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 regularly occurring locations is Florida, considering that he's an avid golfer and likes to get away from the bloodless Canadian iciness for his birthday in early December.
For your time now we had deliberate to consult with Orlando, yet neither one folks are into subject parks. So there was the issue for me: could we be ready to stopover at Orlando devoid of surroundings foot into Disney or Universal Studios? For any person as curious as me this used to be a excellent problem and I were doing weeks of searches at the Internet and speaking with the Orlando Convention and Visitors Bureau to discover approximately pleasing destinations off the overwhelmed route.
Well, I am comfortable to mention, we arrived again accurately yesterday from our ride, and the vacation itself changed into pretty an journey due to the fact we determined to power from Toronto to Orlando, about 2100 km each one method! Actually, the drive became no longer as painful as I expected. The power via Pennsylvania and West Virginia was once advantageous and hilly, and I truly enjoyed coming over the ridge of the Appalachians, right in which Virginia and North Carolina meet, wherein you get a eye-catching view of the piedmont area round Winston-Salem that spreads out in direction of the Atlantic in entrance of the mountain chain.
And I am even happier to claim that within the 14 or so days that we spent in Orlando, now not handiest did we get to play a variety of golfing (to make my husband clearly satisfied…;) – including Mystic Dunes, Champions Gate, Royal St. Cloud Links, Hawk’s Landing and Timacuan Golf and Country Club, now not to say the Walking Hall of Fame revel in of the PGA Father Son Challenge at Champions Gate, yet I additionally received to explore some certainly enjoyable puts, locations I may now not have anticipated in Orlando and its surrounding region. I also had a threat to do an interview with GolfOrlando to get a much better concept of why Orlando is generally known as “The Ultimate Golf Theme Park”.
We commenced off our first week with a discuss with to the Orange Country Regional History Center, which gave us a proper historic history of Orlando and Central Florida. Then, for some sociological and cultural insights, we visited the Well’s Built Museum for African American History and Culture in Orlando. To pinnacle off our first day of exploration we enjoyed a stroll round picturesque Lake Eola in downtown Orlando.
The subsequent object on my off-the-crushed direction time table turned into a discovery of the City of Winter Park, a captivating suburb of Orlando, equivalent to Old European towns. I additionally went at the Winter Park Scenic Boat Tour, which changed into an unique, informative and visually captivating holiday.
The adrenaline revved up seriously on https://dayyachtcharters.com/contact.html our subsequent day trip: an exceedingly top-speed airboat ride at Boggy Creek, that turned into accompanied up by means of a much lower velocity swamp buggy ride in a customized-equipped monster truck that took us through factual Florida panorama.
After our golfing trip at the Royal St. Cloud Golf Links we enjoyed a wonderful picnic by means of the waterfront in sunny downtown Kissimmee. Then, on a desirable Sunday morning we drove about an hour outdoor of Orlando to achieve the quaint city of Mt. Dora, wherein I hopped at the “Herbie Express”, component of the Mt. Dora – Lake Eustis Scenic Railway.
From midweek inside the moment week onwards the climate took a flip for the worse. While planes have been sliding off runways in Chicago and record temperatures have been registered inside the mid-western states, we had been freezing in Florida wherein the mercury hovered round 68 to 70 stages Fahrenheit (round 20 tiers Celsius). So I obtained a rain jacket, and decided no longer to enable the freezing cold intervene with our plans, we headed out to continue our explorations.
On a day that was forecast to be wet, but just ended up being somewhat gray and clammy, we went out to notice Loch Haven Park, Orlando’s heart of science, artwork and culture. We then endured our explorations similarly south to stumble on a few of Orlando’s historical neighbourhoods and parks including Lake Cherokee and Lake Lucerne.
As the drizzly climate continued, we went directly to seek advice from Florida’s Natural Visitor Center in Lake Wales, approximately an hours drive south of Orlando, where I acquired a truly first rate understanding of Central Florida’s citrus trade. I spent the afternoon in yet one more well-liked enchantment in Lake Wales which holds two National Historic Landmarks: the Historic Bok Sanctuary, the place I obtained to see the beauty of the Bok property and its ancient carillon tower, blended with a journey via the historical Pinewood Estate, which was once decked out in full Christmas decorations.
During these 2 weeks in Florida, we obtained exposed to a variety of its flowers, vegetation and flora and fauna, so much of which you run into casually even although enjoying golf or picknicking through the waterfront. Florida has a surprising volume of organic diversity and I enjoyed staring at the countless types of birds, lizards, and squirrels. The merely aspect we didn’t get to work out became a live alligator (with the exception of the nicely-hidden rear quit of a small alligator in the course of our swamp buggy travel – sadly I couldn’t even get a fair image of that one..). Apparently winter time is too bloodless for those creatures to pop out of the water…
On our pressure dwelling, on a brilliant sunny day (of route…), we stopped off in St. Augustine, a old city centered by the Spaniards within the 1500s, and the oldest always inhabited metropolis inside the United States – a potent photogenic region, I must upload.
So, you ask, is it possible to spend 2 weeks in Orlando with no even putting foot inside a theme park and now have an efficient time? Well, based on the above itinerary I’d say that my plans to explore Orlando off the crushed route got here to complete fruition.
Mission executed.