According to a huge number of tourist literature, Florida is in the list of planetary title for human perversity. There is something wondrously upside-down about a state to which people flock, purportedly for its climate and natural loveliness. If you are one of those people who has given up on Florida I advised you to explore about an hour and a half north of the Magic Kingdom, into Marion and Alachua Counties, where a green edema of hills rises from the coastal flatness and horses stalk rolling acreage beside the highway.

The picture displays the Herlong Mansion B&B in Micanopy. Micanopy is a one-boulevard town of aged brick and log buildings, a place with old-style charm and it’s hard to stand on the main drag without a faint anxiety that at any minute movie studio security guards are going to roust you off the set. Micanopy is one of the few places in the state that hasn’t been ruined yet.

A chapel in Micanopy.

Just 20 minutes drive east of Micanopy, is the settlement of Cross Creek. Cross Creek could probably be described as the Florida Cracker Capital of the World.

Three decades ago, Florida was pretty much lay in the blind spots of developers, snowbirds and vacationing throngs. In 1970, the entire population of the region was 70,000. In recent years due to skyrocketing coastal real estate prices and an influx of property owners who prefer an acre of backyard to meager square footage with an ocean view, the county’s population today is around 300,000, a numerous figure for a place that not long ago was mostly forest and pastureland.

For that reason is good to visit the northern edge of Ocala, which lies a nascent development called Jumbolair Aviation Estates, a neighborhood that is perhaps the most spectacular symptom of Marion County’s quickening divergence from its dozy, rural past. Jumbolair is a gated community whose nucleus is the largest private runway in the nation; Jumbolair also sells home sites to people who have their own aircraft.