As mentioned previously, I've never been to Florida, however today I traveled through Burpengary which I mentioned in my previous post. It brought back memories from my childhood when in the 1950s all that was there was a roadside picnic area. We often stopped there on our way back from the surf beach at Maroochydore, which is now part of the Sunshine Coast, where I now live. Back in those days Burpengary was around half way between the surf and where I lived at a bayside suburb of Brisbane. In those days the trip took over 2 hours on a good day and 3 or 4 on a busy day when there was much traffic on the road. Now you can make that trip in a little over an hour.
My parents had a large old black frying pan in the boot of the car, and would call at the shops in Maroochydore and get some sausages and some tomatoes which they would fry for our evening meal over a fire between a few bricks onto which the frying pan would be perched. First job for us kids when we stopped would be to find all the sticks, twigs and pine cones for the fire. That meal always tasted much better that anything cooked at home.
Now Burpengary is wall to wall houses either side of the now multi-lane highway bordered by a light industry area with huge lots along the road displaying and selling trucks, boats, caravans, motorhomes, earth moving equipment and anything else you can think of.
But on to other places I've visited, not far from Burpengary is Humpybong:
Humpybong, is now called Margate, although the school is still called Humpybong.
This is the school where my late wife started school as a child many years ago and at which the Bee Gees also started school some years later.