Living Our Dream

Lake Placid, Florida

Events of Friday, January 11, 2019

Barb and Kent, who are friends of ours who used to live near us in our old hometown of Pittsburgh, now live in the Chicago area. They called us last fall to say they were going to be staying on Sanabel Island in Florida for a week this January. We made arrangements for them to stop by our place last Friday.

After showing them around our new park model, we relaxed and chatted for a while to catch up on what has been going on with each of our families. We have gotten together with Barb and Kent in previous years when they have come to Florida, and we usually try to do a little sightseeing and then go out to eat. We had several ideas for things to do, and we eventually decided to drive to Lake Placid, which is about 10 minutes south of Sebring, to see some of the murals that are painted on various buildings around town.

One of the nicknames for Lake Placid is "Town of Murals" because they have over 40 murals depicting the history of Lake Placid. The other nickname is "Caladium Capital of the World" because 98% of the world's caladuim bulbs come from Lake Placid.

The murals are periodically commissioned by the Lake Placid Mural Society, which was founded in 1992 by Bob and Harriet Porter. Each mural is sponsored by various businesses, civic groups, families, and/or individuals. The Lake Placid Chamber of Commerce Visitor's Center in downtown Lake Placid has guide books for sale for $4 with photos, descriptions, and a map showing the locations of all the murals, so we stopped at the Visitor's Center first.

Before each mural is painted, the artist must submit first a black-and-white rendition of the mural. Once the initial drawing is approved, the artist then submits a full-color painting of the mural that is suitable for hanging. The Visitor's Center houses a gallery of the full-color paintings. The Visitor Center also shows a 10-minute video that gives information on how the murals are created.

After watching the video, we bought a guide book and headed outside to see the murals. The first one was right on the side of the Chamber of Commerce building. It is called "Town of Murals - How it All Began," and it depicts Bob and Harriet Porter founders of the Mural Society. It was sponsored by friends of the Porters and was completed in 2013. The founding of the Mural Society was inspired by murals the Porters saw in a little town in Canada while on a motorcycle trip.

Mural depicting Bob and Harriet Porter, founders of the Lake Placid Mural Society

We walked to several other murals that were located nearby. A fun thing about the murals is that all but one of them have either hidden items in them or items missing from them for viewers to find. One example was in a nearby mural called "Turpentine Industry." It was sponsored by the family of Walter Coachman, who was co-founder of a company that owned over 2 million acres of pine forests and that supplied pine gum for caulking wooden ships. Pine gum was also distilled into turpentine.

Mural depicting the "Turpentine Industry"

The mural was completed in 1994 and is 62 feet long. It includes 4 faces hidden in the foliage. The next two photos show Kent, Margery, and Barb looking for the hidden faces and a close-up of one of the faces.

Kent, Margery, and Barb looking for hidden faces in the mural

Close-up of one of the hidden faces

One of Paul's favorite murals was one called "Birding" because it is located next to a small park. The landscaping in the park blends right in with the mural and looks like a 3D extension of the mural.

Mural called "Birding" and adjacent park

The 67-foot long "Birding" mural is significant because Highlands County where Lake Placid is located is on the National Birding Trail. Volunteer birders gather in Highlands County every December for an annual Christmas bird count.

Next, we hopped into the car and drove a few blocks to a new location where we saw several more murals, the most notable of which is called "Tea at Southwinds." "Tea at Southwinds" was dedicated in 1993 and is the town's first mural. Southwinds was a winter resort belonging to Dr. Melvin Dewey, inventor of the Dewey Decimal System of library classification. This first mural is the only one that does not have hidden or missing items.

"Tea at Southwinds"

After seeing a total of about a dozen of the murals in the downtown area, we were all getting hungry. We decided to head a few miles north to Jimmy's Greek American Grill in Sebring. However, we had one more mural we wanted to stop and see on the way. It is located across U.S. Highway 27 on the side of the Save-A-Lot grocery store. It is called "Cracker Trail Cattle Drive." At 175 feet long and 30 feet high, it is the largest of the Lake Placid murals.

