We're currently sitting in downtown Gainesville, Florida, not far from the UF campus (go Gators), using the free WiFi network that they have here, which is fast and allows us to do our windows updates easily. Gainesville has a pretty campus (UF) but the rest of the town, as much as we have seen, isn't as pretty as many college towns. There are beautiful trees though, and maybe if the economy (stores, restaurants) improves, it will be a showcase town someday. It looks like it has potential.

We're staying 10 miles south of Gainesville, at Paynes Prairie Preserve (reminds me of Pure Prairie League). Here's our site (looks like a lot of other sites we've stayed at).

This campground is especially nice because there are tent sites here not far from the trailor-type sites like ours, but more private, down little footpaths. You leave your car at the road and walk in 50 yards. It would be really nice if you were a tent camper wanting to vacation with your RV friend, or vise-versa. What we don't have here are the ultra-friendly sandhill cranes that we had at Kissimmee. A volunteer here (who lives nearby) said that the cranes that approached us at Kissimmee were a rarity. Even ones who have been fed are usually more shy than that.

Paynes Prairie Preserve is right outside of an old town called Micanopy. Micanopy got bypassed by the state highway (441) and by I-75, and so it still looks it did in 1950 or maybe even 1930. Lots of antique stores instead of hardware or general stores, but the buildings are the real thing, not recreations, they have some architectural variety, and are not crowded together. Here are pictures.

This is a log cabin, covered over to keep it cooler in the steamy summertime (the business looked like an old garage). Here are two more of that structure:

Here's one showing the divided main street:

There's a nice little visitor's center here, with a four-story tower so folks can look out over the prairie (a low spot created by limestone sinkholes). I liked looking back toward the moss-covered oaks instead.



Katie saw a hawk or eagle; it was this big.

I wish I could paint how pretty this was.

At the visitor's center, Katie made friends with a stuffed otter.

Katie is looking at a turtle shell that Mark accidently dropped yesterday. It had been on the "please touch" table, but we laughed and said maybe they should call it the "please drop or throw" table instead. He was trying to hand it to Katie, then changed his mind but couldn't keep is grip on it. He is usually not clumsy at all, and just sort of kept staring at it on the ground, seemingly amazed that it could have happened. They've moved it to a different spot now.

Today we are off to St. Augustine, to stay at Anastasia State Park again, just for a few days. I'm really glad to get to see David and Bill again. We missed seeing St. Augustine's famous fort last time, so we'll probably get there. I'll be sad when we say goodbye to Dave and Bill, but then after St. Augustine, we'll finally get to see our next state: Georgia.