Kevin "Flipper" was one of my all time favorite shows, and "Gentle Ben" was a breath of fresh air!
Flipper was filmed in my neck of the woods, those were my stomping grounds
There is a beach in Miami called "Bear Cut" out off the Rickenbacker Causeway, it was a lovely area and if Flipper and the gang did not pass by there 20 times an episode I would have thought something was wrong! There was a Marina on the other side of the road from Bear Cut, they had a nice restaurant and our favorite outing was to go there real early in the AM for a nice breakfast, the waitress always served our food piping hot and the best over-easy eggs one could ever hope to eat out! I was lucky cause Dad only took the early risers with him, and that was usually me
Besides the beach if you kept driving down towards the end of the road that Bear Cut was on you'd come to the Crandon Park Zoo, it was a great Zoo...Hurricane Andrew wrecked it! There was also a fantastic Aquarium out in the area called the Seaquarium, they kept "Flipper" housed there. Miami was a neat place to grow up. Here's a brief list of many more of my favorites, The Venitian Pool, Viscaya, The Miami Planetarium, Monkey Jungle, Parrot Jungle, and The Serpetarium! Skipping school was always an adventure we would take the bus to the beach, or go to Miami International and hang out at the Airport (always a blast), every once in a while I'd travel over to Hialeah and visit my favorite Cuban Restaurant for a meal of Black Beans and Yellow Rice, and I'd always get a case of guilt so I would confess my sins of school skipping to Mom and get grounded
. Life was too fun down there in Orange and Avacado land!!!