Living Our Dream

Ybor City

Bushnell, FL - Events of Wednesday, Feb. 22, 2012

Ybor (pronounced EE-bor) City was established in 1885 by Vicente Martinez Ybor as a location for his cigar factory. Ybor City was originally an independent town, but it was annexed by Tampa in 1887.

We decided to take a drive to Tampa to check out Ybor City with Pat and Mike. The entire neighborhood has been designated as a National Historic Landmark District, so our intention was to first tour the Ybor City Museum and learn a little about the history, then walk around the area to see some of the historic buildings.

Even though Ybor City is located in an urban area, there is plenty of free, on-street parking. Most of it has a two-hour limit, but there seem to be a lot of spaces available, so you can just move your car to a different location if you need more time. There are also several city lots where you can park longer, but there is a fee for those.

The museum is part of an urban state park and is located in the old bakery that was operated by the Ferlita family. It is supposed to open at 9:00 AM; but when we arrived around 11:00, it was closed. The museum store in a separate building next door was open, and they said they were trying to find out why no one had shown up yet to open the museum itself. We later found out the ranger had car trouble.

While we waited to see if the museum was going to open, we decided to walk down the street toward Centro Ybor. Centro Ybor an entertainment complex with a movie theater, shops and restaurants that is adjacent to Centro Español de Tampa, which was a Latin club that was a cultural, recreational and medical center for early Spanish immigrants.

Centro Ybor

Since the museum wasn't open, we were at a little bit of a disadvantage because we were counting on picking up some of the history of Ybor city at the museum before we walked the streets. Fortunately, there is a Chamber of Commerce Information Center at Centro Ybor where there were a few displays on the history of the area and about cigar making. The lady at the information center also told us about some of the things we should see at that end of town like the Ybor cigar factory. While we were at the information center, we also found out the ranger had gotten to the museum and that it was finally open.

Ybor City Chamber of Commerce Information Center

Vicente Martinez Ybor, who was born in Spain, traveled to the Spanish colony of Cuba in 1832 where he opened a factory that produced world-renowned cigars. Because of his support for Cuban independence, Ybor was forced to flee Cuba for the United States in 1869 where he opened a new cigar factory in Key West.

Ybor had difficulty keeping workers at his factory in Key West because Cuba was so close, the workers could easily return home if they decided to. Also, Ybor also had difficulty with frequent strikes in Key west. For those reasons, Ybor bought 40 acres of palmetto and scrub pine flats in 1885 near the then small town of Tampa on the west coast of Florida.

Statue of Vicente Martinez Ybor

The deep-water port at Tampa was suitable for ships bringing in tobacco from Cuba, and he could obtain enough land to enable him build a company town that included inexpensive housing for his workers so they would not be as likely to return to Cuba. By the time Ybor arrived in Tampa, Henry Plant had also built railroads along Florida's west coast that would enable Ybor to ship his finished cigars north.

Ybor also encouraged others to open cigar factories in his town. This greatly enhanced the vitality of Ybor City because more employers brought in more workers and more workers made better business for everybody. Even though there were other cigar factories, Ybor made sure his was the largest. In fact, the Ybor factory was the largest in the world and covered an entire city block. Since Ybor's factory was only about two blocks from the information center, we headed to the factory before going back to the museum.

Entrance to Ybor Cigar Factory

The cigar industry peaked in 1929. The market crash and the Great Depression that followed reduced the demand for cigars and weakened the cigar industry. The rise in popularity of cigarettes in the 1920s and 1930s didn't help either. As young men headed off to war in the 1940s, cigar making and Ybor City declined even further.

Ybor's factory remained active until after WWII. Then after sitting vacant for a few decades, it was used as gallery space for artists, a festival marketplace, office space and a restaurant. In 2010, the Church of Scientology bought the entire complex, and they currently offer tours to the public.

Paul, Margery, Pat and Mike in front of a tobacco press in the Ybor Cigar Factory

After touring the factory, we walked up East 7th Avenue, which is the main thoroughfare through Ybor City, where we enjoyed seeing the early 1900s architecture. We were hoping for some unique shops, but there are mostly restaurants, night clubs and a few tattoo parlors.

East 7th Avenue in Ybor City

The original residents of Ybor City were primarily from Spain, either directly or by way of Cuba. Soon, however, immigrants from Europe saw opportunities and began moving to Ybor City. Germans were involved in the stone lithography process used to print cigar boxes, a few examples of which are shown at the top of this post. Jews came from eastern Europe and Germany and Sicilians came to learn cigar making or to open other businesses. The bakery where the the State Park's Ybor City Museum is located was owned by Sicilians. 

Ybor City Museum located in the old Ferlita Bakery

Francisco Ferlita built the first bakery on the site in 1896. The original wooden building was destroyed by fire in 1922 and was replaced by the current brick structure. The bakery, which produced 35,000 loaves of Cuban bread a week at its peak, operated until 1973.

Some of the historic buildings in Ybor city were lost to urban renewal in the 1960s and 70s. The remaining residents wanted to preserve their heritage, so they requested a museum. Through a bureaucratic blunder, the fire station where the museum was originally to be located was bulldozed on the very day a celebration was being held in a nearby restaurant to commemorate the designation of the fire station as the new museum. The city fathers substituted the Ferlita Bakery building across the street from the destroyed fire house as the location for the museum.

As we mentioned earlier, one of Ybor's problems at his cigar factory back in Key West was his workers frequently decided to leave and go back to Cuba. In Tampa, Ybor turned to the idea of home ownership in order to give his workers more of a reason to stay. Ybor was able to provide a small house called a casita that the workers could purchase at a reasonable price. Most of these wooden homes were lost to urban renewal, but the state park rescued several casitas and relocated them adjacent to the museum.

We got back to the Ybor City Museum just as the ranger was beginning a tour of one of the casitas.

Cigar factory worker's casita

The casitas were modest shotgun houses one room wide by four rooms deep. Families were large with numerous children and probably grandparents living under the same roof. Small back yards had gardens, chickens and sometimes a pig or even a cow.

Parlor of the casita

After the very interesting guided tour of the casita, we walked through the garden that is between the casitas and the museum.

Ybor City Museum garden

A quick game of checkers in the garden

The museum has an excellent video on the history of Ybor City. After watching that, we checked out some of the displays.

Margery learning about the history of Ybor City

Cigar workers sat at row upon row of benches hand rolling cigars all day. Many factories had up to 1,000 workers, but the Ybor factory had as many as 4,000 at its peak. There was no air conditioning back in those days, and work went on year round. In order to help reduce boredom and increase morale, the factories had readers who sat on a raised platform and read books and the newspaper to the workers.

Cigar workers hand rolling cigars

After our visit to Ybor city, we drove a few miles to the Bahama Breeze in Tampa. Bahama Breeze is one of our favorite chain restaurants because the Caribbean atmosphere and island menu make us feel like we are on vacation.

Bahama Breeze in Tampa

Everyone except Paul had almond-crusted talapia that was served with cinnamon sweet potatoes and a vegetable. Paul had grilled chicken with cilantro crema that was served with mashed potatoes and roasted corn. We shared an appetizer of firecracker shrimp and a chocolate island dessert.

Lunch at Bahama Breeze

It was a great day. We were happy to learn some interesting Florida history, and we enjoyed sharing the day and a delicious meal with Pat and Mike.

Tarpon Springs 2012

Bushnell, FL - Events of Wednesday, Feb. 15, 2012

You will notice a new feature in this blog post - captions for the photographs. The ability to add photo captions was just introduced by Typepad, the host of our blog. It is still in the beta stage (meaning it may still have some bugs and inconsistencies), but we decided to try it out. We hope you like the new captions.

Tarpon Springs is one of our favorite places in Florida. It is located along the Anclote River a few miles upstream from the Gulf of Mexico, and it is only about an hour away from where we spend the winter in Bushnell. We always make a point of going to Tarpon Springs at least once while we're in Bushnell, because we love the quaint atmosphere, the interesting shops and the delicious Greek food.

This year, we went to Tarpon Springs with our friends from Pittsburgh, Pat and Mike. This is their first year of full-timing and their first winter in Florida, and they have never been to Tarpon Springs.

Tarpon Springs was originally a location for winter homes back in the 1870s, but when the sponges began to be harvested from the Gulf of Mexico in the 1880s, sponge divers from Greece were recruited to help bring in the bounty. The industry thrived into the 1920s, 1930s and 1940s. The waterfront has several historic boats with sponges festooned around the decks just like it would have been back in the day.

Tarpon Springs waterfront

In 1947, a red algae bloom all but wiped out the sponge beds in the area, and many of the sponge boats switched to fishing or shrimping. Today, commercial fishing boats dock across the river.

Commercial fishing boat in Tarpon Springs

The sponge beds have recovered, and there is still some commercial sponge diving going on, but man-made sponges and things like paper towels and micro fiber cloths have largely replaced natural sponges. Tourism is now the primary industry for Tarpon Springs. The quaint shops and Greek restaurants of Tarpon Springs draw visitors from all over.

Many of the shops specialize in sponges. We stopped to look at a few.

Margery checks out sponges

The morning started out cloudy, but it cleared up by the time we got to Tarpon Springs. Since it turned out to be such a nice, sunny morning, there were quite a few shoppers on Docecanese Blvd., which is the main street along the waterfront.

A few of the shops along Dodecanese Blvd.

We usually walk to the Sponge Factory at the eastern end of Dodecanese Blvd.

The Sponge Factory

The Sponge Factory has a good movie that gives a history of the sponge industry in Florida. This year, they have updated the movie and added some more recent footage.

The Sponge Factory also has nice displays of Greek-themed gift items that includes olive oil lotions and soaps and also nautical and marine items such as starfish and seashells.

Margery checks out a sea fan inside the Sponge Factory

Since we planned to be gone most of the day, we took Freeway with us. He got to tour all over Tarpon Springs in his carrier mounted on the shopping cart we bought about a month ago at the RV show. Paul and Freeway took a little break to watch the world go by from a bench outside the Sponge Factory.

Paul and Freeway take a break

The Sponge Exchange is a collection of shops and restaurants located toward the western end of Dodecanese Blvd. where the sponge clearinghouse used to be. We stopped there after leaving the Sponge Factory.

Mike and Pat at the Sponge Exchange

By the time we walked to the Sponge Factory and back and then visited the Sponge Exchange, it was almost 1:00 PM. We were all hungry, so we headed down Athens St. to Costa's where we like to have lunch. Tarpon Springs is a pet-friendly community, and we were able to take Freeway into the restaurant in his canvas carrier. He was a good boy and just napped most of the time.

Costa's Restaurant

Like most of the restaurants in Tarpon Springs, Costa's specializes in Greek cuisine. We ordered a flaming cheese appetizer called saganaki. A slab of cheese is placed on a little iron skillet (like the kind they use for fajitas in Mexican restaurants) and put under the broiler. When the cheese is all bubbly, they bring it to your table, douse it with brandy, set it on fire and serve it to shouts of "Opa!" Opa is a Greek exclamation that seems to mean about the same thing as "hooray" or "yeehaw." The cheese is melted inside and has a toasted, crunchy crust outside. Yum!

Flaming saganaki appetizer - opa!

We all ordered gyros (pronounced YEE-ros) and Greek salad. We also enjoyed baklava for dessert. As usual, the food was excellent as was the company.

Enjoying our gyros

After lunch, we let Freeway stretch his legs along the sidewalk near the restaurant before heading back to Bushnell.

