We had a pretty laid back morning today while we awaited DeLuna’s arrival. We had made a plan to all visit Historic Spanish Point, a 30-acre museum and environmental complex located in Osprey, FL. The museum includes an archeological exhibit of a prehistoric shell mound known as a midden, a turn-of-the-century pioneer homestead historic house museum, a citrus packing house, a chapel, boatyard, gardens and nature trails. Deeny had taken Christine and me to Spanish Point 4 years ago and we really enjoyed it, so we were happy to go again.
After lunch at Deeny’s, we loaded into the car and drove to Spanish Point. We had tuckered Deeny out yesterday on our walk on the sandy trail at Oscar Scherer State Park, so she brought a good book along with her and settled down to do some reading. Christine, DeLuna and I set off to tour around the grounds and visit the interesting Native and homestead exhibits around the area.
One of the first places we visited was a sweet little chapel named Mary’s Chapel. It was built as a memorial to a young woman who had visited the area in hopes of curing her tuberculosis. Unfortunately, she died, but her parents donated money to the homestead family to build the chapel.
Nearby was a renovated packing house where citrus was brought from the harvest to be washed, sized, wrapped and packed. It was interesting to read about the history of the citrus industry in Florida. It was also amazing to think that oranges were individually hand-wrapped in tissue paper and packed into wooden boxes until the mid-1940s. The packing house was at the shoreline where boats arrived to take the fruit to market.
There were several cottages on the homestead. These weren’t like the “cottages” on Jekyll Island, but were lovely white clapboard houses with nice porches. Near one of the cottages, a nice portico and garden were created. The bougainvillea was beautiful.
There were some other flowers that caught our eyes.
We learned about one tree called the gumbo limbo. Locals call it the tourist tree because the bark is reddish in color and flakes off, which the locals said resembles the peeling sunburns of tourists.
Here’s one of the main homestead cottages that was built in 1901. The family used to rent out bedrooms to northerners who came to Florida in the winter.
Although I don’t have any pictures of the most interesting thing at Spanish Point, we listened to a video about a very large midden, which basically is a Native landfill comprised of thousand of years of shells, animal and fish bones, and ash. Archaeologists have studied the middens at Spanish Point and have learned loads of information about the lives of the Native peoples. The midden we learned about is 15 feet high and several hundred feet long. We saw cross sections showing layers and levels of the material contained in the midden. Very interesting.
Walking the grounds was really beautiful. The vegetation is dense and interesting, and as always, we really love the live oaks and all the Spanish moss.
So, we had a great afternoon at Spanish Point.
And then we went off to one of our favorite dinner places, Sharky’s at the Venice Pier. This has become a tradition for us. It’s fun walking out on the pier while awaiting the pager to go off telling us our table is ready.
There were some beautiful birds on the pier waiting for a little snack from fishermen.
Dinner was fantastic. Three of us had coconut shrimp, which was really, really good. Deeny had shrimp scampi, which she enjoyed and consumed the whole meal, which is unusual for her.
And we got to see a bit of the sunset.
Once again, we had a very enjoyable day. Tomorrow, we have another wonderful day planned. We’re going to Selby Gardens, another of our favorite botanical gardens.