I hope that many of you will come down here and hunt out some of the
letterboxes that have appeared in Florida. However after this summer,
and particularly this past week, I can see the bad press coming so I
wanted to make a couple suggestions to make your visit and letterbox
hunting fun and safe. This past couple weeks in central Florida where
I live we have had one gator attack, 6 shark attacks, and the most
intense lighting storm I have seen in a very long time. What you are
likely to see in the press is that Florida is the shark attack
capital of the world, the gator attack capital of the US, and the
lighting strike capital of the US. All of this is probably true but
should be kept in perspective. Gator attacks are very rare and
generally occur when someone is foolish enough to swim at night in a
lake or gets into grassy areas along the shorelines. Never let a
small child swim in a lake out of arms reach (_all_ lakes have
gators) even in the daytime. Shark attacks are fairly common on the
atlantic coast of central Florida (15 in Volusia county so far this
year) as a result of people's arms and legs being mistaken for bait
fish by migrating sharks in murky water, and rarely fatal. Stay away
from bait pods splashing in the ocean and don't swim at dusk or
night. Lighting is another story. In reality it is a much greater
danger than the critters. An article in the paper this weekend stated
that on average 10 people a year are killed by lighting in Florida
every year and many times that are injured seriously. Take
thunderstorms seriously and go inside until they pass, which is
usually only a short time. So come on down and have a great time
hunting letterboxes and exploring the "real" Florida using just a
little common sense. Just remember once you leave Mickey's house you
are not in the Magic Kingdom anymore. Wild Florida is beautiful,
welcome to the jungle!
--
Regards,

Eric Mings

Letterboxing International: http://www.letterboxing.com
StoneStashing: http://www.stonestashing.com