Freeway takes a walk

Freeway is really doing well on walks as long as you keep moving briskly. As soon as you slow down, he thinks it's OK for him to stop altogether. Once he stops, he wants to pick up in his mouth anything that is lying around - cigarette butts, stones, sticks, chewing gum, leaves, you name it. As we mentioned in our last post, we are looking forward to having him learn the "leave it" command in our next puppy class.

Back at Blueberry Hill, we took a few days to relax. Look for our next post to see what we found to do next.

Tarpon Springs, FL

Bushnell, FL

One of our favorite places to visit while we're in Bushnell for the winter is Tarpon Springs. Tarpon Springs is located a little over an hour southwest of Bushnell about a mile up the Anclote River from the Gulf of Mexico.

Tarpon Springs was first settled in the 1870s as a location for winter homes. Greek immigrants arrived in the late 1800s and early 1900s when they were hired to dive for sponges. Today, the Greek influence remains strong because Tarpon Springs has the highest percentage of Greek-Americans of any city.

We went to Tarpon Springs last year with Barbara and Dick, and we were glad they wanted to go again this year. The waterfront area is the main tourist area, and we planned to end up there eventually; but this year, we decided to stop in the downtown area on our way. Our first stop was at St. Nicholas Greek Orthodox Church. The church was constructed in 1943.

The sanctuary is usually open for prayer during the day when there is no mass going on, so we went in. Inside, there are numerous shrines and icons including the one below of St. Nicholas known as the Weeping Icon. Back in 1970, a cleaning woman noticed what appeared to be tears around the eyes of St. Nicholas, even though the painting was enclosed in a glass case. Tears appeared around the Christmas season for the next three years, but have not been seen since. The origin of the tears was never determined.

The interior of the church is beautiful with a central dome and large crystal chandelliers as well as many paintings and stained glass windows.

The stained glass windows depict saints and events in the life of Jesus.

 

After we left the church, we strolled down Tarpon Avenue and noticed a large, mosaic mural on the side of a building adjacent to a little park. The mural honors Mother Meres, who was a German immigrant who settled in Tarpon Springs with her husband in 1882.

Amelia "Mother" Meres was an avid gardener and had a lush, jungle-like garden adjacent to where the mural is located today. The mural was a joint project of the Garden Fairies garden club and the Greater Tarpon Springs Chamber of Commerce.

A little farther down Tarpon Avenue we came to Acropolis Meats and Deli.

Margery read about the shop in an RV cooking blog, so we stopped in. They had some great looking meats, but unfortunately, we didn't bring a cooler. We had fun looking at all the Greek foods and chatting with the owner, Teddy Demertzis.

We were planning a late lunch near the Tarpon Springs waterfront, but it was still pretty early, so we continued driving west a mile or so to Fred Howard Park. Fred Howard Park is a Pinellas County park that has swimming, fishing and picnicking. We drove out the causeway, parked and walked out to the beach. Although there was a lot of seaweed on the beach from recent storms over the Gulf, the beach was still nice. There are open areas if you want sun and palm trees for shade. You can also rent beach chairs and umbrellas.

We asked another couple, who turned out to be fellow Pennsylvanians from York, to take our picture.

After we walked the beach, we headed to the Tarpon Springs waterfront. After we parked, we headed for Dodecanese Boulevard, which is the main street. Along the way, Margery stopped at one of the shops to play pirate. Aaarrrgh.

Most of the old stores and sponge warehouses have been converted to tourist shops. Since it was such a nice day, the main street was pretty busy.

On the opposite side of Dodecanese Boulevard are docks where they have boats that do nature cruises as well as old sponge boats like the one in the photo below.

As usual, we walked to the Sponge Factory, which is a large sponge shop at the eastern end of Dodecanese Boulevard. In the next photo, Paul checked out their car wash sponges.

The Sponge Factory has a good movie about the sponge industry in Tarpon Springs. The movie is pretty old, but it does give a good history. We had seen the movie before, so we skipped it this time and headed back toward Costa's Restaurant, which is where we had parked the car. We always go to Costa's when we go to Tarpon Springs because, not only do they have good food, they have a coupon special that gives you a free glass of wine, a soft drink, or baklava with any meal ordered from the special lunch menu. We all had gyros, Greek salad and complimentary baklava.

Our lunch was delish! Afterward, we headed back to Blueberry Hill.

The next morning, Barbara and Dick pulled out and headed for their next stop farther south in Florida. It was great spending a couple of days with them again.

We spent the next few days goofing off. Stay tuned for our next adventure.

Ringling Museum Part I: Cà d'Zan Mansion

Sarasota, FL

One of the main reasons we went to the Sarasota area in the first place was to visit the Ringling Museum. Paul went to the museum as a kid back in 1957 when he went to Florida with his parents, and he has been wanting to go back to see it again as an adult.

Plan to spend the better part of the day at the Ringling Museum, because there is a lot to see. It much more than a museum. There is the John and Mable Ringling Museum of Art, the historic Asolo Theater, a circus museum housed in two separate buildings, and the fabulous 56-room, Venetian Gothic mansion known as Cà d'Zan (KAH-d'zahn). Cà d'Zan is from a Venetian dialect and means "House of John."

John Ringling was born in Wisconsin in 1866. He had 6 brothers and a sister. In 1870, after seeing a circus that had come to town, 5 of the 7 Ringling boys formed their own circus company and soon began traveling to perform. The oldest brother already had a job, and the youngest brother was too young to leave home, so it was only the middle 5 brothers who were involved in the circus. John was youngest of the 5 and was only 16 when he started in the circus business.

In 1894, the Ringling Brothers joined their circus with that of Yankee Robinson. When Robinson died a few years later, the Ringlings took over his show. The Ringling Brothers bought the Barnum & Bailey circus in 1907 following the death of James Bailey in 1906. P. T. Barnum had died previously in 1891.

The Ringlings ran their circus and the Barnum & Bailey Circus independently until 1919 when they combined the circuses into the Ringling Brothers and Barnum & Bailey Circus. John Ringling and his brother Charles were the only two of the five brothers left, and it was too difficult to manage the shows separately. The circus thrived through the "Roaring Twenties."

In 1911, John and Mable Ringling bought 20 acres of land in Sarasota located on Sarasota Bay. There was already a house on the property, and the Ringlings began spending winters in Sarasota in 1912.

The Ringlings traveled extensively in Europe looking for new circus acts, and they came to love the architectural style of Venice, Italy. Between 1924 and 1926, they built a 56-room, 22,000 square foot, Venetian Gothic mansion as a winter home on their property on Sarasota Bay. The house cost $1.5 million, a staggering sum in the 1920s. John Ringling was one of the wealthiest men in the country at the time. In addition to the circus, he was into oil, railroads, banking and real estate. He once owned up to 25% of the land in and around Sarasota.

Margery was intrigued by the fact that the Ringlings owned three homes: their summer home in the Hudson Valley, their apartment in New York City, and their winter home in Sarasota. They also crossed the Atlantic for their annual trip to Europe. She couldn't imagine they spent much time in any one place, so Cà d'Zan was really an extravagance.

Because clouds were moving in from the Gulf when we arrived at the Ringling Museum, we headed to the mansion first. The mansion is the farthest point from the admission building, and it is also the location of the gardens. We wanted to enjoy the gardens while there was still a little sun.

We started out our tour in Mable's rose garden. The rose garden was completed in 1913 even before Cà d'Zan was started. None of Mabel's original roses have survived, but today, the garden contains 1,200 new plants.

We were surprised at how many roses were blooming for this late in the season. Many of the bushes were taller than we were,

Over on the other side of the lawn is Mable's secret garden. It is here she planted plants she collected herself and that were given to her by friends.

There are self-guided tours of the first floor of the mansion, and there are docent-guided tours for an extra charge of $5 that also included bedrooms on the second floor that overlook the two-story living room. We opted for the guided tour, and we're glad we did. Not only did we get to see the bedrooms, but the tour guides always have so many interesting tidbits like the fact the living room chandelier came from the original Waldorf-Astoria Hotel in New York. The hotel was torn down in 1929 to make way for the Empire State Building.

The Ringlings found the auction houses of New York a rich source for furnishings and decorative elements such the chandelier in the photo above, as well as paneling, doors, ceilings, and tapestries for Cà d'Zan. It was the end of the Gilded Age, and mansions in New York were being torn down in the 1920s to make way for new high-rise buildings. All the furnishings, artwork and decorative items like the Delft-style porcelain bird cage in the photo below are original to the house.

The chairs in the breakfast room are upholstered in leather painted green. Green was Mabel Ringling's favorite color.

The photo below shows the formal dining room. The table could be expanded to seat 30.

John Ringling's bedroom is furnished with pieces made in France in the 1850s. He paid $35,000 for the 9-piece set ($750,000 today). Notice the use of more green on the walls.

After we visited the mansion, we still had the circus museum and the art museum to see. We'll tell you about them in our next post.

Tarpon Springs, FL

We went to Tarpon Springs last year, and since it is one of Paul's favorite places, we were thrilled when our friends from up north, Barb and Kent, were interested in going this year. Click here to read about last year's trip to Tarpon Springs. This year, the day was cloudy with a chance of rain, but at least it was warm.

Tarpon Springs is a quaint, Greek community located a few miles up the Anclote River from the Gulf of Mexico. It is a little over an hour southwest of Bushnell.

Tarpon Springs was originally founded in the late 1800s as a location for winter homes for wealthy northerners. Sponge beds were discovered in the Gulf of Mexico, and a sponge-diving industry soon began to develop. Greek divers were recruited and began arriving in large numbers in the early 1900s. Today, Tarpon Springs has the highest percentage of Greek-Americans of any city in the United States.

The sponge industry was booming by the 1930s and early 1940s, but an algae bloom in 1947 decimated the sponge beds in the region of the Gulf around Tarpon Springs. Most of the sponge boats switched to fishing and shrimping, and the sponge docks and sponge exchanges were converted to tourist activities like shops, museums and fishing cruises. Although there has been some recovery of the sponge industry, most of the sponges in the shops today are imported.

In spite of being primarily a tourist area, Tarpon Springs has maintained a picturesque, old-world charm. In addition to fishing and sightseeing cruises, the waterfront is lined with boats decorated with sponges like the one in the photo below.

 

Commercial fishing boats are docked on the opposite side of the river.

 

We went to Tarpon Springs on a Saturday and happened to hit a day when part of the main street along the waterfront was blocked off for a craft show. Unfortunately for the vendors, there wasn't a big turnout with the cloudy weather.

 

As we have said before, we don't have room to buy much at flea markets and craft shows, but we enjoy looking. We also like walking down the picturesque main street in Tarpon Springs with its shops and restaurants predominantly painted crisp blue and white.

 

There was even a man and his young daughter providing entertainment. The girl played the drums, played the harmonica and sang harmony. She was quite talented.

Along the way, Margery and Barb stopped to check out sponges. There are numerous types, each with a recommended use from car washing to makeup application.

Paul, on the other hand, stopped to check out the Greek pastries on display at a restaurant bake shop.

Walking down the sidewalks of Tarpon Springs includes receiving personal invitations from almost every restaurant in the town to come in to dine.

However, we had already planned to return to our favorite from last year. Costas Restaurant is about a block and a half off the main street and offers some great lunch specials. We stopped for a tourist photo with a fiberglass shark on our way through a shopping plaza that is in what used to be the sponge exchange.

At Costas, Paul had a chicken souvlaki sandwich (marinated chicken with yogurt/cucumber sauce, tomato and onions wrapped in pita) while everyone else had gyros (beef/lamb with yogurt/cucumber, tomato and onions wrapped in pita). The lunch special we chose comes with a Greek salad that includes potato salad buried under the greens. Everything, including the baklava that was also part of the special, was delish.

