Nobody had told us Florida had hills. Lia and I drove up from the coast half-asleep and woke properly only when the land began to roll and the road slid under a green tunnel of live oaks so dense the afternoon went to dusk. This was Old Bainbridge Road, one of Tallahassee’s famous canopy roads, and it felt like driving into another century. The capital of Florida, it turned out, was a Southern town of moss and shade and quiet, and we fell for it before we had even parked.
The Canopy Roads
There are five official canopy roads around Tallahassee, protected stretches where the oaks arch overhead and Spanish moss hangs in grey curtains that stir when the wind finds them. We drove them slowly, windows down, the light coming through in coins. Miccosukee Road was our favourite — miles of it, unbroken green, the occasional glimpse of a plantation gate or a red-clay bank. Lia said it was like being inside a held breath. We stopped once simply to stand in the middle of the empty road and listen; there was nothing but leaves and a woodpecker somewhere off in the trees. I have driven prettier coastlines but few roads that felt so much like a place keeping its own secret.
Two Capitols and a Campus
Downtown, the story turns abrupt and modern. The new Capitol is a stark white tower — twenty-two storeys — standing behind the domed Historic Capitol with its jaunty red-and-white striped awnings, the two buildings arguing across a century of taste. We rode to the observation deck on the top floor for a view that stretched clear into Georgia, the town dissolving into forest in every direction. Later we wandered the campus of Florida State, all brick and collegiate calm, and stumbled into the gardens at Maclay, where an old estate’s azaleas and camellias ring a black-water lake. A heron stood in the shallows so still we mistook it twice for a statue. Lia photographed it until it finally, insultingly, flew off.
Springs and Slow Suppers
The country around Tallahassee is stitched with springs, and on our last full day we drove out to Wakulla Springs, one of the deepest freshwater springs in the world, its water an unreal glassy blue. We took the jungle boat and watched alligators sun themselves on the banks while the guide pointed out the very spot where old Tarzan films were shot. Afterward we ate at a roadhouse where the fried catfish came with hush puppies and a jug of sweet tea neither of us could finish. The evening ended on a porch with cicadas and a sky going violet, and I thought how little this place resembled the Florida of postcards, and how glad I was of that.
Getting There
Tallahassee has a small regional airport with connections through Atlanta, Charlotte and Miami, though many travellers arrive by car — I-10 runs straight across the top of the Panhandle and delivers you here from Jacksonville in a couple of hours, or from Pensacola in three. The town itself is walkable around downtown and the campuses, but you will want a car for the canopy roads and the springs, which are the whole point. Give it two nights at least; Tallahassee reveals itself slowly, the way the light does through those oaks.