A section of the "Cracker Trail Cattle Drive" mural

The Cracker Trail ran all the way across central Florida and was used to drive cattle to the ports of Bradenton on the west coast of Florida and Fort Pierce on the east coast. The trail goes through nearby Zolfo Springs and passes by very close to the Co-op. The term "cracker" comes from the cracks of the whips of the cowmen as they drove the cattle.

The "Cracker Trail Cattle Drive" mural was completed in 1995 and was sponsored in part by the Highlands County Cattlemen's Association. In order to raise money for the mural, the association allowed various ranches to put their brands on some of the cattle in the mural. They charged one fee for the smaller cattle along the bottom and a higher fee for the larger cattle.

Detail showing brands on some of the cattle in the mural

The murals are very well done. Since we only saw about a quarter of them, and since Lake Placid is so close, we will definitely be planning a return trip to see more.

We then headed to Jimmy's where we each had gyro platters with fries and a small Greek salad for dinner. Jimmy's has absolutely the best gyros! After dinner, someone mentioned Dairy Queen, so we had to stop on our way back to the Co-op.

Back at the park model, we said our good-byes to Barb and Kent who were flying back to Chicago the next morning. It was a very nice day of fellowship, sightseeing and food.

Highlands Hammock State Park

Wauchula, FL - Events of Thursday, January 10, 2019

By the time we returned from our trip to Pittsburgh, we realized the cold Paul came down with two days before Christmas had turned into bronchitis. Bronchitis is an inflammation of the bronchial tubes. It's usually caused by a virus, so antibiotics won't help. Bronchitis will normally go away by itself, but it can take two to four weeks. Paul's lasted a total of about three weeks, and he had lingering tiredness for a week or so after that.

Paul was finally feeling a good bit better last week, so last Thursday we decided to go on a tour of Highlands Hammock State Park that was organized by one of the couples from the Co-op. The tour included a tram tour, tours of the CCC museum located at the park, hikes, and a picnic lunch. The state park is located about half an hour from the Co-op near Sebring.

A hammock is a stand of hardwood trees, usually surrounded by wetlands. The hammock may be only a few inches above the surrounding land; but this higher ground creates dryer conditions making the growth of the hardwood trees possible. The hardwood trees at Highlands Hammock State Park are mostly varieties of oaks and hickory.

There are several other ecological zones besides the hardwood hammock located within the park. We'll have a little more on that later. 

Our group had over 40 people. Since the tram only holds 30, we had to schedule a tram tour at 9 a.m. and a second one at 11 a.m. We were on the first tour. It was one of the cooler nights of the fall/winter season, and it was in the low 40s when we boarded the tram. Although the sun felt warm, most of the tour goes through the woods. Also, with the tram traveling at speeds up to 10 or 15 MPH at times, we needed to bundle up to stay warm.

Kevin, who was our driver and guide on the tram tour, is a volunteer at Highlands Hammock. He gave us a brief description and history of the park before the start of the tour. He was very knowledgeable and interesting.

Kevin, our volunteer tour guide

Highlands Hammock State Park opened in 1931 as one of the first 4 state parks in Florida. The CCC, which was formed in 1933 by President Franklin D. Roosevelt during the Great Depression to give meaningful work to able-bodied men, played a big role in the initial development of the park. More on the CCC later.

The first point of interest on the tram tour was a 1000-year old Live Oak. It isn't the biggest tree in the park, but it is the oldest.

1000-year old live oak tree

Live oak trees tend to rot out from the inside, which is what happened to this one. In the late 1990s, much of the tree collapsed in spite of (or maybe because of) efforts back in the 1930s to clean out the rot, add steel reinforcing rods, and fill the hollow trunk with concrete. One of the large branches can be seen still lying on the ground to the left of the tree. In spite of losing major branches, the tree still is alive with new growth sprouting from the top of section of the trunk to the right.

Next, the tram tour passed through the hardwood hammock. Sabal palms also frequently grow alongside the hardwoods.