With our bellies full, we headed back to the motor home. Barb and Kent left for their next destination the following morning.

When we got back, Margery was excited to find the $200 gas gift card she won as a voter of Roadtrip Journal's December Readers Choice Contest had arrived in the mail. Roadtrip Journal is an online magazine providing first-hand accounts and recommendations by other Road Warriors.

We'll be putting that gas card to good use once Paul finishes some projects here at the motor home. We'll be reporting on them soon.

Mobile, AL Part II: Day Trip to Pensacola, FL

Pensacola, FL is only about 35 miles from where we were staying in Summerdale, AL, near Mobile. We decided to take a day trip over to the Florida Panhandle to do a little sightseeing.

Margery's online research turned up a lot of things to see in the Pensacola area, but since we were only going there for the day, we decided to concentrate on the Gulf Islands National Seashore because we thought it would provide a good combination of history and nature. Gulf Islands National Seashore runs along the barrier islands off the coasts of western Florida and Mississippi in the Gulf of Mexico. For some reason, the islands off the Alabama coast were not included.

Gulf Islands National Seashore has several visitor centers, and we started at the visitor center at the Naval Live Oaks Reservation located on the spit of land along the outer edge of Pensacola Bay. Prior to the start of the use of steel for ships in the 1860s, wood from live oak trees was very desirable for shipbuilding (especially for warships) because of its great strength. The area gets its name from the fact that the live oaks that grew in this area were once set aside for shipbuilding. More about that later.

Much of the strength of live oak comes from the high density of the wood, which is up to 75 pounds per cubic foot - over 30% more than white oak and 70% more than yellow pine. The visitor center has a display with one cubic foot samples of live oak, white oak, and yellow pine that you can lift with pulleys to feel the difference in weight.

The Pensacola area was first explored in 1513 by Ponce de Leon, and a settlement was established there in 1559 making it the first European settlement in the continental United States. However, the settlement was never able to fully recover from a devastating hurricane that hit later in 1559, and the settlement was abandoned in 1561. Therefore, St. Augustine, FL, which was established in 1565, retains the title as the oldest continuously inhabited city in the United States. Pensacola lay abandoned for 135 years before it was finally reestablished by the Spanish in 1696.

Pensacola is on the dividing line between what is considered to be French Louisiana and Spanish Florida. Pensacola was occupied by the French in 1719, but the Spanish returned in 1722 after the French left Pensacola following another devastating hurricane. After the French and Indian War, Pensacola became part of the British Colonies in 1763. During the Revolutionary War, Spain reoccupied Pensacola and other parts of Florida, but eventually turned the occupied areas over to the United States in 1818.

The United States established a permanent naval yard in Pensacola in 1824. In 1828, the government established the Naval Live Oak Reservation near the naval yard. It was established not only to protect the live oaks growing there, but also to experiment with the cultivation of live oaks. Today, it is part of the national seashore.

There are several hiking trails in the vicinity of the visitor center, and we decided to take the nature trail. The nature trail winds through a forest made up primarily of magnolias, slash pines, and live oaks. The next photo shows a live oak along the trail.

Many of the large live oaks along the nature trail have plaques in front of them with a photo of that particular tree. The photo has an overlay showing how various shapes would have been cut from the tree to be used for shipbuilding. For example, a rib for the side of a ship's hull might have been cut from a gently curving branch, and an angled support bracket might have been cut from the crotch where a branch met the trunk. The natural direction of the grain helped make the pieces very strong.

One of the most noticeable plants along the trail were the beautyberry shrubs. The magenta berries almost seemed to glow in the bright sun.

We stopped for a photo at the deck at the far end of the nature trail.

We took the trail back to the visitor center that ran closer to Pensacola Bay where we watched a great blue heron hunt for food in the shallows. He would stretch his neck up seemingly to get a better look down into the water ahead of him.

When he would apparently see something, he would crouch down and stalk forward. We watched for several minutes while he repeated those actions, but we never saw him catch anything.

 

From the Naval Live Oak Reserve, we took the bridge over Santa Rosa Sound to Santa Rosa Island. There is another area of the national seashore at the western tip of the island. On the way we drove through Pensacola Beach with its high-rise hotels and condos and its colorful beach houses.

Once we got to the national seashore, we got to enjoy views of Santa Rosa Sound on one side and the beach along the Gulf of Mexico (shown below) on the other. This area has some of the whitest sand in the world.

 

There was considerable damage to the road and the infrastructure in this area of the national seashore due to the severity of the 2004 and 2005 hurricane seasons. The road to the western tip of the island had been closed, and it only reopened on March 22, 2009.

At the tip of Santa Rosa Island is Fort Pickens. Following the War of 1812, the United States decided it needed to fortify its major ports. Fort Pickens was completed in 1834 and was one of three forts guarding the entrance to Pensacola Bay. Fort McRee was located on the barrier island opposite Fort Pickens (Perdido Key), and Fort Barrancas was located on the mainland right inside the entrance to the bay.

About 21.5 million bricks were used to construct the walls of 5-sided Fort Pickens. Strength to support the weight of the walls and heavy cannons was achieved by the use of arches. The photo below shows some of the cannon ports along the outer wall. You can see how the walls are a series of arches within arches.

 

Even though Fort Pickens was deep in the South, it was occupied by Union forces throughout the Civil War. The 15-inch Rodman cannon in the photo below was installed atop the northwestern wall of the fort shortly after the Civil War. The 15-inch Rodman cannon was one of the largest smooth-bore cannons ever used by the U. S. Army (there also was a 20-inch version), and it required a team of 10 men to fire.

The Rodman cannon was developed by a career Army officer by the name of Thomas Rodman. Rodman experimented with new casting methods to overcome previous size limitations of cast iron cannons. Rodman worked with the Fort Pitt Foundry located in our old home town of Pittsburgh to develop the new, larger cannons. Fort Pitt Foundry produced many Rodman cannons during and after the Civil War.

Some cannons during the Civil War were rifled, but most were smooth bore. In the 1870s, rifled cannons became more commonplace making brick forts like Fort Pickens obsolete. The rifled cannons were much more accurate and they could repeatedly hit the same spot on the wall of a fort. Brick construction was not strong enough to withstand repeated hits, so a reinforced concrete battery was built diagonally across the parade ground of Fort Pickins facing the Gulf of Mexico in 1898 as a response to possible threats from the Spanish during the Spanish-American War.

Several other gun batteries were constructed at the end of Santa Rosa Island in the early 1900s. Instead of concentrating them within the walls of the fort, the new batteries were spread out over a wide area. Since naval gunfire had become much more accurate and more powerful, the new system relied on disbursement and concealment for protection.

An interesting feature of Fort Pickens is the gap in the walls at the northwestern corner. This gap was caused when a fire in 1899 reached a powder magazine containing 8,000 pounds of black powder. The explosion showered debris 1½ miles, some of it reaching Fort Barrancas on the mainland across the entrance to the bay.

The famous Apache Indian chief Geronimo, along with several of his warriors, were held prisoner at Fort Pickens from 1886 to 1887. Their families were held at Castillo de San Marcos (renamed Fort Marion by the Americans in 1821) that we visited in St. Augustine, FL in 2007. To read about our 2007 visit to Castillo de San Marcos, click here.

Fort Pickens remained in use through WWII until 1947.

When we left the fort and Santa Rosa Island, we took the long way back to the motor home and followed a route along the Gulf. We wanted to stop for an early dinner at Mikee's Seafood restaurant in Gulf Shores, AL. Mikee's is part of the local chain of Shrimp Basket restaurants that we stopped at in Foley earlier in our stay. Unlike the other Shrimp Basket restaurants, Mikee's has a unique name and maintains a slightly different menu.

Margery had all-you-can-eat fried clams (not available at the other Shrimp Basket restaurants) and Paul had all-you can-eat fried mullet. We both had red potatoes and marinated cabbage (similar to German-style sweet/sour cole slaw). Paul's meal also included corn fritters served in their own cast iron skillet. Dinners at Mikee's run $1 to $2 more than at its sister Shrimp Basket restaurants, but the menu is a little more extensive, and the food is the same high quality.

After dinner, we headed back to the motor home. We enjoyed our time relaxing at Rainbow Plantation so much we extended our stay by a few days. We went back to the Shrimp Basket in Foley for all-you-can-eat shrimp with new friends from the park. It was so good the first time we just had to have more.

In our next post we'll tell where we headed after we left Mobile.

Tarpon Springs, FL

We were happy to finally see a ten-day weather forecast for temperatures in the 70s and low 80s, so we took off one morning for Tarpon Springs. Tarpon Springs is a little over an hour's drive to the southwest of Bushnell. Located a few miles up the Anclote River from where the river joins the Gulf of Mexico, Tarpon Springs is a picturesque town known for its sponge industry. The photo below is a waterfront view showing some of the fishing boats.

 

While Tarpon Springs used to be known as the sponge capitol of the world, today it is mostly a tourist area. Dodecanese Blvd. runs along the waterfront and has shops and restaurants mostly along one side. Across the street are the docks where sponges were unloaded. Today, there are still some sponge boats and commercial fishing boats, but there are also lots of tour boats at the docks. There are fishing tours, nature tours, and sightseeing tours - some that only take an hour or two and some that take all day.

There is some free parking in the tourist area of Tarpon Springs, but much of the parking is in pay lots. Parking is very reasonable at only $2 to $3 for all day, but we arrived early enough to find a free spot at the Sponge Exchange. The Sponge Exchange was originally started in 1907 as a place where the sponge divers could take their sponges to sell. The complex of buildings that used to be the Sponge Exchange has been modified and renovated into a shopping village. The photo below shows us sitting at the edge of the fountain with a statue of Neptune in the courtyard.

 

We browsed through some of the shops at the Sponge Exchange, and Margery bought some herbs at a little market. Then we went into a shop called Key West Connections. What a fun store! Of course, they had T-shirts and many of the usual tourist items, but they also had a great collection of silly hats. The gal behind the counter was great. Since it was early in the morning and there was no one else in the store, she encouraged us to try on whatever we wanted and to take all the pictures we wanted. In keeping with the Key West theme of the store, Margery is modeling a Parrot Head hat in honor of Jimmy Buffet.

Not to be outdone, Paul tried the flamingo hat. Now, there's a real fashion statement.

 

To go with the flamingo hat, they even had flamingo glasses.

 

After trying on some of the latest fashion accessories at Key West Connections, we headed on down Dodecanese Blvd. The photo below shows some of the quaint shops and restaurants along the boulevard.

As expected, there were numerous shops selling sponges. In addition to natural sea sponges, most of the sponge shops also sell luffa sponges, which are the dried, inner structure from the gourd-like fruit of a tropical plant. Margery is looking at one of the sea sponges in the photo below. The luffa sponges are the cylindrical-shaped ones hanging in front of her.

At least two of the larger sponge shops have movies that describe the history of sponging and the methods used to harvest and prepare sponges for market. After watching the movie at the Sponge Factory, Paul checked out some of the old photos they had on the wall detailing the history of the area. He is surrounded by many types and sizes of sea sponges they had on display.

The next photo is another view of the Sponge Factory.

A. W. Ormond and his daughter, Mary, were the first settlers in the area in 1876. Mary liked the big fish that inhabited the waters, and she named the settlement Tarpon Springs after the fish.

In the late 1880s, it was discovered that money could be made from harvesting sponges from the Gulf of Mexico. Although Tarpon Springs had grown into an exclusive resort for northerners, by 1890 the sponge industry had become the most important source of income for Tarpon Springs.

