Author Archives: Luke Bennett

After spending some time in the apartment reflecting on my recent breakup I knew it was time to get back out in the world and start being my own man again. Better yet, I knew it was time for a new adventure worthy of some bloggery action. It was mid-day on a Sunday afternoon so I knew the adventure couldn’t be too crazy so I Googled nearby parks.

Much to my excitement I found the Boyd Hill Nature Park right in the concrete jungle known as Pinellas County.

The park has miles of hiking trails through some of Florida’s finest natural beauty. I’m still not quite sure how this piece of land hasn’t been developed through the years while the rest of the county has come up so quickly.

The centerpiece of the park is Lake Maggiore. The lake is 245 acre lake surrounded by wildlife, endangered species and the Saint Petersburg skyline. With all of the hustle and bustle of the city it was quite pleasant to find and isolated part of the city and do some deep soul searching.

And that is precisely what I did. I found a park bench miles deep in the park with a great view of the lake and skyline and sat down. This is when my quarterlife crisis officially began.

The two hours I sat there I deeply dug into all of the childhood dreams I had held onto for so long, all of my ambitions, and all of the goals I had for my life and I really started to think about who, what and where I was as a person. I could say I am happy for the moment. I could also say I am depressed for the moment. But it was in the isolated portion of the park where one can truly find himself and evaluate what the necessities of life truly are.

The final stop on the Saint Augustine nostalgia vacation, the lighthouse.

Don’t be confused by this article and think there is something super significant about this lighthouse that no other lighthouse doesn’t have. I also was still feeling the results of cheaply priced beverages from the Alligator Park so if there was some important significance, I missed it.

You arrive to grounds and you might actually be shocked with how modest the grounds are. I suppose the house of a lighthouse keeper doesn’t need to be extravagant. The porch actually had somewhat of a southern charm to it that the rest of the state of Florida is missing.

Inside there is a bunch of historic memorabilia and shit. The things that stood out to me the most were the old World War II propaganda posters. Specifically the Coast Guard posters recruiting for Spars. My girlfriend made the a positive comment on how far the Coast Guard has come as well as how far women have come after inspection of the posters. It really stuck with me and made me admire the poster as well as her personal accomplishments.

The living room was very homey as any living situation should be.

After touring the living quarters it was time for the great ascent to the top of the lighthouse. I was ill-prepared for the hike up. The thought of carrying a bucket of oil up all these flights of stairs every day sounded miserable.

Stopped for a Shaka Brah Picture.

At the top you finally get some exposure to waters along Saint Augustine. After working two years 10 floors above the city of Saint Petersburg, it was finally nice to see some Florida coastline not completely annihilated by the hand of man.

There really wasn’t much left to see in the park. A little bit of a trail that nobody was on. It was actually quite peaceful. Then we spent some time in the gift-shop before deciding it was time to head back towards Saint Petersburg. (Side note: We stopped for Mexican in Sanford, Florida. Peaceful place.)

Not much of an entry for this one as we only visited the park long enough to enjoy a chocolate covered banana and touch our toes to the Atlantic Ocean. So instead I will just give you the pictures I took.

Saint Augustine Lighthouse in the distance

The other side of the park is quite vast with lots of shading.

There is also camping within walking distance to the beach. Awesome!

Next up on the great Saint Augustine excursion of 2013 was the Alligator Farm. Its easy to find. The whole area is kind of small and if you drive around for 45 minutes you end up knowing where everything is. Like the fort though, the real reason I wanted to visit the Alligator Farm was nostalgia. We visited this park when I was young and the only thing I remember was my dad spitting some Skoal on the bad alligators.

The military discount saved me like two dollars on admission at the Alligator Farm which was quite disappointing. Fortunately, that disappointment was quickly turned around by the first attraction in the farm.. An albino alligator! I feel sorry for these poor guys, they are like at the bottom of Darwinism. If the a predator doesn’t kill them first, they will suffer from sunburn. Good thing these guys are protected in the farm!

All this guy is thinking is ‘Feed me a chicken!’

After picking up your jaw from the floor near the albino gator, you come to the center of the farm where probably 50 gators are just chilling. One thing is on these gators’ mind, ‘Is it feeding time yet?’

Badass Gator Tap!

Next to the feeding frenzy was a bar in the center of the farm selling cheap 32 oz beers. Ugh… Yes please.

So after fueling up it was time to see the park.

A message I need to keep on my pants to fend off all the VD ridden skanks

But it just happened to be feeding time immediately following the drink purchases. Sure why not?