Hardwood hammock

Within a short distance, the elevation started to drop, and we entered yet another ecological zone - a cypress swamp. Cypress trees are one of the few deciduous conifer trees, and they lose their needles in winter.

Cypress swamp

As the tour went on, the elevation began to rise again, and we entered a dry ecological area known as a pine flatwood where the vegetation is made up primarily of pine trees and under-story palmettos. Back when the first Spanish explorers first arrived in the 1500s, 70 to 90% of Florida was pine flatwoods.

Pine flatwoods

The existence of pine flatwoods depends on periodic fires. The pines and palmettos are resistant to fire and will survive. In fact, some pines rely on fire to open the cones to release seeds. Hardwood saplings and other under-story plants on the other hand, will be burned up before they can become established. Fires can occur naturally, primarily through lightening strikes, but naturally-occurring fires can be very unpredictable and dangerous. Therefore, prescribed burns are conducted every few years to preserve the nature of the pine flatwoods in a controlled, safe manner.

The final area on the tram tour was a drive along a canal that was dug back in the day to help drain excess rain runoff from the park. This is an excellent location to see wildlife, and we saw dozens of birds including the ones shown in the following photos.

Great Blue Heron

Anhinga

Ibis

Great Egret

On sunny days, there are usually numerous alligators sunning themselves on the banks of the canal. It was early on a cool morning, so the tour guide thought there might not be any out yet, but we saw a small one that was 15 to 18 inches long and the one shown below that was about 3 or 4 feet long.

3 or 4-foot alligator

The tram dropped us off at the CCC museum. As we said, the CCC played a big role in the development of this park and many others across the country. The museum at Highlands Hammock State Park is housed in what was the rec hall for the CCC back in the day.

CCC museum

The CCC provided young men with food, housing (many times in tents), clothing, and a wage of $30 a month. The men got to keep $5, and the rest was sent home to their families. Over 3 million young, able-bodied, unmarried men participated in the CCC with a maximum enrollment at any given time of about 300,000. The CCC provided manual labor for the conservation and development of natural resources on lands owned by federal, state, and local governments. The CCC built shelters, lodges, service roads, trails, and service buildings in over 800 parks across the country. They also planted over 8 billion trees. The CCC was discontinued in 1942 shortly after the U.S. entered WWII.

Map showing the locations of CCC camps

Margery was interested in the CCC museum because her dad was in the CCC. We found on the map the camp where he worked in the Laurel Highlands of Pennsylvania back in the day.

Margery checking out a display of some of the tools used by the CCC at Highlands Hammock State Park

Because we had previously scheduled haircuts for both of us for shortly after noon in Sebring, we only stayed for the tram tour and a brief tour of the museum. We missed out on a docent-led tour of the museum and a couple of hikes that were planned for later; but with Paul just recovering from bronchitis, going on a hike probably wasn't a good idea anyway.

After our haircuts, we stopped at Dee's Place in Sebring for a late lunch of half-pound burgers. We then headed back to the Co-op to relax with an evening of TV.

We had friends from out of town scheduled to stop the next day for a visit. We'll tell you about that in our next post.

Trek to Pittsburgh Part II

Pittsburgh, PA/Wauchula, FL - Events of Wednesday, December 26, 2018, to Tuesday, January 1, 2019

As we said in our last post, we had both come down with colds while we were in Pittsburgh for Christmas - Paul on Christmas Eve Eve and Margery on Christmas Eve. However, Margery, who slept through most of Christmas day, awoke on the day after Christmas feeling much better. Paul - not so much.

J. Michael had to work on the day after Christmas, but the rest of us had planned to take Lydia to Phipps Conservatory to see the holiday flower show that morning. Paul was still very much under the weather, so he reluctantly decided not to go.

The holiday flower show at Phipps includes an inside/outside light show at night. While the lights are beautiful, it's hard to appreciate the gorgeous flower display inside because of the low lighting. During the day, however, the flowers and lush displays inside occupy center stage.

Poinsettias in the formal Broderie Room

Lush Christmas trees in the East Room

Another advantage of going during the day is they have exhibits and activities just for kids. At the end of the Gallery Room, there is a farmers' market complete with faux groceries and a play cash register. In the next photo, Margery is helping Lydia weigh a turkey.