Within a few years, many divers were brought from Greece to Tarpon Springs. The divers with their rubberized canvas suits and pressurized helmets were able to dive deeper and increase the sponge harvest. By 1905 there were over 500 Greek sponge divers operating from more than 50 boats.

Eateries sprang up along the docks because of the many divers and their crews. As the sponge industry grew, people came to the docks to see the sponges. Soon, shops opened to sell sponges and souvenirs.

Sponges are marine organisms that consist of porous masses of cells and skeletal elements. Although sponges are biologically classified as animals, they do not have nervous, digestive, or circulatory systems and depend on water circulation to supply food, oxygen, and to remove waste.

Only sponges that are a minimum of 5 inches high or 5 inches in diameter are permitted to be harvested. Hand-held rakes are used to pull or knives are used to cut sponges from the rocks on which they grow. Small portions of the sponges that are deliberately left behind will grow into new sponges.

After harvesting, the sponges are squeezed to remove the gelatinous cells. It is only the flexible skeleton of the organism that is used. The sponges are kept moist on the decks of the boats by covering them with wet burlap sacks. During this time, any cells remaining in the sponges decompose. The sponges are then strung up on the ship to dry. After the ships return to shore, the sponges are trimmed, sorted according to size and quality, bleached, rinsed, and dried.

When a red tide algae bloom in 1947 caused a sharp decline in the sponge harvest, many of the boats switched to fishing and shrimping. The photo below shows one of the shrimp boats tied up along the Anclote River.

Although the discovery of new sponge beds in the 1980s has led to a rebound in the sponge industry, most of the dock area is now shops and restaurants catering to tourists. Synthetic sponges have largely replaced natural sponges, but many say no synthetic can equal the durability and absorbency of a natural sea sponge.

A strong Greek influence remains in Tarpon Springs today. Tarpon Springs has the highest percentage of Greek-Americans of any city in the United States. We had a difficult time deciding which of the many Greek restaurants we would try for lunch. Several of the ones along Dodecanese Blvd. are open-air and look like they could be located in a Greek village along the Mediterranean. By the time we decided it was time for lunch, most of the restaurants along the main street were very crowded, so we went down a side street (Athens St.) and stopped into Costas.

In addition to not being as crowded, we decided on Costas because Margery found an online coupon for free baklava with any lunch special. Costas turned out to be a good choice. We both had a gyro (pronounced yee-roh) sandwich with a salad. Paul is about to dig into the "small" Greek salad that came with the special.

 

The gyros were piled high with meat (which is a combination of beef and lamb), tomato, onion, and tzatziki sauce, all wrapped in a pita. Tzatziki sauce is a yogurt-cucumber sauce traditionally served on gyros. The sandwiches were yummy. The baklava was delish, too. We were stuffed when we left.

We started our visit to Tarpon Springs with tourist photos of us wearing funny hats, so we also ended our visit with a another silly tourist photo.

We always enjoy visiting a picturesque town, especially one with a rich history, and Tarpon Springs was no exception. It was interesting to learn about the sponge industry and to learn a little about Greek culture. And we are definitely fans of Greek food.

Back in Bushnell

When we left Bluebberry Hill for our holiday trip to Pittsburgh, the front section of the campground had only a few RVs in it and the back was about 60-70% filled. Now, after New Years, the front is about 50% full (although this section is more transient, and RVs come and go), and the back section is about 80-90% filled as more Snowbirds arrive every day. Interstate-75 is filled with southbound RV's now. There's a steady stream, but the occupancy of Blueberry Hill seems to be running a little behind what it was at this time last year. Maybe the economy has brought about some cancellations, or at least some reduced lengths of stay.

When we went to Pittsburgh last spring, we dropped off Margery's mobility scooter to store for a while. Now that her knees are doing so well, we picked up the scooter during our Christmas trip and brought it back with us to try to sell rather than just leave it in storage for the batteries to deteriorate. When we got back, Paul cleaned it up, made a "For Sale" sign, and parked the scooter in front of our site. We'll see how it goes. The scooter served us well, and now we're hoping it will provide mobility for someone else with difficulty walking.

During our Christmas visit with Lora and J. Michael, we got to sleep on our old mattress. Lora and J. Michael took some of our furniture when we went on the road; and, since the mattress wasn't very old, they have it on the bed in their spare bedroom. The mattress in the motor home was always a little soft for us; and now that it was over three years old, we knew it was getting a little too mushy. However, we didn't realize how mushy until we spent a week on our old, very firm mattress back in Pittsburgh. Ahhhhh.

That prompted us to go mattress shopping when we got back to Florida. A lot of RVs have what are called "short queen" mattresses. These are standard width, but are 4 to 6 inches shorter than a standard queen mattress. Although the shorter length allows more walking space in the RV, it limits the choices for replacement mattresses, and it can also be uncomfortable if you're taller. Sometimes you can replace a short queen mattress with a standard one; but if the bed is part of the slide-out and the slide-out was designed for a short mattress, there probably won't be room for a longer mattress when the slide is in for traveling.

We have a standard queen mattress, so we were able to shop at a regular bedding store. It was a good time to shop - seems there were New Year's mattress sales everywhere. We found a nice, firm, Simmons Beautyrest on sale for a good price at the Mattress Giant store up near the Villages. It was delivered to our motor home first thing the next morning. Wow, what a difference! We have always liked a firm mattress to help eliminate back pain. We both slept comfortably the first night.

We do most of our grocery shopping at Wal-Mart because we feel they generally have the best prices. Here at Blueberry Hill, that is really easy since there is a Wal-Mart right next door. However, Wal-Mart doesn't carry a full selection of grocery items, and we sometimes need to stop at another grocery store for special items. One of these items is chicken hot sausage that Publix Markets usually carry. We took a half-hour drive to the Publix in Inverness, FL. We were able to stock up on the sausage plus a couple of other items. Low-fat products are not abundant in Florida or anywhere else in the south, so we're always happy to find some of our favorites.

The route to Inverness passes through Floral City, which was founded in 1883. Although it only has a population of around 5,000 people today, Floral City was once the largest city in Florida because of phosphate mining in the surrounding area. Henry Flagler started building his hotels and railway on the east coast of Florida about the same time, but Floral City grew faster in those early years because of the mining. The mining was shut down during WWI and was relocated farther south near Tampa after the war.

A beautiful feature of Floral City are the Spanish-moss draped live oak trees that line both sides of County Road 48 heading toward the main intersection in town. The trees run for about half a mile.

 

We gave Molly a bath before our trip to Pittsburgh, but we thought we'd leave her coat a little longer for the cold weather and save grooming her until we got back to Bushnell. Soon after our return, we went about the task of grooming. As you can see from the photo below, she wasn't too happy about it and tried to hide in the bedroom.

 

Trying to hide is typical, but once we start grooming, she is usually pretty good and only gets a little impatient toward the end. She has been getting groomed every few months since she was about a year old, so she's used to it. But for some reason, she really put up a fuss this time. She wouldn't stand still and kept trying to sit and lie down. However, we eventually got the job done (more or less) - she's still a little shaggy in a couple of spots, but we'll fix that next time. The photo below shows Molly in a little better humor after the grooming.

 

We took it easy during our first week or so back to Florida. We got caught up on grocery shopping and a few chores like doing laundry and grooming Molly. We also got a new mattress, rode our bikes around the campground numerous times to try to work off some of those Christmas goodies, and played a few games of pool. We're also investigating interesting things to do and see in the coming weeks. Check back soon to see what we come up with.

Florida Keys Part II: Sightseeing in Key West

After touring Crane Point on Key Vaca near Marathon, FL, we got up bright and early next morning and headed south on U.S. 1 to Key West in the car. Although there is camping in and near Key West, it is very expensive and most of Key West has very narrow streets that would be difficult to negotiate with a large vehicle like an RV.

As many of our regular readers know by now, we like to take guided tours of new areas. We found two for Key West - the Conch Train (pronounced konk - an edible, marine mollusk) and the Old Town Trolley Tours of Key West. The Conch Train looked like fun, but the Old Town Trolley was the same company that did the tour we took of St. Augustine last year. We liked that tour; and besides, the trolley made more stops. We could hop off at any stop to sightsee and just get on the next trolley that went by, so we decided on the Old Town Trolley.

Another advantage to a guided tour was we could park at the visitor center for free and ride the trolley into town. Most parking in town is in pay lots or metered street parking - another good reason not to take an RV to Key West.

One of the first stops on the trolley tour was the Southernmost Point. This is the southernmost point in the Continental United States accessible to civilians. There is a concrete marker in the shape of a buoy there, and we had to stop for the obligatory southernmost photo.

In this area are the Southernmost Guest House, the Southernmost Hotel, and the Southernmost House. There is actually a house farther to the south than the Southernmost House. It was built later and is called the Southernmost Southernmost House, but it's not as picturesque as the original Southernmost House, which is shown in the photo below.

The Southernmost House is a guest house and museum. It was built in 1896 as a private residence at a cost of $250,000 (equivalent to $6 million today). It underwent a $3 million restoration in 1996.

Just to illustrate how far south Key West is, it is closer to Havana than it is to Miami. It less than 100 miles to Cuba, but it is about 130 miles to Miami "as the crow flies."

Being close to Cuba means Key West has had a lot of Cuban influence. In 1890, Key West had a population of 18,000, half of which were said to be of Cuban origin. The battleship USS Maine sailed from Key West on its way to Havana where it blew up sparking the Spanish-American War. There was a huge influx of Cuban refugees during the Mariel Boatlift when Castro allowed people to leave Cuba for a short time back in the 1980s.

Back during the Mariel Boatlift, there were so many refugees that the Border Patrol set up checkpoints along US Highway 1. These checkpoints inconvenienced the locals and deterred tourism. As a tongue-in-cheek protest, the city of Key West seceded from the Union and declared itself a micro-nation called the Conch Republic. Although not a serious secession, the protest did help tourism (and T-shirt sales) when the roadblocks were finally discontinued.

Another sign of Cuban influence are all the chickens roaming the streets. Back in the early days, the Cubans liked to watch and bet on cock fights, and they brought their chickens with them to Key West. When cock fighting was outlawed by the United States, the Cubans simply turned their chickens loose. Although there have been thoughts of rounding them up, it was decided to let the chickens continue to roam free. Since they roam free and must fend for themselves, they eat a lot of bugs.

 

The next trolley stop where we got off was the main stop down by Mallory Square at the western end of the island. We walked around the square and the docks. There was a yacht tied up that was as large as some we saw at the marina near Palm Beach.

We could also see a large cruise ship that was in port.

We strolled around some of the shops that were in the area of Mallory Square. Then we walked up Whitehead Street to Harry Truman's Little White House.

Franklin D. Roosevelt died on April 12, 1945, during his fourth term (this was before term limits). Truman, who had been vice president for only 83 days, became president. After overseeing the end of WWII, Truman was exhausted, and his doctors wanted him to rest. Someone suggested the use of the base commandant's residence at the Key West Naval Station since the house was vacant at the time. There was no long-distance telephone service in the Keys, so Truman would not be interrupted unnecessarily. In fact, telephone lines were run from the house to a Navy ship docked nearby so they could communicate with Washington when they needed to by means of the ship's radio.

The house was originally built in 1890 as a two-family duplex for the base commandant and the paymaster. In 1911, the house was converted to a single-family dwelling because the new commandant had a very large family and needed more space. During Truman's term in office, which ran from 1945 to 1952, he liked it so much that he spent a total of 175 days in the Little White House in Key West.

