Gainesville

After Rainbow Springs State Park, we stopped in Gainesville for a few days to visit our friends, Joe and Lauren, and their son, Joey. The last time we saw them was during our stay at Bonnet Creek in Orlando, when they drove down to spend a night with us.
Gainesville is located in Central Florida, about 2 hours north of Orlando. It is home to the University of Florida, and is the birthplace of Gatorade. It also had a really cool downtown area. Read more about Gainesville here.
We set up camp for several days on the street outside of their house, and spent our time there hanging out in their backyard and exploring the aforementioned cool downtown area. On one particularly hot day, we played a game called Splash Zone, which is kind of like softball, except with water balloons. And no bases or points. So basically someone throws a water balloon at the batter, who smashes it with at bat (or a shovel, if you don't have a bat) and gets everyone soaking wet.

We also got to spend time at a few cool local restaurants, including The Top, Loosey's, and the Lunch Box, all of which had nice ambiances and good food.

Poor Gomez was looking haggard after walking several miles to Loosey's on his tiny stub legs.

Creamed corn nuggets, fried pickles, and shrimp at The Top. The corn nuggets were the highlight of the meal.

We also went tubing at Ginnie Springs, but I didn't take any pictures. I've always wanted to tube down a river, so I was pretty pumped. It was beautiful.

On our last day there, they took us to La Tienda for delicious Mexican food, then on a short nature hike to a creek nearby.

Joe and Joey wading in the creek