Five-Star Trails: Orlando is a handy guide for area residents, vacationers seeking outdoor fun, and for business travelers with a free afternoon. With a diverse collection of hiking routes, the book offers choices for everyone from solo trekkers to companions to families with either youngsters or oldsters to consider. Researched, experienced, and written by a local author, the guide provides in-depth trail descriptions, directions, and commentary on what to expect along the way. Each hike features an individual trail map, elevation profile, and at-a-glance key info, helping readers quickly determine the perfect trip for them when they are ready to head out the door. Sized to fit in a pocket, the book is convenient to keep in the car or toss into a backpack. Driving directions direct hikers to the nearest trailhead parking areas, and GPS trailhead coordinates get them to the start of the trail.

From the Prairie Creek Preserve to Rainbow Springs State Park, Gainesville and Ocala are polar opposites in many ways, but both offer much for those that share a love of the outdoors. With several hundred miles of trails throughout the region to choose from, Five-Star Trails: Gainesville & Ocala helps you find the best. Authored by Florida hiking expert and long-time Ocala resident Sandra Friend along with 40-year Eagle Scout and Florida Trail Association life member John Keatley, this handy guide provides a fresh perspective on the region’s ever-expanding array of hiking trails. Covering more than 35 hikes across a three-county region, all within an hour’s drive of either city, Five-Star Trails: Gainesville & Ocala gives you a reason to get outdoors now. Hikes are rated and highlighted according to their strengths from five perspectives: scenery, trail conditions, good for children, difficulty, and solitude. This handy guide makes planning your trip easy and enjoyable!

Five-Star Trails: Orlando is a handy guide for area residents, vacationers seeking outdoor fun, and for business travelers with a free afternoon. With a diverse collection of hiking routes, the book offers choices for everyone from solo trekkers to companions to families with either youngsters or oldsters to consider. Researched, experienced, and written by a local author, the guide provides in-depth trail descriptions, directions, and commentary on what to expect along the way. Each hike features an individual trail map, elevation profile, and at-a-glance key info, helping readers quickly determine the perfect trip for them when they are ready to head out the door. Sized to fit in a pocket, the book is convenient to keep in the car or toss into a backpack. Driving directions direct hikers to the nearest trailhead parking areas, and GPS trailhead coordinates get them to the start of the trail.

Since the release of the first edition of Florida’s Paved Bike Trails, the Sunshine State has added more than 200 miles of multiuse asphalt and concrete paths. This updated edition of the best-selling guide to bicycling in Florida adds twenty-three new trails to an already impressive roster, offering cyclists—as well as rollerbladers, joggers, and walkers—vital details on over sixty trails across Florida. From where to find parking, water, restrooms, and benches, to how to reach nearby beaches, restaurants, museums, and other attractions, the authors expertly guide readers through Florida’s beautiful terrain.

Offers a comprehensive look at the history of the state of Florida, from its discovery, exploration, and settlement through its becoming a state, to notable events in the early twenty-first century.

A guide to the best scenic day hikes and overnight trips along the state-spanning Florida Trail, this book helps readers of all backgrounds and experience levels plan an adventure exploring natural Florida.

Tales from four northeastern Florida counties that are dominated by the wispy trails of strange female spirits known as ghostly "Women in White." They stand and stare, float, appear in mirrors, and can be seen in many varied locations. These apparitions guard the many secrets in northeast Florida...secrets told in the coded language of ghost lore. Who is the wet spirit woman at Princess Place Preserve? Is a Woman in White still looking for someone to haunt at the Old Clay County Jail? Who is the woman wringing her hands at Old St. Luke's Hospital? What apparition haunts the Casa Marina Hotel by running the halls at night? Who is the ghostly woman walking back and forth on the second floor of the Homestead Restaurant? To see such a spirit, one only need look beneath the surface of northeast Florida's beauty...or turn the pages of this tome. -- back cover.

Mary expected her seventeenth birthday to be a blow-out to remember. Instead, she wakes up naked and scratched, in a mortifyingly public place, with no memory of how she got there. As her life spins out of control, Mary begins to think that someone is out to get her. But isn't she the popular girl everyone loves?

This well-illustrated book illuminates the life and career of one of Florida's premier architects, whose elegant homes and design aesthetic shaped the architectural character of Winter Park and influenced urban development throughout central Florida. James Gamble Rogers II (1901-1990) created homes known for their human scale and proportion and for their suitability to the environment. This work highlights twelve of these residences designed for Winter Park, the beautiful small city adjacent to Orlando and the headquarters of the Rogers family architecture firm, Rogers, Lovelock, and Fritz, which exists today under the leadership of Rogers' son. Ingeniously meeting the special needs of Florida's climate--heat, humidity, termite control, and air circulation--the residences incorporate details from a variety of historical styles, including eccletic and authentic features that emulate vernacular Spanish farmhouses and villas. The book includes critiques of each design and its evolution, particulars about the site, and stories about the lives and tastes of the clients--men and women of wealth and status who influenced the heady era of the Florida land boom in the 1920s and 1930s. Numerous floor plans, modern and historical photographs, and Rogers' own drawings augment the discussion. The book also presents an entertaining biography of Rogers, with information on his schooling, a history of the firm he founded, and his familial connections with the architectural profession (his uncle and namesake designed more than 20 buildings for Yale University). It describes his success in the areas of governmental, military, and university architecture, including his designs for buildings at Rollins College in Winter Park, and evaluates his impact on 20th-century architecture in Florida and throughout the nation. Coauthors Patrick and Debra McClane have studied Rogers' original drawings, toured his homes, and interviewed clients and family members; Patrick McClane worked at the Rogers firm during the architect's last years there and brings a personal connection to this work. Their book documents an exceptional contribution to Florida's architectural heritage, the life and work of a man who created stylish and desirable homes and distinctive public buildings. With a detailed appendix that lists dates and addresses for nearly 275 houses, most of them still extant, the work will serve as the definitive guide to Rogers' work in Winter Park.

A true story about one woman's journey of love, death, murder, political power, deception, the supernatural, and consciousness. Tracey Damron was born into a life of privilege, a life that seemed destined to continue on its path when she married Steve Nunn, the son of a former governor of Kentucky. What follows, however is something quite a bit different than what she expected. Thrust into a world of love, death, murder, political power, and deception, she watches as five men she loves die. In the end, the only way to survive- and thrive- is to turn inward and gather strength from within. A mesmerizing tale that is as uplifting as it is unsettling, this autobiographical journey from shell- shocked socialite to spiritually enlightened shaman is almost too incredible to believe- yet it is entirely true. Guided by the recurring appearance of real- life feathers, she is able to see a different path for herself-and is strong enough to follow it. Damron's fearlessness in opening up the details of her past and the contents of the diary she kept is an extraordinary look behind the scenes of a very public family. Exposing the core of the American Dream gone septic as it demonstrates how to transcend circumstances to attain a greater, more loving spiritual abundance, her profoundly moving story will open your heart to the orders of your life's possibilities. Tracey L. Damron was married to Kentucky politians Supreme Court Justice Will T. Scott and convicted murder ex-state representative Steve Nunn, the son of Kentucky legend and former governor Louie B. Nunn. Through these experiences of death, Tracey has come to realize that it doesn't take a near-death experience to see the Light. Death has served her as a teacher, opening Tracey to the Light during her life journey.