Although the Little White House is no longer owned by the U.S. Government (it is owned by the Little White House Foundation), it is sometimes still used by former presidents. In fact, President Carter visited in June of this year. Therefore, photography of the inside is not permitted for security reasons. The house looks the same way it did when Truman stayed there. Approximately 90% of the original furnishings (down to the stapler on Truman's desk) are still there. We were surprised, although we shouldn't have been, to find the furniture looked just like Margery's parents' furniture down to the breakfront. The photo below shows the outside of the house.

 

The ocean used to come up almost to where the palm trees are in front of the house. In 1909, the harbor was dredged to accommodate larger ships and the material from the dredging was used to fill in the area in front of the house so it is now at least 500 feet from the water. Barracks (now condominiums) were built between the house and the ocean. The Navy has done a lot of dredging around Key West over the years. As much as 30% of the existing land area of Key West is fill from dredging.

Although we didn't get off the trolley, the tour also goes past the house where writer Earnest Hemmingway lived from 1931 to 1939.

Hemmingway spent a lot of time at Sloppy Joe's Bar, which is still in business. It used to have a different name, and it used to be a few doors down the street; but in 1937, the landlord raised the rent from $3 a week to $4. Joe Russell, the owner of the bar, refused to pay the increase and rented a place a few doors away on the corner of Greene and Duval Streets. The old bar never officially closed for the move. The customers just picked up their drinks and bar stools and carried them up the street to the new location. The photo below shows Sloppy Joe's Bar.

Right across from the Hemmingway House is the Key West Lighthouse. Hemmingway said it was a good thing it was so close to his house because it often helped him find his way home from Sloppy Joe's at night. The photo below shows Key West Light.

 

The first lighthouse, which was 65 feet tall, was completed in 1825. It was close to the beach and was destroyed by a hurricane in 1846. A new, 66-foot lighthouse was built on higher ground and was completed in1849. After surrounding trees began to obscure the light, the height of the tower was increased by 20 feet in 1894.

We learned about Truman and Hemmingway, and found out Key West has long been a magnet for celebrities. Other famous residents of Key West include Jimmy Buffet (singer), Mel Fisher (treasure hunter), Calvin Klein (fashion designer), Boog Powell (baseball player), Tennessee Williams (playwright), John James Audobon (naturalist), and Kelly McGillis (actress - Top Gun and Witness).

There was too much to see and do in Key West for a one-day visit. After taking the trolley tour and doing some sightseeing, we called it a day and headed back to the motor home. We would return the next day to see the sunset. We will tell you about our second day in Key West in our next post.

Florida Keys Part I: Crane Point

We left Larry and Penny Thompson Park in South Miami for a leisurely two-hour drive to Curry Hammock State Park in the Florida Keys. Curry Hammock State Park is located on Little Crawl Key in Marathon, FL, and is about half-way between the mainland and Key West.

Curry Hammock is a relatively new campground and has 25 sites with water and 50 amp electric hookups. Seven or eight of the sites have ocean views. The roads are paved and the pads and patios are gravel. The sites are widely spaced and have shrubs between. The campground is very well cared for. In addition to the campground manager, there are two volunteer campground host couples who worked very hard. Even the gravel on each site is raked between guests. The photo below shows our site at Curry Hammock State Park.

 

The next photo shows the beach at Curry Hammock State Park. Since it is a state park, the beach is kept in the natural state, seaweed and all.

Most of the commercial campgrounds in the Keys charge $70 a night (or more) for sites, but there are two or three state parks in the Keys that have camping and charge only about $30. The commercial campgrounds are still almost empty because the real Snowbird season doesn't start until January. However, because the state parks are more reasonably priced, they are filled every night. It's hard to get reservations - they are already booked through Thanksgiving next year. We made our reservations only about two months in advance, and we were blessed to find what was obviously a cancellation. There was only one site available around the time we wanted to be there, and it was available for three nights. We knew we didn't have the luxury of thinking about it or looking further, so we grabbed it - and we're glad we did.

The Florida Keys are a string of hundreds of islands that run from the Florida mainland south of Miami in an arc that swings to the southwest. The string of islands ends in the uninhabited islands of the Dry Tortugas about 60 miles west of Key West. There are 42 bridges connecting the mainland with Key West. The longest is 7 miles long and the shortest is about 110 feet.

After we got set up, we took about a 5-mile drive west to Crane Point. It's pretty easy to find things in the Keys because almost everyone gives their location by Mile Marker. Mile Marker 0 is in downtown Key West and the numbers go up as you drive toward the mainland. Curry Hammock is at MM 55.2 and Crane Point is at MM 50.5.

Crane Point is a nature center and historic site. It is a hardwood hammock surrounded by development. As we learned in the Everglades, a hammock is a high point of ground where larger plants and trees grow. Crane Point is also the site of the historic Adderly house, which belonged to Bahamian immigrants George and Olive Adderly. The house is shown in the photo below.

The dining room is shown in the next photo. The kitchen was in a separate building to protect the main house from the possibility of fire.

George and Olivia Adderly sailed from the Bahamas to the upper Keys in the 1890s and eventually earned enough money to buy 32 acres of land in the middle Keys on Key Vaca. George made a living hunting sea turtles, sponges, and making charcoal.

The Adderly house is the oldest house in the Keys outside Key West. It is built in the classic Bahamian style from tabby, which is a mix of sand, lime (made from burnt shells), and rock. The Adderly house was one of several in a little village, but it is the only one that remains. The others were built of wood and didn't survive fires and hurricanes.

In 1949, after the death of his wife, George Adderly sold his property to Mary and Francis Crane, a couple from Massachusetts. The Cranes soon began construction of the first modern house in the area. The photo below shows the back of the house. The front is somewhat overgrown and is difficult to see.

Although the Cranes did some dredging of the waters and clearing of land to build their house and the access road, and although they did plant some non-native plants to enhance the landscaping, they were ardent conservationists and pretty much left the most of area in its natural state. This preserved the habitat and the history of the hammock. The property remained in family hands after the Cranes passed away.

In 1976, the Florida Keys Land Trust was formed to preserve the hardwood hammocks of the Florida Keys. When Crane Point was in the process of being prepared for sale to commercial developers in 1989, the Florida Keys Land Trust stepped in and was able to purchase the 63-acre property and continue the preservation of this culturally and ecologically important site.

Crane Point is one of the few places left where the Key thatch palm grows naturally. The fronds from these and similar palms were used for thatched roofs. The photo below shows Keys thatch palms.

 

Sea lavender is an endangered coastal plant that grows in South Florida, the Caribbean, and Central America. The photo below shows Margery beside a row of sea lavender plants at Crane Point.

 

Sea lavender blooms almost all year round with the peak bloom period in winter. When the tiny flowers open, they are white. As the flowers get older they turn pink, so the same plant will have various shades of flowers at the same time. The sea lavender at Crane Point was just starting to bloom, so the few flowers that were out were all white.

 

Mangroves are trees and shrubs that grow in tropical tidal areas. They have intricate root systems that, in addition to helping the plants survive, provide unique habitat for marine organisms. Mangroves form dense thickets. They are sometimes called "island builders" because their dense roots trap floating organic matter, which decomposes and eventually forms soil. The photo below shows part of a mangrove thicket at Crane Point. As you can see, these roots are doing their job of island building by trapping organic matter.

 

Red mangroves grow roots that are stilts to support the plant. Oxygen is absorbed by cells of the bark.

Black mangroves grow snorkel roots that stick up out of the water to absorb oxygen.

 

The Marathon Wild Bird Center is also located at Crane Point. The center nurses injured and sick wild birds back to health. This brown pelican was one of many birds at the center. As you can see, its left wing is hanging a little lower than it should.

 

On our way back to the motor home, we stopped at Keys Fisheries and Restaurant. Their huge selection is shown on the menu board on the right, and it took us a long time to decide what we wanted. We finally decided to get a half pound of peel-and-eat shrimp and a crab cake sandwich to share.

We got to enjoy our meal on on the waterfront with a sunset. The seafood is all freshly caught and was delish. It was a little expensive - like everything else in the Keys, but not too unreasonable. Our total bill was a little over $20 including soft drinks.

 

After dinner, we went back to the motor home for a good night's rest. We'll tell you about our newest discoveries in the Keys in the next post.

South Florida's Gold Coast Part IV: Miami Beach

After Thanksgiving, we took a drive north to Miami Beach. We were planning to visit Vizcaya, which is an estate built along Biscayne Bay in the early 1900s by industrialist James Deering. We decided to follow a campground office hand-out that took us by way of the scenic route. It took us past some of the beautiful, old homes closer to the coast rather than via the Florida Turnpike.

The scenic route also took us through Coconut Grove. It was once a tropical village of Bahamian seamen; but today it is a "hip" Miami neighborhood with boutiques, seasonal festivals, fine dining, and abundant night life. The photo below shows sidewalk cafes and a number of boutiques with brightly-colored awnings.

 

The next photo shows Coco Walk, which is an open-air mall in with dining, entertainment, art galleries, and specialty shops. There's even a big, pink flamingo out front.

Coconut Grove also has a number of buildings with unique architecture. The photo below shows a store with an intricate, copper sculpture over the entrance. It's difficult to see in the photo, but there are shapes that look like butterfly wings surrounded by a background of small flowers and leaves.

Shortly after driving through Coconut Grove, we arrived at Vizcaya. Vizcaya was built as a winter home by James Deering, who was vice president of International Harvester. Construction was started in 1914 and completed in 1916. Vizcaya is an Italian Renaissance-style estate that used to consist of 180 acres (only 10 acres remain today) and included the main house, extensive gardens, and a village of support buildings that serviced the estate.

Vizcaya was such an elaborate undertaking that more than 1,000 workers were employed during its construction. That was 10% of the male population of the city of Miami at the time.

James Deering died in 1925. In 1926, a hurricane severely damaged the house and gardens. Dade County purchased the house in 1952, opened it as a museum, and began an ongoing program of restoration. The house and many of the formal gardens have been restored; and there are plans to restore more of the gardens, the support buildings in the village, and a few of the rooms in the main house that are now being used as offices.

The photo below shows Margery beside the fountains at the entrance driveway.

The front of the house, which faces Biscayne Bay, is shown in the next photo.

 

There is a boat dock in front of the house on the bay. A little way out in the water is an intricately-carved stone breakwater that is shaped like a Venetian barge.

 

There is also a tea house along the bay that has views of the stone barge, the house, and out into the bay. The photo below shows Margery and Paul in the tea house.

 

Inside, the house is quite elaborate and ornate. Unfortunately, photography is not permitted inside the house, so we'll just give a brief description. The house is built around a large, central courtyard. This courtyard was originally open, and there were several large doorways (without doors) in the exterior walls to allow the ocean breezes to circulate freely. A glass roof and glass doors were added in 1985 to protect the interior from the weather. The roof and doors also allowed the addition of air conditioning which was beneficial in protecting furniture and artwork from humidity.

The first floor has a reception hall, library, music room, living room, and dining room. The bedrooms were on the second floor.

The house contains fine antiques, furniture, sculpture, and artwork collected from all over the world. Vizcaya has 22 sets of china so guests would never get bored by having to eat from the same china pattern twice. One set of china is not the original set that James Deering ordered from England, but is a replacement set. The original set was being shipped from England aboard the RMS Titanic and now rests on the bottom of the Atlantic. White Star Lines, owner of the Titanic, provided the replacement set of china.

Even though the formal gardens at Vizcaya have been reduced in size from what they originally were, they are still quite extensive. The photo below shows just a portion of the gardens.

 

Throughout the gardens, there are smaller areas that are designed to be a little more intimate. The photo below shows one of these areas.

