Orlando – Off The Beaten Path: Discovering Central Florida Without
Orlando – Off The Beaten Path: Discovering Central Florida Without Visiting Any Theme Parks… Can It Be Done?
One of my husband’s sought after puts is Florida, seeing that he's an avid golfer and likes to get away from the cold Canadian winter for his birthday in early December.
For it slow now we had deliberate to stopover at Orlando, yet neither one of us are into subject parks. So there was the problem for me: may we be ready to talk over with Orlando devoid of surroundings foot into Disney or Universal Studios? For any one as curious as me this turned into a relevant task and I have been doing weeks of searches on the Internet and speaking with the Orlando Convention and Visitors Bureau to discover approximately pleasing destinations off the crushed path.
Well, I am glad to assert, we arrived back effectively the day prior to this from our commute, and the shuttle itself became kind of an adventure for the reason that we made up our minds to power from Toronto to Orlando, approximately 2100 km each and every means! Actually, the force became now not as painful as I anticipated. The drive via Pennsylvania and West Virginia become nice and hilly, and I relatively loved coming over the ridge of the Appalachians, excellent in which Virginia and North Carolina meet, wherein you get a gorgeous view of the piedmont region around Winston-Salem that spreads out in opposition t the Atlantic in the front of the mountain chain.
And I am even happier to claim that within the 14 or so days Cabo San Lucas private boat charters that we spent in Orlando, no longer solely did we get to play loads of golfing (to make my husband easily completely happy…;) – such as Mystic Dunes, Champions Gate, Royal St. Cloud Links, Hawk’s Landing and Timacuan Golf and Country Club, not to say the Walking Hall of Fame feel of the PGA Father Son Challenge at Champions Gate, however I also acquired to discover a few sincerely fascinating areas, locations I might now not have predicted in Orlando and its surrounding location. I additionally had a probability to do an interview with GolfOrlando to get a miles higher conception of why Orlando is known as “The Ultimate Golf Theme Park”.
We began off our first week with a discuss with to the Orange Country Regional History Center, which gave us a fabulous old heritage of Orlando and Central Florida. Then, for a few sociological and cultural insights, we visited the Well’s Built Museum for African American History and Culture in Orlando. To good off our first day of exploration we enjoyed a stroll around picturesque Lake Eola in downtown Orlando.
The next merchandise on my off-the-crushed course time table changed into a discovery of the City of Winter Park, a pretty suburb of Orlando, equivalent to Old European cities. I also went at the Winter Park Scenic Boat Tour, which was an exciting, informative and visually nice looking expedition.
The adrenaline revved up noticeably on our next day trip: a totally excessive-velocity airboat ride at Boggy Creek, that become adopted up through a far reduce velocity swamp buggy trip in a tradition-built monster truck that took us as a result of actual Florida landscape.
After our golfing outing on the Royal St. Cloud Golf Links we loved a correct picnic by way of the waterfront in sunny downtown Kissimmee. Then, on a beautiful Sunday morning we drove approximately an hour out of doors of Orlando to succeed in the quaint the town of Mt. Dora, in which I hopped on the “Herbie Express”, a part of the Mt. Dora – Lake Eustis Scenic Railway.
From midweek within the 2nd week onwards the climate took a turn for the worse. While planes had been sliding off runways in Chicago and report temperatures have been registered in the mid-western states, we have been freezing in Florida the place the mercury hovered round 68 to 70 tiers Fahrenheit (round 20 tiers Celsius). So I sold a rain jacket, and made up our minds not to enable the freezing cold interfere with our plans, we headed out to keep our explorations.
On a day that changed into forecast to be wet, however just ended up being a little gray and clammy, we went out to stumble on Loch Haven Park, Orlando’s middle of science, paintings and lifestyle. We then persisted our explorations in addition south to uncover some of Orlando’s historical neighbourhoods and parks including Lake Cherokee and Lake Lucerne.
As the drizzly climate continued, we went directly to visit Florida’s Natural Visitor Center in Lake Wales, approximately an hours force south of Orlando, wherein I bought a unquestionably appropriate figuring out of Central Florida’s citrus enterprise. I spent the afternoon in an alternative noted enchantment in Lake Wales which holds two National Historic Landmarks: the Historic Bok Sanctuary, where I were given to see the splendor of the Bok property and its ancient carillon tower, combined with a tour using the historical Pinewood Estate, which become decked out in complete Christmas decorations.
During these 2 weeks in Florida, we received uncovered to a great deal of its plants, plant life and natural world, tons of which you run into casually even when playing golfing or picknicking by means of the waterfront. Florida has a shocking quantity of natural diversity and I enjoyed gazing the loads of forms of birds, lizards, and squirrels. The simply issue we didn’t get to see was a dwell alligator (apart from the well-hidden rear cease of a small alligator at some stage in our swamp buggy tour – alas I couldn’t even get an honest photo of that one..). Apparently iciness time is just too cold for those creatures to pop out of the water…
On our force abode, on a bright sunny day (of course…), we stopped off in St. Augustine, a historic the town based by way of the Spaniards within the 1500s, and the oldest endlessly inhabited the city inside the United States – a powerful photogenic position, I must add.
So, you ask, is it you can still to spend 2 weeks in Orlando with out even setting foot inner a topic park and now have a superb time? Well, established at the above itinerary I’d say that my plans to explore Orlando off the beaten direction got here to full fruition.
Mission carried out.