Celebration, Fl.

The Town of Celebration was first built in 1994 and the Disney company brought together some of the world's foremost architects and urban planners for the job. Pictured here are the town hall with its delightfully modern reinterpratation of a New England structure and the quirky round post office.

Just beyond the town hall at the foot of the main shopping street

View from halfway up the observation Tower

This fountain is in the square between Town Hall and the Tower.

Colorful Main StreetBuildings

The Lake at the beginning of Main Street features a park with lookout and comfy rockers.

The fountain along the lake is timed for a number of liquid effects!

The town movie theater is nostalgically retro.

This alligator in the town lake is definitely not animatronic.

The Celebration Hotel is a popular retreat for the rich and famous.

Looking up main street from the lake side

Celebration Tower is almost a hundred feet high and features stunning views.

Mount Dora Antiques,Hotels and Restaurants

Me outside the entrance to The Frosty Mug on the corner of Fourth Ave. and Donnely in Mount Dora.

Mount Dora is one of Florida's most charming towns. It abounds with great restaurants, antique and art shops and lovely streetscapes. It's historic Lakeside Inn has been listed in the famous book "1,000 Places To See Before You Die." And its hilly location along the shores of Lake Dora just twenty five miles northwest of Orlando make it an easy getaway for locals and tourists alike. On Mt. Dora's East side are the Renniger's Twin Markets which house the best antique and collectible finds anywhere in the state.

As you view The Frosty Mug from the street you can't help but be drawn to this very cool Scandinavian restaurant. The front room seen here open to the street is the restaurant portion which boasts great drinks and food which you can check out on their menu displayed up on the huge wooden shutters. The Viking Lounge upstairs let's you relax and enjoy a drink, a cigar from their humidor, and live musical performances.
The Lake Side Inn, the oldest operating inn in Florida, has been open for 125 years. It includes the Beauclaire Room for gourmet dining, The Tremain Lounge for cocktails, an impressive lake view and boating.

One of the outbuildings and central green of the lodge complex heading down to the lake.

The Sunset building which now includes a spa.
The pool at the Lakeside Inn
View from the dock of the pool area and main building.

View of the lake from inn's dock.
The remains of an old dock beyond the cattails.

The John P. Donnelly house is a Queen Anne style landmark built by the towns first mayor in 1893. It is now owned by the Mount Dora Lodge.

An example of the exterior stylings common throughout Mount Dora.

The Mount Dora Sushi Co. voted best sushi by Lake Magazine and third best in central Florida on Channel 2's A-List in 2008 includes a beer garden where live musical performances go on every friday and saturday. It feautures Tokyo sushi chef Takashi Kobayashi, claims no prepackaged food and has a great menu.

Cool brick alley way in Mount Dora.

Wekiva River Basin in Orlando

Orlando is the site of the Wekiva River Basin, and outstanding waterway whose spring fed outflow feeds into the mighty St Johns River a few miles northwest of Sanford and Lake Monroe. The little Wekiva River has its origins at Lake Lawne on the outskirts of the Central Florida Fairgrounds on West Highway 50, 4 miles from downtown Orlando. These fairgrounds once housed the City of Orlando Prison Farm. Back in the nineteen forties and fifties, the city had its own jail and many prisoners would be sentenced to serve up to a year for knife fights or similar Saturday night indiscretions. If they were well behaved they were sent to the prison farm which had it's own dairy, garden and cattle operation.
After my maternal grandfather had a massive heart attack, my grandmother went to work as the secretary to the city judge. One of the perks for anyone who worked for the city at that time, or who was lucky enough to be connected to them, was to eat at the prison farm. It had the freshest, most delicious food , prepared by workers who could give all their time to making it. And no doubt the rich lands of the headwaters of the Wekiva allowed for the production of multiple crops to fuel the pantry.
After leaving Lake Lawne, the Little Wekiva flows into the 800 acre Lake Orlando whose shores are surrounded by the Orlando neighborhood of Rosemont. Named for the Rose family who once had a dairy farm here, this is the same Family who built Orwin Manor, Beverly Shores, Rose Isle and gave the land for Loch Haven Park. As the river flows through Lockhart it forms into a few unnamed ponds as it enters Seminole County. Skirting the western side of the city of Altamonte Springs, the river flows throughthe prpoperty that once belonged to my great grandfather, Leo Egerton Fosgate and Dr. P. Phillips. Subsequently , on over 300 acres, it became , under my uncle Chester, one of the largest citrus processing plants in the country. No doubt the river's proximity to the plant provided a source of fresh water just as previously it had aided in the site's use as a lumber mill.
Today the Little Wekiva crosses under State Road 436 just past this site and two miles further north it's joined by the run formed by Sanlando Springs. Sanlando had been the site of one of the Orlando areas favorite recreational swim spots for over fifty years before its conversion into a gated housing community in the early nineteen seventies.

Baldwin Park, Orlando

Just a mile northeast of the cottage is the new village of Baldwin Park. Built on the site of the old Naval Training Center, which itself succeeded the Orlando Air Force Base, the area represents all that is best in contemporary urban landscape design. Two lakes connected by a pond help to form the over 1,000 acres of park space. It's incredible to think that just 3 mile west of downtown Orlando, a metropolitan area approaching three million people, is one of the best urban oasis in the world.