 

One entrance to the garden area in the photo above was through an arched, coral-lined grotto.

The hibiscus in the photo below is an example of the tropical plants in the gardens at Vizcaya.

The gardens have numerous fountains and water features like the one shown below.

 

In the next photo, Paul is standing by another water feature called the Water Stairway.

 

From Vizcaya, it is only about a 15 minute drive to Miami Beach, so we decided to continue our drive to see the historic, Art Deco hotels in South Beach.

South Beach is the southernmost part of Miami Beach and is the first part of Miami Beach to be developed. Development of the land that was previously a coconut plantation began in the 1910s. In 1920, a land boom began in Miami Beach and development increased. Much of area was destroyed by a hurricane in 1926 (the same hurricane that damaged nearby Vizcaya). Then in the 1930s, an architectural revolution hit South Beach with the introduction of Art Deco and Streamline Moderne architecture.

In the '70s and early '80s, the area fell into decline, and South Beach became a run-down, high-crime area. Then in the late '80s, a renaissance began when there was an influx of fashion professionals into the area. Even though some of the old Art Deco buildings had already been lost, many have now been restored to their former glory. Sidewalk cafes line one side of Ocean Drive, and the ocean is right over the dunes on the opposite side of the street.

 

A few of the hotels have antique cars parked out front to add to the ambiance.

 

The old Buick in the next photo coordinates with the colors of the hotel.

 

We enjoyed seeing the vitality that exists in South Beach, but the quiet of our motor home was a welcomed respite. We are almost at the end of our stay in South Miami, but there was one more thing we wanted to see while we were here before we headed to the Keys. Check back in a few days to find out about our visit to the Everglades.

South Florida's Gold Coast Part I: Palm Beach

We visited Florida's Space Coast, which is the area around Kennedy Space Center. Now it was time to check out the Gold Coast of Florida, which is the area of the Atlantic coast farther south that runs from Palm Beach down to Miami. The Gold Coast includes other cities like West Palm Beach, Boca Raton, Pompano Beach, Fort Lauderdale, and Hollywood. We usually avoid heavily-populated, urban areas such as this, but we were curious about the area and its glamor. We also needed somewhere to stop on our way to the Keys and this was a convenient distance from New Smyrna Beach.

We drove a little less than four hours south of New Smyrna Beach and pulled into John Prince Park Campground where we had reserved a site. We don't like to make reservations if we don't have to; but the Snowbirds are starting to arrive in Florida, and from what we could find out, John Prince is quite popular so we didn't want to take any chances. It turned out they weren't anywhere near filled yet, but we figure it's better to be safe than sorry.

John Prince Park Campground is beautifully landscaped. The photo below shows our pull-through site in the full-hookup section.

It has tent sites with no hookups, tent and RV sites with water and electric, and RV sites with full hookups and 50 amp electric. Long-term camping is permitted in most of the sites (lakefront sites have a 14-day limit), so they do get their share of Snowbirds. Honey wagon service is available for those in sites without sewer. Roads are paved, but they are a little tight in several spots. The pads are paved in the full hookup and 14-day sections and are crushed shell in the other areas. The size of most of the sites is quite generous; however, a few sites on the inside of bends of some of the roads are close to the site behind.

John Prince Park is located a little to the south and a little inland of Palm Beach, FL, in Lake Worth. Palm Beach County operates the park and campground. The park is located on the northern part of Lake Osbourne which is a 338-acre lake popular for freshwater fishing and boating.

One thing we didn't know about John Prince Park is that it is right next to Palm Beach County Airpark. The airpark is primarily for private planes (propeller-driven only, no jets), but we also saw (and heard) helicopters taking off and landing. Our campsite was located right next to a runway, and the planes were pretty noisy when they hit full throttle to take off. Fortunately, there weren't that many takeoffs, although Sunday seemed to be a pretty popular time for flights, as did the evening before we left (which was two days before Thanksgiving).

Speaking of noise, there are quite a few distant trains. The reason there are so many trains is the tracks are part of the South Florida Tri-Rail transit system that runs commuter trains from from Miami to Palm Beach. The tracks run parallel to I-95 on the far side of Lake Osbourne. Usually, we could barely hear the trains; but if the wind was right, they would sometimes sound quite close. Although it wasn't that bothersome, we could also hear traffic on I-95, especially when everything else quieted down at night. I-95 is 10 lanes wide in this area, and it carries a lot of traffic.

While staying in Lake Worth, we took a ride around the area. We parked and walked down to the beach, and we were struck by how much bluer the water is than farther north in Myrtle Beach or even in New Smyrna Beach. In spite of the cool breeze that day, there were a few people on the beach including one or two swimmers, a few surfers with boogie boards (also called a body board - a small, light-weight surfboard used to support the upper part of your body while body surfing), and a kite surfer. The kite is the little crescent at the left of the photo below.

 

We parked near a pier with the intention of walking at least part way out to get a good view of the beach. Unfortunately, except for a restaurant that was open at the beach-end of the pier, the rest of the pier was closed. It looked like they were doing some renovation on some of the concrete pillars for the railings.

Our research of things to do in the area turned up a DivaDuck Amphibious Tour of West Palm Beach. We always enjoy trolley and mini-bus tours of a place we have never been before. Two years ago, we took a Duck tour of Branson, MO, that we also enjoyed. We thought the DivaDuck might be a good combination land and water tour. The water part of the tour travels along Lake Worth Lagoon (also part of the Intracoastal Waterway), which would be a good way to see come of the expensive, water-front properties.

The Duck tours of Branson used renovated WWII amphibious vehicles. The name "Duck" comes from DUKW, which is a letter code used by GM, the designer of the original vehicles. Unlike the WWII Ducks, the DivaDuck is a newly-built, state-of-the-art amphibious vehicle called the Hydra-Terra built by C.A.M.I., LLC in New York. The vehicle is 39 feet long and 8 feet wide - just a little longer than our motor home. It can seat 46 passengers and 2 crew members and has a 300 hp Caterpillar diesel engine. The captain has a Class C (commercial) driver's license to operate the vehicle on land and is licensed by the Coast Guard as a Master Captain to operate the vehicle in the water.

 

We arrived early and had about half an hour to hang around the plaza in downtown West Palm Beach where the tour starts. The plaza is called City Place. City Place is a mall-like area with expensive shops, boutiques, and quite a few restaurants. In the photo below, Margery is heading into the plaza.

 

At the other end of the plaza, Margery is sitting by the fountain in front of the Harriet Himmel Theater for Cultural & Performing Arts. As you can see from the poinsettias in the first photo and the Christmas tree in the second, City Place was all decked out for the holidays.

After enjoying the plaza at City Place for a while, it was finally time to board the DivaDuck. While the tour spends most of the time in the water, the DivaDuck travels on land for several blocks to the boat ramp at Curry Park where it drives into the water of Lake Worth Lagoon. The photo below shows us heading down the ramp. Notice the label on the paddle hanging over the cab where the captain is sitting.

 

Henry Flagler, the oil/railroad/hotel magnate, was responsible for much of the development along the east coast of Florida. Last year when we visited St. Augustine, we learned how he honeymooned there with his second wife, and then built the Ponce de Leon Hotel a few years later. Flagler also bought up a number of short line railroads and formed the Florida East Coast Railway to carry guests to his hotels. West Palm Beach was originally intended to be the terminus of the railroad, but a freeze prompted Flagler to extend the railroad to Miami. The railroad eventually ran all the way to Key West.

Palm Beach was established as a resort by Henry Flagler. In the late 1800s, Flagler began buying up land on the barrier island of Palm Beach and built the Royal Poinciana Hotel followed by the Palm Beach Inn as winter retreats for wealthy northerners. Flagler founded West Palm Beach on the mainland side of Lake Worth (the lake lies between the barrier island and the mainland) as a community for those who worked on the island. Today, Palm Beach remains a place for expensive hotels, fine restaurants, high-end shops, and homes for the affluent. Although West Palm Beach has its share of fine homes and high-end shops, it is more of a bustling, working city.

Lake Worth was once a fresh-water lake. There were no rivers or streams flowing into the lake - it was fed only by ground seepage from the Everglades to the west. Today, the lake is a salt-water lagoon and is permanently connected to the Atlantic by an inlet. When the inlet was created in 1918, the dredging created Peanut Island at the mouth of the inlet. Although the island was originally named Inlet Island, it was renamed Peanut Island for a planned peanut oil operation which failed in 1946.

Today, Peanut Island has a park with campsites, a reef, a pier, and the Palm Beach Maritime Museum. There are no bridges to the island. The campsites are accessed by boat or water taxi. The museum is accessed by a ferry from the museum preview building located in Curry Park on the mainland. There is also a bomb shelter on the island built in secret for President John F. Kennedy, who occasionally spent time during the winter in Palm Beach.

The tour progressed north on the Lake Worth Lagoon past numerous luxury homes. The house in the photo below was owned by Celine Dion, but she gave her mother this house as a Mother's Day gift. Celine is building another one a little farther to the north.

 

The photo below shows a house that now belongs to an attorney but used to belong to the well-known pianist, Liberace. He had a pool in the shape of a grand piano.

 

Other famous past or present residents of Palm Beach include Ann Coulter (conservative columnist), Donald Trump (business magnate), Ivana Trump (Donald's ex-wife), Madeleine Astor (Titanic survivor and wife of John Jacob Astor), the Kennedy Family, E. F. Hutton (Wall Street broker), Rush Limbaugh (conservative talk-show host), Rod Stewart (singer), Vera Wang (designer), Henry Paulson (U.S. Treasury Secretary), Jimmy Buffet (singer) - just to name a few of the names we recognized.

On the tour, we also learned Palm Beach was named for the coconut palms found growing there. Coconut palms are not native to Florida. In 1878, a Spanish ship carrying coconuts from Havana to Barcelona wrecked and dumped its cargo. The coconuts washed ashore and sprouted on the barrier island now known as Palm Beach.

Another interesting fact we dug up was that, although they may survive for a while, it is likely that coconut palms will eventually be killed by cold weather if planted very much farther north of Palm Beach.

On the way back to the boat ramp, we passed a number of houses on the mainland side of the lagoon. These are still quite impressive and expensive, but not quite as luxurious as the ones on the other side of the lagoon on Palm Island. We also passed a large marina. Some of these boats are HUGE and there were LOTS of them! The photo below shows just a few.

 

Some of the celebrities who currently or used to dock their yachts at the marina include Jimmy Buffet, Magic Johnson, and Tiger Woods.

When we returned to the boat ramp, the captain just drove right up onto the land, and we continued on down the road back to where we started at City Place.

Another interesting attraction that turned up in our research of things to do was the Loggerhead Marinelife Center. The Loggerhead Marinelife Center is an ocean conservation organization and a sea turtle hospital and is located north of Palm Beach in Juno Beach. They are adjacent to one of the most heavily nested beaches in the world. Admission is free, but there is a suggested donation of $5 per adult. The photo below shows the entrance to the center.

 

Sea turtles are generally found in temperate and tropical waters. They are highly migratory, but the females return to the beach where they were born to lay eggs. The loggerhead turtle, along with the green, leatherback, hawksbill, and the Kemp's ridley, commonly nest in the U.S. The loggerhead is most common, but all the above species are either threatened or endangered. The leatherback is the largest at about 6 feet long weighing from 500 to 1500 pounds. The Kemp's ridley is the smallest with a shell length of 2 feet or a little more and a weight of 85 to 100 pounds. The Kemp's ridley is also the rarest and most endangered.

