The Winter Park Scenic Boat Tour - Entertaining, Informative and
a Visual Delight
The Winter Park Scenic Boat Tour, founded in 1938 and located
just 15 minutes north of downtown Orlando, is one of these
lovely side trips that combine beautiful scenery, a bit of local
history, some close-up exposure to local wildlife and vegetation
with a relaxing outing in a slow-moving 18-passenger pontoon
boat, all complete with expert (and sometimes humorous)
narration provided by the boat's captain.
The tour takes you through 3 lakes: Lake Osceola, Lage Virginia
and Lake Maitland. On this gorgeous day, with brilliantly blue
skies, the boat whisked us past hundreds of beautiful
water-front estates, many of which were originally built in the
1920s and originally sold for $20,000, while fetching between
$500,000 and several million in today's booming Central Florida
real estate market. Even boathouses are worth between $30,000
and $40,000.
In Lake Virginia we came up close to the grounds of Rollins
College, one of the top rated private liberal arts colleges in
the South Eastern United States, founded in 1885 by New England
Congregationalists. Rollins College is the oldest recognized
college in the state of Florida with a small student body of
1,700 students, housed on a beautiful 70 acre Mediterraean
Revival Campus. Our expert captain / tour guide mentioned that
tuition at the college is $38,000 and the ratio of students to
professors is 12:1.
Rollins College's Spanish Revival Campus
Condos are located right next to the college, selling today for
between $450,000 to $1 million. As we approached the narrow
Venetian Canal that would take us from Lake Virginia to Lake
Maitland, our captain made us aware of all the interesting
vegetation growing alongside the canal: Egyptian papyrus,
Spanish moss (an airplant and not a parasite), the Princess
flower, colourful bougainvilleas and resurrection fern. We saw a
variety of birds, including an Osprey eagle, a snake bird, a
great blue heron and a white egret, which used to be the good
luck bird of the Seminole Indians. Some of Winter Park's
beautiful mansions
On Lake Maitland we learned that there was an alligator cave
from which 150 alligators were removed into the Florida
Everglades to prevent a rather dangerous collision between local
wildlife and civilization.
Along the Venetian Canal we also saw variegated ginger and
banana trees, as we slowly passed under the arched Palmer Avenue
Bridge. Philodendrons, palmgrass, bamboo, a plant called
firespikes and an interesting arrangement of "air potatoes",
round tubers hanging down from a tree branch, adorned our
journey through the canal. The Venetian Canal The arched Palmer
Avenue Bridge
At 450 acres and 30 feet deep, Lake Maitland is the largest of
the 3 lakes covered by the boat tour. A dam controls the water
level and interestingly, the lakes all drain northwards into the
St. John's River which flows into the Atlantic near
Jacksonville. The Kraft Azalea Gardens, located on Lake Maitland
on Alabama Drive off Palmer Avenue, feature thousands of
azaleas, tropical shrubs and trees. Azaleas are in full bloom
January through March.
Our expert captain also pointed out various mansions that have
been used as backdrops in various movies and commercials. Lake
Maitland also features several small islands with rather naked
looking trees that house colonies of cormorants, fishing birds
that consume up to a pound of fish a day.
Cormorants, resting for another round of fishing
We slowly made our way back from Lake Maitland to Lake Osceola
where our relaxing and scenic boat tour came to an end. On this
gorgeous day it was a fabulous outing that provided an
appropriate historical context for a further exploration of the
beautiful city of Winter Park.
The Scenic Boat Tour, a Winter Park institution for almost 70
years now, is located at the end of Morse Avenue on the shores
of Lake Osceola. It is a very affordable outing at $8 for adults
and $4 for children (children under 2 ride free). Boat tours run
every day from 10 am to 4 pm (except Christmas). For further
information contact the Winter Park Scenic Boat Tour.