Margery weighing a turkey at the farmers' market

Other activities for kids included starting rosemary plants, making pine cone bird feeders, and making whimsical animals from air plants. In the next photo, Lora watches while Lydia decorates an air plant. Kids get to take the projects home with them.

Lora watches while Lydia decorates an air plant

The girls all had a good time at Phipps. They paused for a photo of Grammy and Lydia on the chair used by Santa when he visited Phipps before Christmas.

Grammy and Lydia

Paul really missed going to Phipps. He has fond memories of going there with his grandfather when he was a kid and of going there as a family when Lora was growing up. Oh well, at least Margery took a slew of pictures for him to enjoy at home.

We had planned to take Paul's step mom to lunch on Thursday; but Paul still wasn't feeling well, so we decided it would be best to cancel. Paul's step mom understood. In fact, she said that not giving her his cold was the best gift we could have given her.

By Thursday evening, Paul was feeling a little better. It was a good thing because Lora and J. Michael had scheduled friends to stop by. Paul avoided hugs and handshakes and kind of kept to himself to avoid spreading germs.

Paul still had a lingering cough as we said our good-byes to Lora, J. Michael, and Lydia on Friday morning and headed out to our overnight stop in Rock Hill, South Carolina. There was light rain off and on all day and a lot of fog and mist through the mountains; but traffic was light for the first part of the journey through West Virginia and Virginia.

As we entered North Carolina, Google Maps, which we connect to our car's in-dash display to use for navigation, said there was considerable congestion ahead on I-77 north of Charlotte. Google Maps suggested an alternate route that would save a good bit of time, so we took it. It was a little out of our way, but it was still faster than the more congested, direct route; and at least we were moving almost the entire time.

We got an early start on the second day of travel from Rock Hill to Wauchula. Traffic was again light during the morning until we got to I-95. I-95 is a major north-south route that connects the entire northeast with Florida. While I-95 is 3 lanes (or more) each way in Georgia and Florida, it is only 2 lanes each way through South Carolina where there are frequent slowdowns. This year was no exception, but at least it was early enough in the day that the slowdowns weren't too frequent or too long.

This year, we also noticed a much higher volume of traffic heading north as those who went to Disney, Universal Studios, or one of Florida's many beaches for the holidays headed back home. Maybe the higher volume of north-bound traffic this year was because our second day of travel was on a Saturday, which we had never done before.

The other area of congestion is Orlando. Since we always hit Orlando late in the afternoon, traffic is usually horrible, and the construction along I-4 going through downtown doesn't help. Since we were traveling on a Saturday this year, at least there was no rush hour traffic in Orlando itself, but there was late-day congestion on the western side of Orlando where Disney, Universal Studios, Sea World, etc. are located. Google Maps suggested an an alternate route to avoid the congestion at the attractions. Again, it took us on a more circuitous route, but it was still faster and was better than sitting in stop-and-go traffic.

After we got off I-4 in Orlando, it was clear sailing the rest of the way home. We decided to stop for dinner at John's Drive In located in Fort Meade, which is a little to the north of Wauchula. John's gets good online reviews.

John's Drive In

We both had fried grouper sandwiches with fries and slaw (about $8). John's portions are large and the prices are reasonable. The food was pretty good, but nothing that would cause us to go very far out of our way to go back.

Margery with her grouper sandwich

From John's Drive In, it took only about 15 or 20 more minutes to get home. We got the car unpacked, chatted with the neighbors, got most everything put away, got the first batch of laundry started, and had time for a little TV before heading off to bed.

We skipped church on Sunday because Paul's cough was still lingering, and we were both still tired after two days of driving. During the afternoon, Paul napped, and Margery worked on the Co-op newsletter.

Monday was pretty much a repeat of Sunday, except that Monday was New Years Eve. Paul, whose cough had finally started to diminish, still wasn't feeling 100%. He was in bed by 11:00, and he never even heard all the fireworks being set off by the locals at midnight.