Inside the center, there is an exhibit room with facts about sea turtles (especially loggerheads) and beach ecology. There also is interesting information about shellfish, sand, and coral. There is a display of a cross-section of a simulated loggerhead turtle nest. The turtles mate during migration. The female finds her way back to the beach where she was hatched, climbs out of the water, and digs an egg chamber to deposit her eggs. She then covers the eggs with sand and returns to the water. The female loggerhead will repeat the nesting process up to 9 times in a nesting season. The photo below shows the simulated nest with the hatchlings climbing out.

 

As soon as the hatchlings crawl out of the sand, they head straight for the water. They will spend the first several years of their lives hiding within floating plants, such as Sargassum (which is a brown, free-floating seaweed sometimes also called Sargasso seaweed). The young turtles will eventually leave the protection of the seaweed and head for near-shore habitats such as lagoons and estuaries.

The exhibit also includes a replica of the fossilized skeleton of an extinct sea turtle that was found in our "home" state of South Dakota. At a length of over 13 feet, the Archelon is the largest species of sea turtle that has ever been documented. The photo below shows the Archelon replica.

 

Out back of the exhibit building is the turtle hospital. There are exam and operating rooms where visitors can watch through observation windows if there are turtles being treated. There are also tanks where visitors can view recovering turtles. The photo below shows a turtle named Boo.

Boo was brought to the turtle hospital by fishermen who found him offshore and realized Boo had fish hooks in his mouth. Now that the hooks have been removed, Boo is still slightly underweight and anemic. The web site for the Loggerhead Marinelife Center has a listing of all the current hospital residents and what their ailments are. About 70% of their patients recover and are returned to the ocean.

We are enjoying our time on Florida's Gold Coast. We particularly like the lush, tropical landscaping that comes with being farther south in Florida. There is an even greater variety of palm trees and other tropical plants than there is in parts of Florida to the north. The photo below shows bougainvillea. Although light frost will not kill the plant, it will cause all the leaves to fall off. The leaves will eventually regrow, but here in South Florida, there is little danger of frost.

There is more sightseeing to come along the Gold Coast before we move on to the Keys. Stop back soon to check out our next post.

Florida's Space Coast Part III: The Coast

In addition to witnessing the launch of the Shuttle Endeavour and visiting the Kennedy Space Center, we also explored some of the other things to do in the vicinity of the Space Coast.

On the barrier island south of New Smyrna Beach and to the north of Kennedy Space center is Canaveral National Seashore. The seashore is an undeveloped area that is a sanctuary for plant, animal, and marine life.

A short distance inside the northern entrance to Canaveral National Seashore is Turtle Mound. Turtle Mound is a 50 foot high hillock of mostly oyster shells and is a refuse mound left by the Timucuan Indians from about 800 to 1400 AD. During the time the Indians lived here, the mound was as much as 75 feet high. Turtle Mound contains over 30,000 cubic feet of refuse and extends approximately 600 feet along the shore of the Indian River, which is the river that runs between the barrier island and the mainland. The mound is easily visible from the sea and has been used as a landmark by mariners since the time of the Spanish explorers. The turtle-like shape of the mound gives it its name.

There is a boardwalk that carries visitors to the top of the mound.

The photo below shows Margery and Paul on the boardwalk with the Indian River in the background.

 

Much of the larger plant growth has been removed from the top of the mound. You can see exposed oyster shells in a number of areas. But more importantly, with the vegetation removed, there is a clear view of the surrounding area. The photo below is looking north along the Indian River. The beach houses in the distance to the right are outside the national seashore.

 

Along the boardwalk, we saw several of these zebra longwing butterflies sipping nectar from the flowers.

 

A little farther down the road into the national seashore, we stopped at a parking area along the ocean side of the island where we could walk out to the beach.

 

After visiting Canaveral National Seashore, we also stopped to the north in New Smyrna Beach near where we were staying. Unlike the beach at Canaveral National Seashore, New Smyrna Beach is more like Daytona Beach a few miles farther to the north with a wide beach with little slope. The sand is very fine and so tightly packed you can easily drive your car on the beach like you can at Daytona. There is little danger of getting stuck unless you disobey the signs and try to drive on the sand at the very back of the beach where the tide seldom reaches. The photo below is one of the many auto entrances to the beach at New Smyrna.

The panoramic view of New Smyrna Beach below shows how totally different it is from the beach at Canaveral, which is only 8 or 10 miles to the south.

Just across the inlet to the north of New Smyrna Beach is Ponce de Leon Inlet Light Station. But you can't get there from here because there is no bridge across the inlet. You have to go back across to the mainland, drive about 10 miles north almost to Daytona Beach, cross the bridge there out to the barrier island, then drive almost 6 miles back to the south to get to the light station.

At 176 feet high, Ponce de Leon Inlet Light Station is the tallest lighthouse in Florida and the second tallest in the country. The lighthouse used to be called the Mosquito Inlet lighthouse until the inlet was renamed in honor of the Spanish explorer in 1927, which is a good thing because we tend to avoid any places that have "mosquito" in its name. :)  Work on the lighthouse was begun in 1883 and completed in 1886. The lighthouse is constructed entirely of brick and contains approximately 1.25 million of them. The foundation is 12 feet deep and is 38 feet across at ground level. At the base of the tower, which is 32 feet in diameter, the walls are 8 feet thick. The tower tapers to 12 feet in diameter at the top where the walls are only two feet thick. The photo below shows the Ponce de Leon Inlet lighthouse.

This area of the coast was long recognized as being very dangerous. Bonfires were lit on the shore to aid mariners. The first lighthouse built on the south shore of the inlet in 1835 was damaged by a hurricane, attacked by Seminole Indians and eventually fell into the sea without its lamps ever having been lit.

Last year when we visited the light station in St. Augustine, FL, we learned that, although the terms lighthouse and light station are frequently used interchangeably, lighthouse refers to the tall structure with the light on top while light station refers to a lighthouse that has a complex of support buildings. The support buildings at Ponce Inlet include the principal keeper' s house, two assistant keepers' houses, a woodshed, a pump house, a generator building (added in 1940), and an oil storage building.

Paul climbed the 203 steps to the top of the lighthouse. The photo below shows one of the assistant keeper's houses from the top of the tower. Margery, who decided not to stress her knees by climbing the tower, is sitting on the bench in front of the house to the right of the steps.

 

From the top of the lighthouse, you can see Daytona Beach in the far distance to the north...

 

...and to the south you can see the marina at the mouth of the inlet, New Smyrna Beach in the middle distance, and Canaveral National Seashore beyond that.

An entrance building/gift shop was added to the complex in 1992. It was built according to 1883 plans for a proposed, multi-family keeper's dwelling. In 1995, a building to exhibit the Preservation Association's collection of Fresnel (pronounced Fre-NEL) lenses was also added.

Fresnel lenses are actually a combination of lenses and prisms. The use of prisms allows a reduction of the overall thickness of the lens.

Order numbers are used to classify Fresnel lighthouse lenses with a first order lens being the largest and a sixth order the smallest. The first lens used at the Ponce de Leon Inlet lighthouse was a non-rotating, first order lens illuminated by a five-wick kerosene lantern whose light could be seen 20 miles out to sea.

In 1933, the lighthouse was electrified and the fixed lens was replaced by a rotating, third order lens. The rotation of the lens allows a unique pattern of flashes which is used by mariners to identify the lighthouse so they would know their exact location. The third order lens continues in operation today as a privately-operated aid to navigation.

There are a number of lenses and lamps on display in the lens exhibit building, but the star of the show is the restored, first order lens that was originally located in the Canaveral Lighthouse to the south. The Canaveral Lighthouse is located near the Kennedy Space Center. When it was discovered vibrations from all the rocket launches were damaging the lens of the Canaveral Lighthouse, the lens was removed in 1993 and placed on display at the Ponce Inlet Lighthouse. The lens is over 16 feet high and weighs 12,800 pounds.

 

As you can see, the lens is illuminated, although with a lower wattage lamp than would be present in actual use. The lens also rotates, and we were fascinated by the light patterns as they traveled around the walls.

 

Many of the other buildings on the grounds have displays of artifacts and photos that depict the life of the keepers and their families. The First Assistant Keeper's house is furnished the way it would have been at the turn of the 19th century. The photo below shows the bedroom.

 

Also on the grounds is one of the first charter fishing boats in Ponce Inlet, the Gay Wind. The boat was built in 1939 in St. Augustine and was in service until 1999.

 

Next to the Gay Wind were two rafts used by Cuban refugees trying to escape to America. The one on the left is made from canvas and styrofoam and washed ashore in 1989. A life vest was left in the raft by the Coast Guard indicating those on board had been rescued. The raft on the right was made from a truck inner tube, some wood, and a few pieces of styrofoam. The fate of those on the second raft is unknown. The fragility of these rafts that were used to traverse 90 miles of open ocean between Cuba and Florida indicates how desperate some are for freedom...something we take for granted.

 

While walking the grounds of the lighthouse, we stopped to admire these tropical-looking plants with bright orange flowers. We don't know what they are, but it was a good reason for a photo.

We spent a week on Florida's Space Coast and we found plenty to do, but there was one more thing we wanted to check out before we left. Right up the road from the campground was a sign for the ruins of a sugar mill. Every time we drove by, we were curious as to what it was. Finally, on our last day in New Smyrna Beach, we drove into the narrow road to find out. Just a few yards off the main road was a nice little county park.

In 1830, Henry Cruger and William DePeyster acquired 600 acres of land, bought machinery, and established a sugar plantation and mill on the site. Unfortunately, in December, 1835, Seminole Indians attacked the mill, set fire to it, and destroyed other plantations in the area.

The sugar house where the sugar cane was processed is pretty much all that remains of the mill. The locals carried off some of the stone blocks to use for other buildings after the destruction of the mill. The building was made from coquina, which is a type of limestone found along Florida's Atlantic coast. Coquina is composed of compressed bits of shell and is quite durable. In our travels last year, we found the Castillo de San Marcos (the large Spanish fort) in St. Augustine, FL, was constructed from coquina. The photo below shows the sugar house.

The mill had a steam-powered cane crusher to extract the juice, which was then heated in large kettles. Some of the kettles are still there. With Margery and Molly standing beside them, you can see how big they are.

 

When enough water had been boiled off, the thickened juice was ladled into wooden cooling troughs. After the sugar had cooled and crystallized, it was packed in barrels. Before shipping, the barrels were stored for a time to allow the molasses to run out.

Behind the ruins of the sugar mill is a short nature trail that runs through the palmettos. Molly enjoyed the opportunity for a little walk.

As we said, there is a lot to do in this area, but it was time to be moving on. We will have to add another location to our list of places we want to return to someday. From here, we will be heading farther south.

We find taking a guided tour is a good way to get a quick overview on our first visit to a historic city like St. Augustine. We took a tour last year in Savannah and this year in Charleston and enjoyed them both. We like the tours because they are a quick way to find out where things are located, to learn some interesting facts that may be hard to dig out otherwise, and to get an outline of the history of the area. So we wanted to take a guided tour of St. Augustine. There are only a couple of tours available, so we chose Old Town Trolley Tours. The tickets are good for 3 days, we could get off and on at any of over a dozen stops along the route, and we got a combo ticket that also included admission to The Old Jail and the Florida Heritage Museum.

One interesting stop along the tour is at St. George St., which is which is now a pedestrian mall. The buildings in this old section of the city have been transformed into quaint shops as shown in the photo below.

