White Springs, Ichetucknee and an Armadillo

This morning after eating breakfast we headed to the Bryant’s Family Reunion. The Bryant’s are Beck’s momma’s side of the family and she can trace back their roots in the Hamilton County area to before Florida statehood.  Usually the reunion is held at one of her cousin’s houses in Jasper but this year it was held inside the Steven Foster Folk Cultural Center State Park in White Springs, Florida.

Becks' Branch of the Bryan Family Tree

Aunt Bly’s Kitchen (that was the name of the building the reunion was held in) was air conditioned and while Becks and her mom chatted with distant relatives I hung out with Steve and Becks’ brother Mitch waiting for lunch to be served.  It consisted of fresh fried catfish, grouper, hamburgers, hotdogs, a variety of downhome cooked vegetables, Aunt Audrey’s coleslaw, dessets of every kind (Becks made a strawberry shortcake, yum!) and sweet tea. 

I made up a plate loaded up with catfish, some coleslaw and macaroni and cheese.  The catfish had been decapitated, lightly battered in cornmeal and fried to perfection with their fins and tails still on.  As I was eating the delicious fish I remarked to Becky that my friends from New Hampshire would make fun of me if they saw me eating whole catfish. (The fins are actually really tasty and crunchy).   She is trying to turn me into a Southerner!

Catfish is tasty!

As the reunion was winding down Becks’ Robin asked if I wanted to join her, her husband Joe and some other people on a ride down the Ichetucknee River.  I decided to go along with them and we headed down I-75 to the state park.  When we got to the place to rent tubes we were told that they had closed the river down and we’re only letting people do a one hour float on the lower portion.  When we arrived at the part we were told that no additional people were being allowed on the river and that all we could do was swim in the two holes. 

The kids who were with us wanted to swim so we explored the park on foot.  The first hole was packed with people and after a few minutes we decided to walk down where the tubes were launched.  The river at this point reminded me of a narrower version of the Wacissa River in Jefferson County. 

An armadillo at Ichetucknee State Park

As we were walking back up to the Blue Hole I caught sight of a baby armadillo wandering around on the edge of the woods.  It was about 8 inches long and had it nose stuck to the ground in search of insects to eat.  The little armadillo was actually kind of cute and I was able to get within an arms length of it.  I expected that it would then run into the underbrush but instead it glanced up at me and then continued its search for bugs.

It began to rain on our way back from Blue Hole and we decided to call it a day and head back to Monticello.  The weather got progressively worse and at one point the rain was coming down so hard on I-10 that it reminded me of being in a white out back north.  Thankfully we made it home without incident.