Hi! It’s Heather The Happy Travel Blogger coming to you from my dad’s house in New Smyrna Beach (NSB). I’m just around the corner from where Adam and I were house-sitting; now I have a view of the Atlantic Ocean instead of the Intracoastal Waterway. I can’t complain about my long-term travel path because life is good!
Cassadaga Spiritualist Camp Welcome Center
Growing up in NSB, I always heard mystical stories about Cassadaga, FL which is only about 30 minutes away by car. It’s southwest of here and closer to the middle of the state in the direction of Orlando. It has a reputation of being full of psychics, witches, hauntings, and more. Yes, I do scare easily but I’ve always been curious about this tiny town.
Adam and I decided to take a field trip there last week. I admit to being a little nervous because I didn’t know what to expect. Would I sit down for a reading and the Spiritualist would say my outlook doesn’t look so good? Could she or he tell me anything at all? Maybe it was possible that a loved one was trying to reach me to affirm happiness in the next life. How would I respond? Would it be too much to process?
I expressed my concerns to Adam and thankfully he told me to relax. I took his advice and just went with the experience. After all, this is what travel is all about: more doing, less thinking.
Since we didn’t know where to go once we arrived, we Googled Cassadaga, FL. The first result was The Cassadaga Spiritualist Camp so we looked into it and decided to go there. The drive was easy and we took some local, non-interstate roads.
Talk about small town USA! There’s really one main road where The Camp, Cassadaga Hotel, and Post Office all are. Among these large-ish structures is a peppering of other Spiritualist businesses.
Cassadaga Hotel & Psychic Center
We walked into The Camp and were greeted by a woman working there named Dee. We introduced ourselves and told her we were interested in a reading and a tour. She told us that a tour wasn’t available until the next day and explained how the reading worked. We followed her instructions for booking a Spiritualist appointment (more on our experience in a future post).
In the meantime, she recommended we explore the Colby-Alderman Park because it’s a beautiful walk and the signs along the paved walkway would give us some of the same historical information as the tour. She also suggested exploring the unpaved trails because they intersected with the main walkway and one led to a beautiful bamboo garden (which we never found).
We set off for the Park and meandered through what we thought was the right place. We started getting deeper into the woods with Adam leading and I didn’t see a paved path or historical signs. There were two main flaws here: Adam posing as a nature guide and both of us wearing flip-flops on a dirt trail in the middle of the Florida woods. No thanks!
Trail in Colby-Alderman Park
Don’t get me wrong, Adam has a good sense of direction but I don’t trust his lead in the woods especially when we didn’t see any of the landmarks Dee told us to look for. I turned us around and once we were back in civilization (that is, paved roads), we got directions from a cheerful woman who greeted us and was clearly a local.
We didn’t have time to continue our nature hike after the detour because we had to meet the Spiritualist for our readings. To pass the time, we each decided to have a Florida Lager beer in the Hotel bar because it was on draft and we hadn’t tried it before. This crisp, light, and refreshing lager is brewed by the Florida Beer Company located just south of NSB in Melbourne. It really complimented the Florida heat.
Adam enjoying a Florida Lager beer in the L'Aldila Restaurant inside the Cassadaga Hotel
The Cassadaga Hotel & Psychic Center was built in 1927 and is haunted by friendly spirits. We didn’t encounter any paranormal activity because our time there was limited to the restaurant, L’Aldila (Spanish for the other side), but it did have plenty of charm and good service.
After our readings, we discovered Colby-Alderman Park and the paved historical path Dee told us about. We learned that The Southern Cassadaga Spiritualist Camp Meeting Association was founded by George P. Colby, a well-known trance medium, from New York in 1894. Colby came to Florida in 1875 after one of his spiritual guides, an Indian named Seneca, instructed him to travel south. Colby named the town after Cassadaga, NY because he attended spiritualist meetings in the nearby city of Lily Dale.
Lake Colby in Colby-Alderman Park
According to The Cassadaga Spiritualist Camp’s official site, “Spiritualism’s main focus is to promote an individual’s personal experience with God. Spiritualism is a religion that is not based on a relationship with a particular savior. It recognizes all prophets that have come to humankind throughout the ages, not setting one above the other. Rather, it is based upon the idea that we are all to form our own relationship with God, and to obtain guidance and accept responsibility for our actions based on our interaction with that personal guidance.”
After spending the day there and having a reading, I’m much more excited by Cassadaga than I am nervous about what I might find out. Living a Location Liberated Lifestyle makes me appreciate all that I have and I can’t wait to continue our journey to discover what awaits!
