Avon Park, FL.....a weekend outing........

We'd heard lots of things about this small town...so we struck out. It was a somewhat scenic 2hr drive there. I had taken this Fri off work and we had been told there was a restaurant in the old Jacaranda Hotel that had a great seafood buffet on Fridays...so we decided to check it out. We'd also heard there was a cooking school at this hotel, so we had high hopes for some really good culinary dishes.

We spotted the hotel right away, but it was too early for dinner so we decided to ride around town and the surrounding area. We're so glad we did, we found this adorable country store.

It was so cute and the gal that owns it was so nice. Her Dad opened the store many years ago on the main street coming out of Avon Park....but they had to move it from the roadside a few yrs back.....so he took it apart board by board and put it back together on this spot....and u see lots of signs pointing to it.....

An aerial shot of where it was originally..

Pictures of it being reconstructed....a true labor of love.

How it looks now.....

They sold fresh fruits/veggies from the farms close by...and many other typical items, but the also sold some of the BEST orange ice cream...made from REAL oranges...it was wonderful. The also sold wine. They have wine tasting every week...wish we lived closer.

Denny was checking out the free juice.....

Very good grapefruit...

We got the smallest ones you could buy since we were headed to dinner....it was yummy. We knew it had to be, there was a front porch full of people eating eat!!!

Ice Cream on the front porch....nice.

These signs were too cute...

That was the best find of the day. Turned out we had been misinformed about the culinary school. They only use the kitchen, they don't cook for the restaurant....which was really too bad. It was not very good. All but 2 seafood dishes were fried and it was VERY obvious they were from frozen boxes.....the dead give-away is when it all looks perfect and the same...LOL!!! Like Gorton's fish squares.....so we had salad and few other things and headed out. Wish we'd looked at the buffet before we were seated....we'd have left and gone to the beef place across the street....I think it would have been very good. Oh well...lesson learned. Lunch or some other night might be better, but we'll not be back for Fri nite again.

So...we headed home with our fruit and wine and another fun experience......