Hey, everybody. This is Kyle Sasser, Great Things Tampa Bay. And we’re continuing with the rapid piece intro here. This is the second episode where we’re doing that. So be sure to go to our website, greatthingstb.com and listen up if you like it or not. This is episode 25. And today we’re talking about Mount Dora, which is a little bit of a trip. It’s a little bit further north of us, a little north of Orlando. But we do like to do car trips, day trips, and even little weekend trips. Can’t call them One Tank Trips, because I believe that is probably copyrighted, so my apologies. And if this episode gets pulled you will know the reason why. But Mount Dora, not too far away. It’s a great place to go hang out for a few days, may have a ton art shows, but, you know, I don’t wanna give all of it away from the get-go here, so here is Mount Dora.

This is another road trip episode, so I know these are a little controversial. Okay, not really, I just made that up. But yeah, so this is another road trip episode. Wife and I, we went up to Mount Dora, Florida, which is located about…I mean, I won’t say about an hour north of Orlando. The way we went, we went up 75 to someplace with a federal prison and we got off there. Yeah, it’s a pretty desolate drive. But then once you kinda cross the ridge there in the central part of the state, you know, you start seeing all these lakes, Hawaiian hills, and all that good stuff, beautiful country up there. Then, you know, we actually arrived at Mount Dora’s.

We stayed at a bed and breakfast up there called the Adora Inn. They’re located at 610 North Treemain Street. We’re gonna put the information for them in the show notes if you would like to stay there as well. And we were there…proprietors, John and Arthur definitely gave us a great stay. They told us lots of great places to go there and eat and, you know, just a little history about the town and the history of how they ended up there and became the proprietors of the Adora Inn. Yes, there was a duplex, so, like you’d go inside and there was these two staircases side by side and, you know, there used to be a wall there separating them but, you know, now it’s kind of you just have two staircases in the house, which is pretty crazy. And then, yeah, that was actually like three stories tall and had a basement. So, you know, pretty unique for Florida.

So while we were there, we were actually up there for the Arts and Crafts Fair. They have a ton of just festivals, and like art shows, and stuff like that. So kinda check the calendar if you’re thinking about going up there because they might have something that appeals to you coming up. We were up there for the arts and crafts festival which we learned was good. But I think the art, the actual just art festival that they have up there was probably more of what we’re looking for. The arts and crafts festival was a little bit more of the, you know, hand-painted signs, you know, small glass pieces, dog collars, that sort of thing. It did have some art and artsy stuff, but definitely not as much as the art show.

First day, we were there we went to Goblin Market which is pretty good. It’s located on one of the side alleys, so, you know, it was pretty fun to find. That’s good, it was delicious and hearty. The interior was decorated awesomely and it was very cool.

The next day we had lunch at 1921 at the recommendation of the proprietors of the Adora Inn. And 1921 by Norman Van Aken who is…I believe he’s a chef down in Miami. And so they had tuned the menu a touch for the arts and crafts festival. And they didn’t really have all of the normal stuff there. But we did have a hamburger, which sounds boring, but it was amazing, like a very nearly perfect hamburger. And then we met some friends later that night down at Pisces Rising, which is kinda down the hill a little bit overlooking Lake Dora. And it’s a great place, used to be a house, you know, with one of the original families there. And then it was bought and turned into a restaurant. They have a huge porch there. It’s a great place to watch the sun go down over the lake, and amazing. Food was pretty good, I think I had a steak there, and it was good. But definitely, I would put it more on the great place to watch the sun go down with a cocktail in your hand, really good time.

They also have a train, which if you don’t know I’m bit of a fan of trains, you know, brings out the inner 12-year old in me. My dad actually worked for CSX for 30+ years. He’d probably be really mad at me that I don’t know the exact number. But he was there, he worked for CSX. So I have a special place in my heart for trains. But yes, so they have a train that kinda goes round from Mount Dora to Tavares. And, you know, you can kinda just look out there, look at the lake riding the train around. It’s a good time. While we were there it was not running though, they were just using it to ferry people from parking lot into town for the art festival, but it’s very cool. You can go into the old train depot. Mount Dora was one of the first resort destinations in Florida. So when Flagler was building his railroads down through the East Coast over there and came down through St. Augustine, Flagler Beach, and all that stuff, one of the first attractions was a spur that went over to Mount Dora, so very cool.

