Solar Walk

New York City has 6^th Avenue, Avenue Of The Americas — big deal. Gainesville has 8^th Avenue, Avenue Of The Galaxy. You don’t have to be an explorer to know which of these is more monumental.
And indeed it IS monumental — the planetary representation of our solar system is a series of monuments starting at the cross section of 34^th St (the Sun) and ending with Pluto at 22^nd (strict astronomical interpreters may end at Neptune, but understand you’re missing out in your understanding of the cosmos). The beauty of it is that the planets are installed as a 4-​billion (read that in a Carl Sagan voice) to 1 scale model, giving you a glimpse of just how far these planets are from each other. And 8^th Ave is straight and flat here, so you can aim to see the whole run should you choose (though standing at the sun my eyes gave out around Saturn). The respective monuments stand about 15 feet high with a planet-​esque sphere atop it — all of equal size, which was a slight disappointment until I realized a truly scaled Jupiter would take out a streetlight. Planetary stats and info is engraved on each monument, with impressive sketches of the mythological namesake gods and some choice quotes — can’t get better than «Gangrene Uranus, ghoul of the heavens.»
This was exactly the quirky kind of thing I was hoping to find on my brief stay in Gainesville. The whole length of the run is 0.9 miles one-​way, and even better there’s a park trail (Loblolly Woods? Something like that) around Jupiter that looked promising had we more time. You can drive it for a quick science lesson, or you can walk it if you feel the calling to be a true galactic navigator (and this is the city of ‘gators after all). I did a round trip, so I walked the scale model twice — only 3,999,999,998 more times and I can truly say I’ve walked the length of the solar system! That’d be cool if they can give me a badge when that happens.