This hotel in Vero Beach is so dramatic at night, with its avenue of illuminated palms and purple lighting, and by day it's the whitest, blandest-looking building you could imagine. You'd never know it was even the same place.
Sue and I were up early yesterday morning as usual. She went walking while I drove across the Indian River to find some coffee at Dunkin' Donuts. I joined her later in what we've been calling "downtown" Vero Beach, though whether or not the locals use that term I have no idea. We went to breakfast at a place called the Lemon Tree, though we could never remember the name so we amused ourselves by coming up with various alternatives: Lemon Cake, Lemon Bar, Lemon Seed, Lemonade's, Don Lemon's and Jack Lemmon's.
We spotted this little lizard in the boardwalk outside the Ocean Grill. At first I thought it was stuck, but no -- it was just surveying its domain. It popped out and skittered across the wood with no problem. Sue and I agreed it's a lizard unlike any other we'd seen and we puzzled over what type it could be. It's bigger and plumper than the anoles we usually see running around.
According to Google it's a northern curly-tailed lizard (Leiocephalus carinatus), a Caribbean native that was intentionally released in the Palm Beach County area in the 1940s to control pests on sugar cane.
We checked out of our motel and got on the road about 11 a.m. and I drove us back across the center of Florida, on a more southerly route this time through Ft. Pierce, Okeechobee County and Sebring. That part of the state is largely empty, at least of human development, though of course there are owls and panthers and hawks and bobcats and who knows what else skulking around in the woods and swamps.
This flag-waving barber shop was somewhere outside Ft. Pierce. Maybe Miami is the barber's nickname?
We rolled into Anna Maria around 3 p.m., by which time Sue's husband John and dog Finnegan were here. We ate carry-out pasta last night and today I'm off to visit Dave's parents at their retirement home in Bradenton.
How lovely to have spent such quality time with your old friend Sue when Florida's heat was tolerable. I am surprised that you didn't nip into Miami's Barber Shop for a trim and blow dry.
ReplyDeleteOn our way back from a visit to the family cabin in Arkansas, we often stop to eat at a place called "The Peach Tree" which I just now had to stop and google it because I can never seem to remember the name and always come up with variations like you did with the "Lemon Tree."
ReplyDelete