This giant mastadon skeleton is on display in the Museum of Florida History in Tallahassee.

I accompanied my wife on a job-related trip [for her] to Tallahassee last week. She was working with the State Department of Education on some new science standards for public school teachers.

While she worked, I played. Sort of. I got in one round of golf on Thursday after it had warmed up from a low of around 20 degrees and I visited the Museum of Florida History, which I will tell you more about in a few minutes.

The trip was also noteworthy for renewing acquaintances. My wife visited a friend from high school whom she had not seen in more than 40 years and I met a person I used to work with at the Times-Union, Jim Baltzelle, who is now Florida bureau chief for the Associated Press in Miami. Of course, there was a legislative update session in Tallahassee, so it was natural that journalists would be all over the place. My neighbor Mike Marino was also there visiting with the Times-Union’s new Tallahassee reporter.

OK, back to the subject at hand, the museum. I don’t know if I would make a special trip to Tallahassee to see it again, but it is certainly worth visiting if you are in the area and have the time. I took some photographs of images that I found interesting and I interviewed a delightful gentlemen named Peter, a volunteer who was very helpful to me. You can see the photos by clicking on the gallery at the top of the page and the video is at the end of this article.

Tallahassee is only 170 miles from Jacksonville, so it is an easy day-trip to make. Admission is free, as is parking, but they request “voluntary” donations of $5 for adults to the museum. Luckily, I had that much in my pocket. The museum was well worth that price.

The first thing that struck me was the skeleton of a huge mastadon that was over nine feet tall and weighed an estimated 10,000 pound. Mastadons and mammoths roamed Florida during the Paleoindian period, but apparently not dinosaurs. The skeleton was found at the bottom of Wakulla Springs just south of Tallahassee in the mid-1990s by professional divers. Almost all of the skeleton was in tact. The ivory tusks were found but they weighed too much to be supported in the skeletal frame, so the museum substituted other material for them as well as the rib cage. On display also is a replica of an nine-foot long armadillo, the direct descendant of a modern armadillo. I wonder what damage that size animal would do if hit by a car in today’s society?

Other interesting things I found were original color prints of Seminole Indian chiefs; a display of Florida Highwaymen art, and the fore-runner of the modern day travel trailer. The Florida Highwaymen had a display at Affordable Framing in Orange Park a few years back, thanks to owner Greg Renninger.

Check out some photographs of the museum. Click on the gallery at the top of this page.

If you have visited a site that you think is worthy of a write up, send it to me, along with some photos, and I will published it for you.