I probably took a hundred photos trying to best capture the excitement of feeding time in the Alligator Farm but none of my picture quite conveyed the emotions. Watching these prehistoric beasts fight for effortless food is definitely worth the price of military discounted admission. I highly recommend it.

There are a few paths you can head down to see the farm. What is most awesome is the zip line course that traverses right above the exhibits in the farm. This is something I would have been all for had I not capitalized on two of the cheaply priced 32 oz beers the park offered.

You will be happy to know that even the dumb cousin of the alligator, the gharial is also an exhibit. Apparently these guys are some sort of endangered species or something. I can’t imagine why. Not even a toddler would be afraid of this thing.

For those bringing young ones you will be pleased to learn that there is a children’s playground. It isn’t much but it will probably keep them entertained long enough to regrip your bearings on life.

The paths you choose eventually lead you back to the center of the farm where coincidentally the refreshment station is located. There is a stage where some stupid show about the history of gators or some shit is going on. I suppose families would enjoy this but I am more of the exploring type.

After refilling we decided to head down one of the other paths. This path was a bridged walkway of swamp-like territory that gators were swimming freely in. Awesome.

I actually spent the most time in the park on this walkway. I don’t know what it was but it felt quite refreshing to watch the gators swim freely without concern. I thought about how the management of the farm decided where what gators went where when standing on this walkway. It seemed like this was the most open environment but the gators in this exhibit were smaller than some of the others. Something had to give but I will probably never know.

At the end of the walkway you approach an air conditioned room with video and aquariums filled with lizards, snakes and whatnot. Not exactly why I came to this park.

The best part of the room though was the painting that portrayed a prehistoric alligator taking down the monstrosity known as the tyrannosaurus rex.

Overall, I think I can confidently say that visiting the Alligator Farm was the best part of my return visit to Saint Augustine. I found none of the nostalgia I came looking for but instead I found a place where I was caught up in the moment and couldn’t help but to admire the beautiful creatures of earth that were on exhibit. Better yet, I was able to get one of the most badass Hawaiian t-shirts ever. Except nothing about it was Hawaiian. If I had to describe it I was describe it as a Florida T-shirt. Flamingo’s and Gators.

While were on the topic of this gift store of this trip, I must mention I bought one of the best gifts ever. A coffee mug in the shape of an alligator with a gator hatching out of it. This was a great gift for the gf because she was on a ship in the Coast Guard named the Alligator. Cant beat that!

The second stop on the Saint Augustine tour is the Castillo de San Marco. Or as us dumb Murican’s like to put it, the fort in Saint Augustine.

My readers should know by this point that I love taking great pictures. So I am finally at a fort and I thought to myself ‘What a great time to get a picture of me holding down the fort’. What I mean by this is that I wanted to take a picture in similar fashion to those where a person is standing in front of the Leaning Tower of Pisa trying to push it back up or in front of the Taj Mahal squeezing the structure like an ant.

Unfortunately no matter how hard I tried, this was a concept that I could not articulate clearly enough to my girlfriend. What you see are three feeble attempts of taking a picture where I am holding down the fort.

Finally, frustrated, I know the only way I am going to get the picture that I want is to do it myself and show her how its done.

What do you know? First try and I take a perfect picture. Now that I felt the concept was fully grasped, I felt the picture I required would come.

Not perfect but I’ll accept it. This is one of the reasons I know our relationship would have never worked. Her lack of photography skills would never bode well with an aspiring photo journalist like myself. But like I said, I am not going to harp on her unless I think it is crucial to the comedy of the story.

So we head towards the main entrance but by this point in the day its time for the daily cannon shooting from the fort. I suppose its widely known to the sail boats that every day before dinner time a cannon ball is shot into the bay because none of the vessels seemed concerned to scurry out of the way.

After waiting 20 minutes for the cannon blast we find that only one cannonball is fired a day. Not the firework show I was hoping for. Even worse, I only captured the one photo. Hey, at least it was better than the 15 failed attempts of a picture of me holding down the fort. Ha!

OK, so finally time to actually go in the fort. So I suppose this is a good to let you know that we actually did visit the fort on my trip to Saint Augustine when I was 9. So I was expecting much. I guess I just wanted to relive some nostalgia.

