January 12th, 2021

The top of this hill may be the highest point in Florida.  Or at least Sarasota County.

For those of you unaware of the topography of Florida, it's flat.  Very Flat.  Not flat in the way that a desert is.  I remember, as a kid, riding in the car as my dad drove across Texas toward California and seeing the mountains in the distance, literally days before we reached them.  So it's not the sort of flat where you can see for hundreds of miles ahead of you. Nope.

And it's not flat like Kansas or Nebraska where after harvest, suddenly you can see straight across the fields to your neighbors house in the distance and before harvest all of the cornstalks are the same height.  (I once described driving across Kansas as being: corn, corn, corn, corn, wheat, wheat, wheat, wheat, cow, cow, cow, cow house! repeat)  So it's not like that.

Florida deforested would look very flat, but Florida has trees galore. All sorts of trees. Trees of every shape and size and colour.  Some filled with fruits, others with birds.  And because of the forests thick with greenery, you might not notice the relatively small changes in elevation while driving from Point A to Point B.  And if you are in a city, all of the tall buildings might distract you from realizing how, mostly, level the ground beneath you remains.  The fact of the matter is that the land that is Florida is, by and large, flat, level, even-steven however you prefer to describe it.

I actually just now looked it up.  The highest point in the state of Florida is Britton Hill in Walton County.  Britton Hill stands a whopping 345 feet high.  Whoa!  Having moved to Florida, as Tim and I did, from Colorado that is hilarious.  The Colorado town that we lived in stood at 5,589 feet and went up from there.  That's over a mile high, folks.

My point, I guess, is that when we drive past a 'hill' like in the above picture, we notice.  And we've driven past this hill many times.  Each time I say the exact same thing, "I really want to climb that hill".  But we are always on our way somewhere and don't have the time.  Sunday, we stopped the car, got out and we climbed that hill!  Woohoo!

It's been awhile since we've had to climb anything higher than the stairs to the Venice Island bridge so this was a good way to find out exactly how out of shape we are.  Turns out, not as bad as we feared!  yay!  

There were choices for tackling this climb.  There was a dirt path that went straight up. No foolin' around, asking no quarter, just a get it done direct route.  And then there was a 'round and 'round path that gently circled the hill slowly raising the pedestrians, gradually, to the top.  We were full of sass and vinegar I guess because we chose the straight line, right to the top.

We charged that hill as if we were going on attack, Full Speed Ahead, Damn the Torpedoes!  We hauled arse upward not slowing down for a second. Also not talking. We saved our breath for climbing (and panting, I confess).  About 2/3 of the way up I asked Tim between big gulps of air if his legs were screaming at him because my thighs were objecting strongly.  He shook his head no and said, "Butt".  Ahhh the old glute muscles. Yeah they are not big fans of that sort of climb either.  But HAH!  We kept going, same speed as when we began and then, suddenly, we reached the Tippy Top!

We walked around admiring the view and trying to catch our breath.  Wow! What a view!  And to our surprise, more paths to follow!  We followed one of the paths that circled the edge of the top of the hill for awhile, then eventually walked down (not on the path) the opposite side then circled back to the beginning around the base of the hill.  Here are some of the things that we saw:

So that was fun!  Now instead of saying, "I want to climb that hill" when we drive by I can say, "Hey remember when we climbed that hill?"  Ahhh Memories 

One more thing checked off the list of things I want to do.  Cool.