It was almost impossible for a random person like meeeee to get a pitcher that shows the Devil’s Millhopper sinkhole in Gainesville, Fla in a way that you can see what it is. We are at the bottom of it here. You can’t see the 212 steps we climbed down to get here.

This beautiful place was a wee bit spooky, at least at first. Like, will there be alligators? Not, and not sure whether alligators can climb that far down and back up. Will a poisonous snake reach out and nip me? The visitor center listed all of the possible park fauna and several poisonous snakes were mentioned. I am not used to hiking in poisonous snake territory. We have one poisonous snake here in the Great Lake State, the Massasauga Rattler. It has a limited territory in the Great Lake State and I have never seen one. I am more scared of being sprayed by a doggamn skunk. The snakes I know and love are harmless Garter and Grass Snakes. And then there was just the idea that the ground can suddenly sink to the point where a 212 step staircase needs to be built for people to get down to where somebody’s house or whatever used to be. But it was gorgeous down there and I got my bearings and then, other people started coming down the steps. And going back up. And down. And up. Exercise for young oldsters. You go, Fla retirees (or whatever).

After that, we got a tour of the lab in which my niece is working toward her phd. I’m not going to divulge what that line of work is (and I *certainly* didn’t take pictures) except to say that there were a lot of bones and the stories about those bones are confidential to the folks who are entrusted to figure out what they are. My niece gave us a wonderful tour, carefully telling us things that were *not* confidential and explaining her lab and work in a way that I could understand it without a big whooshing noise going over my head. Both of my nieces are pursuing phds. I know that my brother would be very proud of his daughters.

Breakfast after that at a lovely Gainesville restaurant (beautiful city) and then northward to Chattanooga. I was starting to get into beam me up mode by then, not that I wanted to be. Man, that “R” word. But not yet…

This entry was posted on Tuesday, April 28th, 2015 at 6:14 pm and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.