In spite of numerous attacks on the city and many fires and hurricanes, quite a few buildings from the 1700s remain. For example, there is the Gonzales-Alvarez house from around 1723, the Colonial Spanish Quarter which is a city block of nine historic houses and shops from around 1740, and the oldest wooden school in the United States. The exact date the old school was built is unknown, but it first appeared on the tax records in 1716. Many of the old wooden buildings such as the school are not painted. They are built of cypress and cedar which are resistant to rot and insects. The photo below shows the oldest school.

Imagine our surprise to find out that "snowbirding" is not a phenomenon unique to the 21st century. It seems that its origin go as far back as 1888! Perhaps was is unique is that it became more attainable for the middle class as our parents entered retirement. Henry M. Flagler had a huge influence on what is considered to be the golden age of St. Augustine. He also left a permanent mark on the entire east coast of Florida as well as much of the entire state. Henry Flagler was the business partner of John D. Rockefeller in the Standard Oil Company. After the death of his first wife in 1881, Flagler traveled to St. Augustine on his honeymoon with his second wife. He recognized the potential for Florida to become a winter playground for the wealthy and the rest, as they say, is history. In January, 1888, his Ponce de Leon Hotel opened and a second hotel, the Alcazar, was well underway across the street. The Ponce de Leon Hotel, which is shown in the photo below, is now part of Flagler College.

Flagler College is relatively young at 40 years of age. This co-educational, nonsectarian college provides "a rich liberal arts education in a small, supportive environment." Students provide tours of the Ponce de Leon Hotel but we saved it for another visit.

Louis Comfort Tiffany designed the interior of the hotel and included in the design are 79 stained glass windows. The windows shown below are in the hotel dining room (also the current dining room of the college) and are valued at over $6 million.

Unique to Flagler College is their annual New Year's Scholarship Ball where guests can welcome in the new year among the breathtaking Tiffany glass, elegantly carved columns and towering murals of the former Ponce de Leon Hotel’s Dining Hall. New Year's revelers can celebrating by getting a taste of the former luxury resort’s opulent heyday. Black tie, of course, is required. :)

Flagler saw the need for good transportation to get his guests to his hotels so he purchased the Jacksonville, St. Augustine, and Halifax Railroad, which was the first part of what was to become the Florida East Coast Railway. The railway was eventually extended all the way to Key West with Flagler buying or building hotels along the way in places like Daytona, Palm Beach, and Miami. Flagler encouraged settlement and farming along his railway and made many gifts to build hospitals, churches, and schools.

One of the churches built by Flagler is the Flagler Memorial Presbyterian Church which he built in memory of his only daughter, Jenny, who died while giving birth in 1889. The church, which is styled after St. Mark's Cathedral in Venice, was completed in less than a year. Flagler, his first wife and his daughter are interred in a mausoleum within the church.

Henry Flagler was quite the ecumenical. He also built the Grace United Methodist Church. Their original church and parsonage stood on land Henry wanted for his Alcazar hotel so he built them a new church in exchange for the site. He also gave land for the Ancient City Baptist Church and financed a new bell tower for the Cathedral Basilica of St. Augustine which is shown in the photo below.

Flagler also built the city a new jail. It seems his hotel guests didn't like seeing prisoners from their room windows so Henry built a new jail outside of town. It was quite attractive for its day and, in fact, first-time visitors to town who disembarked at the train station across the street at night sometimes went up and knocked on the door of the jail thinking it was a hotel. The Old Jail is shown below.

Here is Paul demonstrating where the term "jail bird" came from. Unruly prisoners were locked in cages which were then suspended over the prison yard.

Christmas decorating in St. Augustine isn't as low key as it is in Williamsburg; but being a historic city there is an absence of blow-up snow men, plastic Santas, and tacky glitz. The bed and breakfasts do the most elaborate decorating. The one shown in the photo below has combined Williamsburg-style decorations around the door with more elaborate lighting.

Below is another example of a bed and breakfast with Christmas lights.

In addition to touring the old city both in the daytime and at night, we drove across the bay to Anastasia Island to see the beach and to tour St. Augustine Lighthouse. The Spanish built a wooden tower on the island manned by a single soldier. The watchtower was primarily an early warning system to identify incoming ships, but it also served as a landmark to identify the city.

In 1683, the wooden tower was replaced with a sturdier tower built of coquina. The complex also included a guardhouse, a well, and ammunition storage, all surrounded by a high coquina wall.

By 1870, it was evident the sea was encroaching on the coquina lighthouse and construction of a new, brick structure was started in 1871. The new lighthouse was first lit on Oct. 15, 1874. Several years later, the old lighthouse fell into the ocean.

The photo below shows the St. Augustine Lighthouse with its distinctive spiral black and white paint scheme and red top. This design is used to identify the lighthouse in the daytime.

The lens in the lighthouse is a Fresnel (pronounced fray-NELL) lens named after its French inventor Augustin Fresnel. Fresnel lenses for lighthouses are essentially a series of concentric prisms and are ranked according to size. Sixth order lenses are used on lakes and in harbors. First order lenses are the largest. The St. Augustine lens is the same first order lens that was first used in 1874 and measures 9 1/2' tall. The lens in the photo below is a fourth order lens and is similar to the one used in the coquina lighthouse from about 1855 to 1871.

The St. Augustine Lighthouse is 165' tall and the maximum actual recorded sighting distance was 18.75 miles out to sea in 1911. We decided not to climb the 219 steps to the observation deck, but they did make for an interesting photo.

Margery is descending the stairs from the porch of the keepers' house in the photo below. The keepers' house is a duplex where the 2 keepers and their families lived.

The St. Augustine Lighthouse is still operated as a navigational aid and as a museum by a non-profit organization. Today it is fully automated with a sensor to turn it on at dusk and off at dawn. There is minimal maintenance required and the duties of the keepers (which in addition to lighting and putting out the flame also included carrying fuel up the tower, replacing and trimming wicks, cleaning soot from the lens, and winding the mechanism that turned the lens) have all been eliminated.

From St. Augustine, it is a short hop over to the Orlando area where we plan another visit to the Mouse. Last year we thought we wouldn't need to go back to Disney for a few years, but Disney did what they do best - they created good memories. We enjoyed thinking about last year's visit so much with all their Christmas decorations and programs, we decided to schedule a return trip for our next stop.

From Charleston, SC, we continued our southward journey stopping at Ocala National Forest where we stayed at Salt Springs Campground. While Ocala National Forest has a number of campgrounds, most have no hookups. Salt Springs Campground, however, has full hookups and is a nice quiet campground with paved pads and numerous trees - mostly pines and live oaks. Still, there are quite a few sites with potentially good satellite reception. With the discount we got with our America the Beautiful Pass, this was a nice place to chill out for a few days at a lower price than some of the tourist areas we had been in recently.

After spending four days at Salt Springs, we headed northeast to St. Augustine on Florida's Atlantic coast where we had reservations at Indian Forest Campground for a week. Indian Forest has gravel roads, packed sand/grass pads, and scraggly grass between sites. Indian Forest is very convenient to St. Augustine; but that means they are located on a main road into town with the accompanying traffic noise, especially since they are very close to the road. Many of the sites are shaded, but the owners graciously gave us one of the sites in the center of the main loop where there was full sun.

St. Augustine is the oldest continuously-occupied, European-established city in America. We had followed primarily British history up until now with our visits to the Historic Triangle of Williamsburg/Yorktown/Jamestown, Charleston, and with last year's visit to Savannah. We had touched on the history of Spain in the New World with our visit to the Alamo in San Antonio and to the Southwest in general, but now it was time to learn about Spain on the eastern side of the continent.

Florida was discovered in 1513 by Juan Ponce de Leon, whose name means Prince of Lions in English. Although there were prior Spanish settlements, they all were abandoned due to hurricanes, famine, and warring native tribes. The city of St. Augustine was established in 1565 by Pedro Menendez de Aviles. This founding date is 22 years before British "Lost Colony" on Roanoke Island in 1587 (when supply ships finally returned 3 years later, the original colonists had vanished), 42 years before the British colony in Jamestown, and 55 years before the Pilgrims landed at Plymouth Rock.

The 208' tall stainless steel cross in the photo below marks the spot where Pedro Menendez is said to have landed on September 8, 1565.

As soon as the landing party was ashore, they celebrated a Mass of Thanksgiving and afterward, Menendez laid out a meal to which he invited as guests the native Seloy tribe who occupied the site. The meal probably consisted of cocido, a stew made from salted pork and garbanzo beans, laced with garlic seasoning, and accompanied by hard sea biscuits and red wine. If the Seloy contributed to the meal, the menu could have included turkey, venison, gopher tortoise, seafood such as mullet and sea catfish, maize, beans, and squash.

Although the thanksgiving at St. Augustine was celebrated 55 years before the Puritan-Pilgrim thanksgiving at Plymouth Plantation in Massachusetts, it did not become the origin of a national annual tradition. During the 18th century British forces won out over those of Spain and France for mastery over the continent. Thus, British observances such as the annual reenactment of the Pilgrims' harvest festival in 1621 became a national practice. After the U.S. became an independent country, Congress recommended one yearly day of thanksgiving for the whole nation to celebrate. George Washington suggested the date November 26.

In 1863 during the bitter struggle of America's Civil War President Abraham Lincoln established the last Thursday in November as a National Day of Thanksgiving, making it truly a national holiday. The President urged prayers in churches and in homes calling on the "whole American people" wherever they lived to unite "with one heart and one voice" in observing a special day of thanksgiving, and to "implore the interposition of the Almighty to heal the wounds of the nation and to restore it...to full enjoyment of peace, harmony, tranquility and union." We don't know how football got into it. :)

Last year when we visited Savannah, GA, we learned that Savannah had several forts to protect the new colony from the Spanish. In fact the British colonies of Georgia and Carolina were so worried by the Spanish that they attacked St. Augustine several times. Their efforts to expel the Spanish by force were unsuccessful. After the French and Indian War, the 1763 Treaty of Paris gave Florida and St. Augustine to the British. Florida was ceded back to Spain at the end of the American Revolution in 1783 in recognition of Spain's assistance to the Colonies during the war. A little later, however, Spain was being invaded by Napoleon and was struggling to retain its colonies. Spain turned Florida back over to the United States in 1821.

One of the reasons the British Colonies were unsuccessful taking St. Augustine by force was the strength of Castillo de San Marcos, a fort built by the Spanish to protect the city. For over 100 years, St. Augustine was protected by a series of wooden forts. Construction of a masonry fort which was called Castillo de San Marcos was started in 1672. The Castillo is built from a locally available stone called coquina, which literally means "little shells." Coquina is made up of fragments of billions of sea shells bonded together by time and pressure. It is fairly soft so it is able to absorb the impact of cannon balls without cracking making it an ideal material for a 17th century fort.

The fort is built in a star shape. The bastions projecting out from the corners of the fort provide a variety of angles of fire from the gun deck atop the walls, including the ability to trap anyone foolish enough to try to scale the walls in cross fire.

The entrance to the fort, which is shown below, was protected by a tidal moat and drawbridge.

Inside the fort, the chapel can be seen in the center of the wall which faces the entrance.

In the photo below, the white line just below the horizon and to the right of the muzzle of the cannon is the surf breaking at the mouth of the harbor about 3 miles away. This is just within range of the cannons.

Paul remembers his childhood visit to St. Augustine. The photo below shows Paul at Castillo de San Marcos in 1956.

Here is Paul during our recent stop at Castillo de San Marcos near the same location as the 1956 photo. The fort has changed a little since 1956. Paul has changed a lot!

Castillo de San Marcos is only a small part of what there is to see in St. Augustine. We think a guided tour is in order and will do some research to see which one we like the best.