This morning I awoke bright and early in our tilted little cottage. (When I laid a water bottle on the floor in the kitchen, it went rolling lickety-split to the other side of the room, picking up speed as it went. When we turned on faucets, the water flowed out, crooked.) Larry and Victoria were still sound asleep. I grabbed my camera and rushed outside to get pictures of the sun coming up over the Homosassa River, shining all golden through the rising mist.

These first three panoramas were taken by Victoria with her iPad. I totally forgot to take pictures of the inside of the cottage; I'm glad she took some.

The cottage is named 'Riverview'.

Brown pelican landing in the water.

Looking back at our cottage from the dock.

The moon looks big here, but it wouldn't be setting for almost 3 hours.

Ring-billed seagull

The sun was so bright, these ducks were mostly silhouettes. But I think they were wood ducks.

Our cottage

Yellow-rumped warbler

Riverview Cottage

Squirrel

He's waaaaaay up there

Practicing his dare-devil stunts

Yellow-rumped warbler

Marigolds outside our cottage door

Gray catbird

Boat coming through the mist on the river

Ring-billed seagull

Riverview Cottage

Great Blue Heron

We have these birds in Nebraska, too, but I've never seen one so close-up.

Great Blue herons stand 4.5 feet tall, and their wingspan is often 6.5 feet wide.

In spite of their impressive size, they only weigh about 5 or 6 pounds, due to their hollow bones (a feature shared by all birds).

Brown pelican

Loooong, straight highway, vanishing into heatwaves.

These flowering bushes seemed to grow wild all along the highways.

I quickly snapped a photo of this river as we traveled over the bridge, never noticing until I looked at it later on my laptop's wide screen ---

--- there are a whole lot of turtles back there!

All these houses on stilts look quite amazing to me. We certainly don't have anything of the sort in middle Cornland, USA!

Sometimes, they look like a regular ranch house on stilts.

But more often, there are at least two stories above the stilts.

Brown pelican

On those posts sits a brown pelican, a cattle egret, several cormorants, and some sleeping seagulls. In the background, far out on the water, there's a big ol' ship.

Brown pelican

I do believe it was from birds and animals such as this that Dr. Seuss got some of his ideas!

I wonder if this place is undergoing construction, or destruction?

Even the apartment complexes are on stilts.

Mariner's View Condominiums

The houses just keep getting taller

Fishing boat the 'Rebel Queen'

Fishing boat 'B. J. Henry'

Navigation: serious business.

Cormorants

Apalachicola Marina Inc

Old Stuff Shop, Island Girl Gifts

Sister Sue's Antiques, Blinging Up Daisies Florist

Water Street Hotel & Marina

Raney House Museum

First United Methodist Church

Flatauer House, built in 1908, restored in 1982, now the Community Bank, but for sale.

Those pesky palm trees, always jumping in the way

Rancho Inn

First United Methodist Church

Notice the three-legged person with the salad bowl on his head.

The Thirsty Goat

This rooster crossed the street in front of us smack-dab in the middle of town.

Port Cottages

Daly's Watersport

Dolphin's Dream

Look at that spiral wooden staircase!

Salt Crusher

The Grove

Caribbean Coffee, Emerald Coast Jewelry

Crossing Dupont Bridge

Looking down on Oak Shore Villas, condominiums on Oakshore Drive, from the Dupont Bridge, crossing East Bay and just coming into Panama City.

And here's what was producing all the smoke in the condo shot: RockTenn Pulp & Paper Mill, Panama City. Just entering city limits of Parker, suburb of Panama City.

Jenkins' Corner Cafe

It was nearly dark, but I hadn't put my camera away yet -- and I was certainly glad I hadn't, when we unexpectedly came upon this sight:

Wonderworks, Panama City Beach, FL

Quite the oddity! The entire building appears to be upside down and tipping.

I’d never heard of it before, but it turns out there are several of these buildings in the U.S.

I looked it up, and found this website:

http://www.wonderworksonline.com/panama-city-beach/

There are half a dozen of these buildings, each with a website specific to their individual locations and exhibits.

Here’s what it says on this website:

WonderWorks is an amusement park for the mind with 35,000 square feet of “edu-tainment”. The attraction combines education and entertainment with more than 100 hands-on exhibits that challenge the mind and spark the imagination.

This once top-secret laboratory was located in the Bermuda triangle. An experiment gone awry lifted the laboratory and carried it to Front Beach Road in Panama City Beach, where it landed upside down. Luckily all of the exhibits remained intact and available for guests to explore.

Here’s a daytime photo of the place, from their website:

Tonight we checked into the very nice Candlewood Suites in Miramar Beach, just west of Panama Beach in the Florida Panhandle, that night. It had a regular kitchen, including a full-sized refrigerator, a glass stovetop, and a dishwasher, of all things. I’ve never seen a dishwasher in a motel room before. The cupboards were stocked with *matching* dishes, too. Furthermore, it cost $1 less than the tilted little cottage we stayed in last night.

I have to admit, though, I liked the location of the little cottage better. The motel room is really lovely, and the cabin was pretty shabby; but I’ll tell you one thing the cabin had that the motel will never have: a four-and-a-half-foot-tall Great Blue heron standing immediately outside the screen door, right on the edge of the Homosassa River, over which a golden early-morning mist is just rising.

However, Victoria is a whole lot more agreeable with a pretty room than with a dumpy little cottage with saggy couches, chairs, and questionable cleanliness in various spots here and there. Oh, well. The bedding and linens were nice and clean, and we survived just fine, and the birds were singing like anything in the morning.

I like a variety of experiences. Tilted cabins and crooked streams of water don’t really faze me. Much.