and open it to the public as an interpretational site were dropped.)

The shuttle takes you from the South Entrance to where tubers
enter the springs. There's a 45-minute float, a 90-minute float
and a 3-hour float. Our group went for 90 minutes.

Cooperation amongst group members to get us
into the water and comfortably onto our tubes.

What a beautifully relaxing morning on the water.
Can see the dragonfly on my left leg?

Coffee Spring? Ichetucknee snail????

The view when I tilted my head back.

Our exit point. It was far too easy to float
over the barrier.

Cooperation was required while getting out of the springs.

We dropped off our tubes for the tube provider
to come fetch them.

We then climbed back onto the shuttle unencumbered by tubes.
But had we chosen to, we could have walked back to the
parking area near the South Entrance.

My car full of women decided that rather than taking the interstate back down towards Cross Creek, we'd take the scenic route. There is still so much open land in Florida. Plus we got to see a part of Gainesville that none of us had seen before. Our route took us about 15 minutes longer than the quicker route (which was about 55 minutes), but most of us arrived at the Yearling Restaurant at about the same time. The restaurant had warned our organizer that if we all arrived at the same time, they might have trouble serving us all at once. They provided us with a large table in a "private" room. We arrived in three groups. Two smaller groups first and a much larger group third. Service was excellent and we were all able to enjoy our meals together.

Pretty unassuming exterior

I guess they don't always have cooter.
Do you know what cooter is?

The hallway leading into the dining room
 really appealed to my nerdiest side!

A bit of the menu

Lots of nostalgic items abound. I wonder
if all these items have been here since the
restaurant first opened in 1952. The Yearling Restaurant
is named after Rawlings best selling novel, published in 1938.
The book, The Yearling, won a Pulitzer Prize in 1939.
You might notice the titles of some of her books
hanging on the beam near the ceiling. Cross Creek
was her memoir. In actuality, it was a memoir of the
land and the other residents of Cross Creek. It was,
as our tour guide said, "a love story to a place."

Click here for my review of Cross Creek which was written before my visit to the park. That was a book club selection in April. I was about halfway through the book when I realized I wasn't going to the April meeting. Once I made plans to visit the park, I decided to pick up the book and finish it before my outing.

More stuff....

The Yearling was her most well-received and successful book.
Sojourner was her final book. It's said that it didn't measure
up to her earlier books, possibly because her mentor had died
prior to her writing it.

Note: the restaurant has very limited hours. Please check the website before heading to the restaurant.

Our final stop of the day was to the Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings Historic State Park. I'd been there once before in 2011... but I hadn't checked the hours so the house wasn't open. Since we'd already paid to park (honor box), the groundskeeper let us walk around. We weren't able to enter any buildings nor was there a ranger there to give us anymore information that we were able to get from reading a walking tour pamphlet.

The park is open from 9 to 5 daily. Guided tours by the ranger are available October thru July only on Thursdays thru Sundays (closed Thanksgiving and Christmas) at 10:00 a.m., 11:00 a.m., 1:00 p.m., 2:00 p.m., 3:00 p.m., and 4:00 p.m. There's a $3 fee for parking. You may walk around the park for free, but if you'd like the guided tour which includes the inside of the house, it's $3 per adult and $2 for children ages 6 to 12. Over the summer, there are special events held at the park. There are special events throughout the year as well. Coming up on June 16th through June 19th,  there will be an Old Florida food event with cooking demonstrations and tastes of food throughout the day.

The park rangers shared lots of stories about both the house and Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings. Some of the information I'd gathered from reading Cross Creek. Some of it reminded me of things I'd read but forgotten. In one way, I was sorry I'd read the book before exploring the home site. In other ways, I was glad to go in knowing what I already knew. I was able to say, "Ah ha!" quite a few times during the tour. The combination of reading the book and visiting the park really enhanced the experiences of both.

Entrance to the park, complete with all sorts of information.

"It is necessary to leave the impersonal highway
to step inside the rusty gate and close it behind.
One is now inside the orange grove, out of one world
and in the mysterious heart of another.  And after long 
years of spiritual homelessness, of nostalgia, here is
that mystic loveliness of childhood again. Here is home."
~Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings
Cross Creek, 1942

The sign reads as follows:
This short trail loops through Rawlings' young citrus grove.
Over time, the land reverted back to a hardwood
hammock, its natural state.

There are still several chickens on the farm. While we were there,
the rangers called the flock of chickens for dinner. That's how they get
caged up overnight. The night prior one of the chickens did not
make it back into the cage and was found dead in the morning.
This little guy was hiding inside a cart inside of a tractor shed.

Most of the items inside the house are the actual items that were in the house when Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings lived in the house. Her property was bequeathed to the University of Florida upon her death with most of the possessions intact. In later years, the homestead was designated in the National Register of Historic Places and as a National Historic Landmark. The park is currently run as a Florida State Park.

This is the porch where MKR did most of her writing.

The Yearling has been translated into 29 languages.

Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings had the first toilet
in Alachua County. She held a bathroom party with
flowers in the toilet and drinks on ice in the
bathtub. More about this story in Cross Creek.

Many famous artists visited MKR at Cross Creek. They include
Margaret Mitchell, Thorton Wilder, and Robert Frost.

I saw this and immediately thought "valise."

The ice box where the ice man discovered
MKR's un-housebroken raccoon, Racket.

The old Cracker house from the back with MKR's car which
 got lots of her servants into quite a bit of trouble.

The tenant house, where most of the servants lived.

Broom made from palm fronds

The grove adjacent to the farm

Oranges still growing on the trees

It's certainly not necessary to go tubing in Ichetucknee in the morning and visit Cross Creek in the afternoon. But I would most certainly experiencing tubing in a spring-fed Florida river. And if you're a historical nerdy bookworm like I am (hey, even if you're not), you'll enjoy a visit to Cross Creek, both eating at The Yearling and exploring the historic park on a guided tour.

And yes, there is a creek. I apologize for no photo of the creek. After such a long day, the group I was riding with was ready to come home. I'd already seen the creek. Plus I'm sure I'll be back again sometime.