Sunday in St. Pete

 

February 12, 2012 – An Afternoon in St. Pete

One more time, we packed up and headed out for places unknown.  According to the GPS, our ETA was 12:31 p.m.  Our route would take us southwest to the Tampa Bay area.  For most of the journey, we traveled west on Route 4.  We had a brief view of downtown Orlando as we drove out of town.  Aside from some congestion near the exits for Disneyworld, Epcot and the other theme parks, traffic was light.  For mile after mile, tree after tree, the scenery didn’t change. Then, suddenly, on the right side of the highway, the Holy Land Experience appeared.  I looked at Elliott; he looked at me.  We drove past without stopping.  At least it broke the monotony. 

The names of the towns we passed were vaguely familiar – Kissemmee, Lakeland – but they didn’t conjure up any mental images.  Driving behavior I encountered was similar to what we’d find on the Capital Beltway.  If I didn’t exceed the speed limit by at least 10 miles per hour, all the other cars would pass me.  I was actually enjoying the drive.  I could feel the wind buffeting the car.  The sun was streaking through a rippled cloud bank. The road continued flat and straight, an occasional hawk soared overhead, and I wasn’t lost.  Thanks to the beneficence of Garmin, god of navigation, we arrived in the heart of St. Petersburg at precisely 12:31 in the afternoon.  

Our hotel, a funky boutique property called the Ponce de Leon, is located on Central Avenue, just a block or so from the water.  A short stroll down Central brought us to a multitude of restaurants.  Despite the cold weather (still in the 40s this afternoon), many of the outdoor tables were occupied.  We ate a late lunch at a cute little organic café.  Both of us were curious about the history of St. Petersburg, so we decided to make the history museum our next stop.  Now we know how the city got its name – from a Russian immigrant named Peter Demens, who named it after his hometown in Russia.  That was back in the 1880s, when Demens brought the Orange Belt Railroad to the lower Pinellas Peninsula.  We also learned that St. Petersburg’s nickname is the Sunshine City.

But the most interesting knowledge we gained from the museum was an understanding of the origins of the Seminole Indians.  They didn’t exist as a tribe at the time the first Europeans arrived in the 1500s.  The Timucua Indians (the same tribe that Menendez found in St. Augustine) lived in this area, but their population had declined dramatically over the ensuing centuries.  In the early 1700s, remnants of Florida’s Indian tribes joined with refugees from several tribes native to the Southeastern United States, some Spanish fishermen, and even some Cubans to create the group known as the Seminole.  They fought hard to maintain their independence from a series of colonial rulers and later from the U.S. government.

The sun was low by the time we left the museum, and the squeaky birds were chattering away.  This region of Florida is home to a species of bird I’ve dubbed the squeaky bird.  It perches in the dense foliage of trees in urban areas (see photo below) and makes a constant squeaking sound.  We first noticed these creatures yesterday in Winter Park.  In St. Petersburg, the trees near the pier were full of them, as were the sailboats in the harbor.  Does anyone know their official name?