So we head towards the entrance to pay the admission fee but at this point and in tune with capitalizing off of my girlfriend’s military discount. It was the first thing that crossed my mind before even greeting the cashier at the station. He asks for the active duty ID or whatever its called… Then he looks back and goes, “Hey Rob, do we accept Coast Guard as active duty discount?”. I must say, even as a civilian, I was offended. I was offended as an American by that comment. Who knows what kind of rage my girlfriend was going through at the moment.

My ongoing theme of people carving their names into something beautiful

We make it through the ignorant process without losing our head and finally find ourselves inside the fort.

Little crawlspace I found

There isn’t really a lot to write home about inside the fort. It just a sight to see. Admire the ocean. Think about the history, etc…

I’m not sure how I felt about the installation of modern restrooms in the fort.

At the top of the fort you get to see why the location was chosen. Probably the best vantage point along the Florida Atlantic coast.

Me and my cannon

No attraction is complete without me taking a lewd photo.

After leaving the fort, it is easy to cross the street and find many watering holes and tourist attractions. You can walk up and down for a few hours and really feel like you are on vacation. But after seeing the fountain and the fort in the same day you know its time to call it a day!

I must apologize to the ten or so readers that I have on my blog. The date that I am writing this entry is November 21, 2013. So any blog entries dated between August and November will be written looking back in time. I am like so far behind on blog entries. I could blame it on laziness. I could blame it on work. I could blame it on a woman. But truth be told, I haven’t sat down with a bottle of bourbon and a writer’s spirit in a long time.

In regard to a woman, I have since had my heart ripped out, thrown in a blender and watched it spin into a beautiful oblivion. OK, so maybe that’s a bit of an exaggeration, but it wasn’t the most pleasant feeling in the world. So in fairness to her, I will keep her removed from articles unless imperative to the crux of the story. In all honesty, I have nothing bad to say…

Moving on. When I was little my parents and I visited Saint Augustine. Unfortunately we did not have the time to visit the Fountain of Youth as my dad was busy with a job interview (which would inevitably take my Margarita spirit to the Bluegrass). Ever since, I knew drinking this immortal water was a bucket list item that needed to be kicked. Approaching the park, you begin to think you’re not in the right spot because it too quickly becomes residential. Then you make a turn onto a street where there’s more Spanish moss that your dreams of living on a plantation in the south. Then you find the entrance.

After parking and paying whatever the park fee is, you walk into an open outdoor park without much direction. To your side is a fountain. The Fountain of Youth? Why are no people standing around it? No, its just a pretty fountain outside.

Then you turn around and see an old building with ivy growing down the side like your back home in Kentucky (I say ivy but I know nothing of the botany field). So the Fountain of Youth is inside? OK, I can work with this.

There is your average museum tour guide guy standing beside the fountain telling you all the information pertinent to why you are visiting even though you will never remember a word he says. A feeling of confusion overtakes you. This is the Fountain of Youth? Hell, they could have told me the one outside was it and I would have been much more happier.

The man offers you a dixie cup’s worth of water from the fountain along with a photo. The water is that slimy earthy feeling water that reminds you of Ghostbusters. The three photo’s he takes for you and your girlfriend all turn out blurry. Then the photo your girlfriend captures for you is one where you have no smile. You leave the fountain disappointed. But at least there is more park to explore.

Like a rooster in Key West, you are suddenly shocked by the fact that wild life is roaming free right in front of you (It just occurred to me that I have written a great amount of this post in the second person. Fuck you Jay McInerney). Unfortunately the beautiful creature never spreads its beauty in all its worth for you.

It is OK though because coming up behind you is an albino peacock. According to Wikipedia, its not truly an Albino but the Angel’s Envy has me to unconcerned to research any further on the issue. Just admire the beauty.

When the haze of wildlife’s beauty leaves you, realize there is an Indian Burial Ground right behind you. You will probably be haunted for the rest of your life. At least that’s how you feel when you walk into the building behind the sign. Creepy.

At this point you feel like there’s not much left to do in the park but walk along the ocean and take in its wonderful calmness. Boy are wrong because Florida decides to remind you that you are indeed still in the Bible Belt with one of the largest crosses in the nation. Its quite a remarkable engineering feat to lay your eyes upon.

There are a few other spots and historical signs to read in the park about Ponce de Leon and some other bullshit. Don’t be a toolbox and read them like you are going to remember them for a test or some question on Who Wants to be a Millionaire. Just admire the historical significance and head to the bar in the parking lot so you can discuss how Orwell, Bradbury, and Moore basically told us decades ago that this world was going to hell and how so correct they were over a nice refreshing drink.