The Florida Explorer

I like to look at the bright side of life. I was supposed to be spending my vacation next week at a condo on Indian Rocks Beach…but that has been cancelled as I can’t bring myself to be an idiotic, disease-spreading spring breaker. But so what! I can still have an amazing vacation right from home. All I need is to brainstorm some great ideas.

I have more time on my hands due to working at home, so I have been pondering, including pondering about this blog! So a State of the Blog article is in order. Hear! Hear!

So Florida is basically closed and the usual things us Floridians do this time of year are out of commission. But fear not! There is still a lot of Florida exploring to do!

In our quest to preserve and make available as many Florida writings as possible, here’s a public domain piece from Outing magazine dated 1891.

In our quest to preserve and make available as many Florida writings as possible, here’s a public domain piece from Outing magazine dated 1903.

Well, we live in interesting times. Let’s take a look at how the Corona Virus is impacting Florida.

Does anybody out there actually work a 9-5? I think that’s a myth. I think most people work an 8-7, plus commute time. It’s weird that I remember playing video games for hours as a child/man-child and I somehow was able to have time for that.

In February I went to the beginning of Carl Hiaasen’s career, where he teamed up with Bill Montalbano to write three books — Powder Burn, Trap Line, and A Death In China.

In our quest to preserve and make available as many Florida writings as possible, here’s a public domain piece from New York Cosmopolitan magazine dated 1892.

In our quest to preserve and make available as many Florida writings as possible, here’s a public domain piece from Scribner’s magazine dated 1892.

It’s back! The Smithsonian Museum is giving away free tickets to amazing museums again on April 4, 2020. Here’s what you need to do:

Work brought me to Ybor City the other day and, as usual, chickens were everywhere clucking away. So I decided to get some pictures for the blog.

Since I was born and raised in a place that was not Florida and now permanently live in Florida, because it is the land that I love–does this make me a True Floridian? What are the rules for this?

Well, it is upon us once again. Where half the country comes to party on our golden shores, cruise our theme parks, clog our roads, take all our camping spots, and drink our beer.

In our quest to preserve and make available as many Florida writings as possible, here’s a public domain piece from Scribner’s magazine dated 1894.

There is nothing else like the Everglades–this river of grass–in the whole world. You cannot find it anywhere else but in South Florida. That means, for us FL residents, that you are a very fortunate person indeed.

My goal is to read deep, deep, deep into the FL literature cannon…but this month I got a bit sidetracked, mostly by Stephen King because one of my goals is to read all of his books. Here’s what my beach bum reading looked like this month:

BG’s Food and Wine Fest is one of their Big 3 Events (a term I just made up now–Food and Wine, Howl-O-Scream, and Christmas Town). Let’s look at what we know so far about the food, drinks, bands, and everything else.

I ended up in Wesley Chapel by chance. I was starting a new chapter in my life, one with a wife and a child. I was switching gears from a life of world travel to settling down. My heart was always in Florida so I knew that was the only place I could possibly settle down.