“Hallmark Holidays” have never been a big deal for us, and Valentine’s Day is no exception. However, we had no plans to visit state parks today, had been looking for a day to visit the Florida Museum of Natural History at the University of Florida in Gainesville, needed to make a visit to Walmart, and wanted to try one of the vegan-friendly restaurants in Gainesville, so Valentine’s Day provided the needed excuse to do all of that in the same trip. Before I go on, I am including a picture of us taken by Marian Hagan on our outing with her and John to the two Crystal River state parks last Sunday.
Us at Crystal River Buffer Preserve State Park. (Photo by Marian Hagan.)
We selected The Jones Eastside which was open all day serving breakfast and lunch, and was staying open for dinner. We can usually find acceptable food for lunch and dinner if we are thoughtful about our choice of restaurant, but breakfast is often limited to dry toast with jam and/or fresh fruit. Nothing wrong with that, of course, but also nothing special about it. At The Jones Eastside, however, we were able to order a tofu scramble with sides of potatoes and fruit and a stack of vegan flax seed pancakes with fresh blueberries and real maple syrup. We split each dish in half and had a really nice breakfast. The Jones Eastside was highly recommended on both HappyCow.com and Yelp.com, and deservedly so. It’s a quaint little place using organic ingredients and providing attentive service; you go for the food, not for an upscale setting.
From The Jones Eastside we drove through the heart of downtown Gainesville to where we thought the Florida Museum of Natural History was located. We enjoyed seeing the non-university part of town, and parts of the UF central campus, but the museum was not where I thought it was. Our Garmin 465T GPS did, however, and we followed its directions into a major traffic jam. We had been to Gainesville several times, but had not seen traffic like this before.
We found the museum, paid $4 to park, and went in. Admission was free except for the Butterfly Rainforest and special exhibits. We spent a couple of hours exploring the free exhibits and plan to return for the Butterflies and a special exhibit titled “Wolf to Woof” on the evolution of the domestic dog. Like most serious museums, you could spend days here depending on the level of detail you wanted to absorb.
By the time we were done at the museum it was 4 PM. Our Valentine’s Day still needed something “sweet” so we headed to Karma Cream for vegan ice cream. We fought our way (slowly) through more terrible traffic, but it was worth it. 🙂
“GPS, find us a Walmart, please.” It showed two in Gainesville so I picked the closer one just up the street. It was closed, the building vacant. 🙁 So I selected the other one on SW Archer (US-24). We routed ourselves over to FL-121 southbound which intersects Archer close to the Walmart. YOU DO NOT WANT TO BE ON THIS ROAD DURING AFTERNOON RUSH HOUR, which is actually “hope you’re not in a rush” hour. Truthfully, you do not want to be in Gainesville during the evening rush hour. Period. End of story. Total gridlock. Fortunately we were not in a rush to be anywhere in particular by any certain time so we only had to deal with our self-imposed frustration at being stuck in traffic. It won’t happen again, at least not in Gainesville.
We eventually got to the Walmart (thank goodness they are open 24/7). We do not go out of way to shop there, but it’s the only place locally where we can find Calgon Bath Beads which we mix with water and Pine Sol and add to our holding tanks. It is also where we bought our microwave popcorn popper and have to get the disposable cardboard heating discs that go in the bottom.
Shopping done, we had no choice but to venture back out into traffic. OK, we had a choice; we could have sat there for a couple of hours until traffic thinned. If we had been the least bit hungry we could have gotten something to eat while we waited, but having just had ice cream our appetites were satisfied. Fortunately we were close to the SW corner of Gainesville by now where FL-121 turns SSW and heads through the country to Williston. We arrived back at the RV resort after 6 PM, but there was no fire going in the fire pit.
WCRVR was having a Valentine’s Day dinner/dance starting at 5 PM so the Friday night fire had not been built by Kevin at its usual time as he and his wife had gone to the dinner/dance. But a short time later I noticed a flickering flame and went to investigate. Next door neighbors John and Ali had not gone to the dinner/dance either and John, being the backup fire guy, was getting one going. We opened our bottle of sparkling pink moscato, bundled up a bit against the cool evening air, and went over. Ali brought John’s guitar, the rocking chairs slowly filled up (~16 people), and we sang along when we knew the words. It was a lovely capstone to a very nice Valentine’s Day (traffic notwithstanding).