Tuesday 4~Our Town

 Our Town  

The Caboose in our historic downtown

Hello! This is Toni Taddeo's Tuesday 4 where we ask just 4 questions each week in an effort to get you blogging, thinking and learning about others.

Maybe we can discuss the town you live in. It might be nice to find out more about where you live and why you live there. Sometimes we just fall into a place and other times we \choose.
Here's a chance to sing the praises of your town or uncover it's faults.. have at it!


1. What are the good points to living in your town? Could you interest us in moving there?

Well, you'd have to want to live in North Central Florida, which is not in the tourist belt of Florida, thank goodness! It's a rather rural community without any real claim to fame, but there is that small town feel to it, and there are lots of lakes and wooded areas and it's still not terribly expensive to live here. But it's definitely not fancy. There are more manufactured homes on dirt roads in this area than there are "real homes" on paved roads.  We are fortunate that our manufactured home happens to be on a paved road!  And even though our own "Still Waters Pond" is still very dry, little by little we are getting more rain and we hope by the end of the summer we will see our pond restored back to its original beauty.

 

This is one of many little lakes in our community...Lake Lagonda.

2. Are the things you need convenient to your home? (shopping, library, schools, entertainment?)

We have a local small grocery store, a public library, elementary-high school, several Dollar General Stores and gas stations/handy stores, thrift stores, a McDonalds, Dunkin' Donuts, Taco Bell, and some other small privately owned cafe's. Our doctor's office is also very convenient, as is also the CVS Pharmacy, and the nearest hospital is about 15 miles away. Also in the city that is 15 miles away is a Walmart, Home Depot, Lowes, and all the basic things you need to survive. Restaurants, Publix, and many other kinds of businesses. We are centrally located between two cities, Palatka to our east, and Gainesville to our west. And St. Augustine is about an hour away to the east.  Also, we can get to the beach on the Atlantic coast in about an hour, or we could go to the Gulf Coast on the west also in a little over an hour, so we truly are in a prime location. Thankfully the hurricanes do not impact our area quite as seriously as they do closer to the coasts.  

One of our newer shopping experiences in our community is this "Trading Post at Deep Creek":

And as I've mentioned before, our son actually works there part time and also has a booth inside where he sells some of the wooden craft items that he builds.

It's a fun and interesting place to visit and shop!

There's also another newer store in town, Blue Pond Market, and it is similar to the type of store our family once owned known as "Dixie Cottage", for those of you who remember that season of our lives!

It is named "Blue Pond Market" because our little town was originally named "Blue Pond", and this old house has been here since the "beginning of time", so to speak.  

"Interlachen, Florida, was originally known as "Blue Pond" from roughly 1852 until the 1880s. The settlement earned its name from one of the area's clear, spring-fed lakes, and was established when early pioneers, including Pennsylvania native Dr. O.S. Whipp, built log cabins along its shores. [1, 2, 3]"

And yes, our son does sell some of his wood working products there as well!

Currently it is only open on Saturdays, so don't come during the week expecting to shop there or you will be disappointed!

3. Did you choose your town or did you just end up there?

We chose to move here when our son married a sweet young lady who lived here. We fell in love with the little church where they got married and the people here, and we wanted to live closer to our son. Our previous home was about 30 miles away and in a very rural community without very many amenities for "older folks like us".  Once both our sons moved away from there, we just felt like we were too far from civilization, so we sold our home there and moved here.

Our church, Interlachen Methodist Church

4. Is your town known for any special foods, activities, places or people?

Our town is named "Interlachen" (click HERE for link to the town information), which means "between the lakes".  There are many lakes in this area, and so it is popular for fishing and for people seeking a place away from the cities. But it is definitely NOT touristy or very commercialized, which we do like.  We have the basics that we need here, and we prefer that it stay that way and not get too big.  Regarding special food, the only thing I can think of is there is a large Blueberrry Farm here where people can come and pick their own blueberries, blackberries and strawberries in season.

Our town does have a great 4th of July celebration every year, and this year looks extra special:

HERE is a LINK to a previous post I wrote about our town in 2023. I am trying to update everything in that post, but it has become too time consuming because there have been a lot of changes recently, so it may be confusing to read!!  However, there are a lot of pictures of our community in that post that you may find interesting if you haven't been a blogging friend for that long.

All in all, we do like our little community. There is still a lot of room for improvement, but we really don't want to see the kind of growth here that they are experiencing a little further south of us.  We'd prefer to keep this one of Florida's "best kept secrets".  

And besides all this, I would never have had the opportunity to have our sweet friend "Blackie" come and sit beside me while I write if we'd never moved here!

He's got his paw on my journal that says "With God all things are possible" , Matthew 19:26! 

Yes, that's so very true, Blackie...so very true!

Good night friends. I hope you enjoyed hearing about our town.  Now let's go check out where everyone else is living over at https://tuesdaysplace.blogspot.com/2026/06/our-town.html