Chris Curle/Special to the Eagle

This beautiful peacock is one of the extra added attractions living on the grounds of the Fountain of Youth Archaeological Park in St. Augustine, FL.

Chris Curle/Special to the Eagle

Explorer Ponce de Leon, the stiff guy on the left, discovered the Fountain of Youth. On the right is Bryan Fraser, whose family has owned this popular attraction for 81 years.

Chris Curle/Special to the Eagle

Castillo de San Marcos is a national monument on the water near downtown St. Augustine. For many years it was the northernmost outpost of Spain's empire in the New World. It took 23 years to build, starting in 1672.

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Forget the Disney/Universal/Sea World megaplex. There’s another “Orlando” to enjoy. Forget the winding, sometimes sand-blown beach roads and highways and the Interstate corridors, those multi-lane racetracks too often slowed to parade pace by ramparts built with all the orange barrels east of the Mississippi.

Here is a proposal for those who want to see the other Florida, the one where the locals relate more to their “Cracker” ancestors than to the Bronx Bombers or the white days and nights of the upper Midwest.

Skip Busch Gardens and Longboat Key, bypass South Beach and the Space Coast and take a trip up the peninsula’s midsection.

We did that recently – over the Tamiami Trail to Highway 29, north to Highway 27, scooting briefly over Interstate 4, then roundabout to St. Augustine. It seemed appropriate to visit America’s oldest city via one of Florida’s oldest north-south routes.

Here then are impressions of the trip, acknowledging that there’s much more to see, smell and taste along the way than this space can include:

Woodpeckers get a break along SR 92, where old wooden poles are installed next to the modern metal power poles. We watched a couple of those amazing birds enjoying the wood poles, not banging their beaks on the new metal ones.

Driving by the panther refuge and Big Cypress National Preserve was fun. One treat was seeing a relatively rare crested caracara, a raptor/scavenger bird. They’re mostly in Central and South America but also populate a small area in south central Florida.

Watching fields of crops whoosh by, we had a brainstorm. Why doesn’t the state help farmers put up signs on the road identifying the crops in the fields?

To an urbanized, on the road “Farmer” in name only, it’s tough to tell soybeans from bok choy. OK, corn I get. And the color of oranges gives away the identity of those groves. But knowing what the low-to-the-ground stuff is would be fun.

Immokalee seemed a town on the move to my uninformed drive-by eyes. Downtown was clean and bright. New retail and residential development borders the main area. We avoided the famous casino there, needing all our cash to buy gas, even though it got cheaper the further north we drove.

LaBelle, on the Caloosahatchee River, has a pleasant “downtown” area and did not seem to have changed a bit since our last visit by boat three years ago. Out of town we saw a few deer just off the highway and a bear crossing sign, but no bears.

From where Highway 29 gives way to the four-lane Highway 27 in Glades County, it’s an easy trip to where the lake country begins at Lake Placid.

From there through Sebring and Avon Park, the landscape was engorged with highway-hugging retail clusters serving residential areas seemingly built mostly of metal — manufactured houses, mobile homes, RV parks and such. Of course retirement is big there, with what seemed like more seniors than oranges in the groves along the road.

We noticed dozens of billboards advertising personal injury attorneys. One headline screamed, “Aggressive Attorneys,” which seemed redundant, I thought.

What’s going on up there? Why does Central Florida need so many personal injury lawyers? Are crazed RV drivers crashing into one another at an alarming rate?

From that area up to St. Augustine we saw at least three Harley-Davidson dealerships, one of which claimed to be the largest in the state or the country or the universe, whatever. I’ve since seen that claim made by a biker’s dozen of other Harley dealers around the country.

We saved the real Orlando for our return drive. Our focus was on getting to St. Augustine. We found it a delight.

Our first stop was the same as Spanish gadabout Ponce de Leon’s – the Fountain of Youth.

Enthusiastic guides, apparently giddy from drinking the water there, give fun, interactive tours. Also a parade of puffed up male peacocks gave us an impromptu look at their tail-shaking, feather-flashing full Monty displays as they pranced before hens that seemed more interested in food tidbits from the tourists.

St. Augustine is one big history lesson. One excellent way to get the Cliff Notes version before deciding which features to focus on is with the Old Town Trolley Tours. Open air “trams” twist through the historic area’s narrow streets, while eager driver-guides dazzle you with facts, anecdotes and jokes along the way.

You can get on and off at 20 different stops to visit specific highlights. A $20 ticket is good for three consecutive days. It’s a bargain, even though some attractions have a modest entrance fee.

The tour is dotted with gift shops and restaurants, some of which are on the waterfront with great views.

Better restaurants have menus and prices posted at the entrance.

The best-known and maybe priciest hotel is Casa Monica, a beautifully restored showplace close to everything. It also has a great bar. Web site: casamonica.com.

A much cheaper alternative is the clean, convenient and hospitable Hampton Inn Historic, a Hilton product at 2050 Ponce de Leon Blvd. Information: 904-829-1996.

One of the important things to know about St. Augustine is what not to do, at least in my view, while you’re there. I’ll cover that, plus a look at the “Other Orlando,” seeing that place without getting even a whiff of Walt Disney’s unique universe there.

Seeing Florida up and back through its midsection has its charms in both directions. All that, here, next week.

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Email: dfon@donfarmer.com