And I also mentioned that they do have tons of festivals there. So they have festival fairs, they have craft fairs, couple of the cool ones is that Tavares is actually the seaplane capital of the world or so they claim, you know. I’m always a little dubious of towns that claim to be the capitals of something. But they did admittedly have a lot of seaplanes there. So if you like seaplanes that’d probably be the place for you to go. And they also have a wooden boat festival, so like all the old, you know, wood speedboats, Chris Craft [SP], and all that stuff which if you remember from the boat show episode that we’re personally fans of. So yes, so they have a wooden boat show festival and they get up and race the wooden boats around, and it’s supposed to be pretty cool. So, you know, I’m gonna have this kinda nudge the wife and see if we can get back up there to see that.

So yes, so that was our weekend in Mount Dora. It was a lot of fun. One thing we did go, right when we had the first little cool weather towards the end of October there, you know, when the weather kinda dropped down into the 80s, which for Florida is nearly winter time. So we went up there right during that first initial cool weather, and my wife is going crazy, she’s like, “Oh, you know, it’s so great up here. We should move up here, like feel the temperature.” I was like, “Listen.” I was like, “We did not find like some secret garden in Florida that, you know, magically the weather is just, you know, 30 degrees cooler up here.” And that was rapidly confirmed by the proprietors of Adora Inn, John and Arthur, who, you know, definitely said that it is very, very warm there in the summertime. So if you’re thinking about going to Mount Dora, you definitely would probably want to do it when the weather is a little bit cooler. If you have any questions or anything all of this information is going to be in the show notes. It’s definitely worth a trip there. It is pretty hilly and, you know, you can either go to the Adora Inn… They have another spot there down actually on the lake, called the Lakeside Inn, which is basically the old resort there. So bunch of cool stuff, lot of great history up there. And that is Mount Dora. If you have any questions or anything, check out the show notes on our website.

So again, if that tickled your fancy at all, we will have all the details in the show notes including where we stayed, where we ate at. You’ll be able to find links there. Follow on our footsteps, if you like. I would also like to add, before we get to segment two here, that we do actually have events, and meet-ups and all that good stuff. You can find the details at our website or on your meetup app. So if you’d like come have dinner with me and my wife and some other Great Things Tampa Bay listeners, you can do so.

So this segment two is a little bit of a musical interlude, I guess you could say. Before we get played out by a local musician on our outro. Interestingly enough, “Mr. Brightside,” which was a song by The Killers, which many of you probably know, never actually ever left the U.K. charts. And in fact, Mr. Brightside by The Killers was among the top 50 songs in 2017.

I’d like to thank you for listening to “Great Things Tampa Bay,” the podcast covering all the great eats, great places, and great people in the Greater Tampa Bay Area. If you’d like to interact with us, if you’d like to give us a tip of the hats, a wag of the finger, a dog poop on the doorstep, you can do so by going to our website, greatthingstb.com. And on there we have all of our show notes, history, we got some blog posts which will keep you up to date on, you know, the quick happenings, a lot of restaurants opening up currently. Sorry, that’s the dog and a cat fighting in there. Hang on a second.

Okay, I’m back from dog patrol. I’m really trying to make greatthingstb.com a great resource and where you can go and find out everything that’s going on in the Tampa Bay Area, talk with other like-minded people, people looking for good eats, you know, something fun to do, talk about local bands, local art, and all that good stuff. So that’s greatthingstb.com. Thanks for tuning in.

Playing us out today is the Ellie Lee Band, “He’s My Baby.” If you like this song take a look in the show notes, we’re gonna have links and additional information, and all the good stuff maybe. You can catch the Ellie Lee Band out and about in the Greater Tampa Bay Area. This group was recommended to me by some fans of theirs. And that wasn’t just one, I actually got two, or three, or four people who said, “These guys are great, very bluesy, guitars is awesome.” So here we go, Ellie Lee Band, “He’s My Baby.”

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