We put away Christmas decorations on New Years Day and watched a little of the Rose Parade. Margery worked on the Co-op newsletter, and Paul, who still wasn't feeling his best, did a lot of napping.

So that closes out another trip to Pittsburgh for Christmas and another year. We wish all our readers a happy and blessed new year.

Trek to Pittsburgh Part I

Pittsburgh, PA - Events of Wednesday, December 19 to Tuesday, December 25, 2018

On Wednesday, December 19, we headed to Pittsburgh to spend Christmas with family. We made our usual overnight stop at the Hampton Inn in Rock Hill, South Carolina. Barbara and Dick, who are RVing friends of ours who live near Rock Hill, met us for dinner at the Texas Roadhouse located near the motel. We had a great time chatting and catching up.

We made good time on both days of travel since traffic was fairly light. We pulled into Lora and J. Michael's driveway around 3:00 on Thursday afternoon.

Lydia is growing by leaps and bounds. We see a big difference in her just from last September when we all spent a week together in Orange Beach, Alabama.

On Friday morning, we went to Lydia's pre-school where she played Mary in the Christmas program. The program was very well done, and the kids were adorable.

Lydia (to the left of the angel) playing Mary in the pre-school Christmas program

After the program, the two of us headed to the North Hills of Pittsburgh for some appointments. We stopped for a late lunch at Chick-Fil-A before heading back to the house.

One of the things Margery wanted most this Christmas was to spend some mother-daughter time with Lora, so Lora took her to tea on Saturday afternoon at the Johnson House Tea Room as an early Christmas present. The Johnson House is located to the north of Pittsburgh in Mars, Pennsylvania. They had a nice time.

Lora and Margery outside the Johnson House Tea Room

On Saturday after  dinner, we drove to the nearby town of Clinton to see their Christmas light display like we have done in previous years. Thousands of lights are put up by volunteers every year along a 1-mile drive though the municipal park. The display is really remarkable. Proceeds from the $10 per car admission fee go to local charities.

Santa's workshop

Tunnel of lights

In addition to lighted figures, lights strung on trees, and decorated Christmas trees, they also use some of the picnic pavilions in the park to create winter scenes. The pavilion in the photo below is made up to look like a cabin in the woods all decorated for Christmas.

Cabin in the woods

After the light show, we headed back to the house. Lydia headed off to bed soon afterward, and the adults relaxed for the rest of the evening.

Sunday was Christmas Eve Eve. Like many churches, the church Lora and J. Michael attend combined Christmas Eve services with regular Sunday services since Christmas was so close to Sunday. They also added a couple of Sunday afternoon services to help spread out the crowds.

It was a nice service with many of the traditional carols. Unfortunately, Paul felt he might be coming down with a cold earlier in the morning. By the time we got home, he was sure of it. He started taking Airborne and took a long nap in the afternoon.

On Monday, Margery also started to feel the cold coming on. Neither of us felt too bad, so we went with Lora, J. Michael, and Lydia to J. Michael's brother's house for Christmas Eve. We steered clear of hugs and handshakes so we didn't spread our germs. It was a nice evening.

On Christmas morning, we weren't about to let our colds dampen our holiday spirit, and we had a good time watching Lydia open her gifts. She started by opening her stocking.

Daddy and Lydia opening her stocking

Lydia's big gift was a Barbie Dream House. The next photo shows her before opening the gift.

Lydia with her big gift

It turns out the box was empty. Lora and J. Michael had wisely assembled the house beforehand and had hidden it downstairs in the laundry room. Lydia was thrilled to say the least.

After we had all opened our gifts, Margery headed back to bed while the rest of us had a delicious breakfast of scratch-made cinnamon rolls. After that, Paul also went back to bed for a nap while Lydia played with her Barbie Dream House downstairs in the family room.

We were invited to go with Lora and J. Michael to J. Michael's family Christmas celebration later that afternoon and evening, but our cold symptoms were getting pretty bad by that time, so we decided to stay home and not spread our germs. Margery went to bed around 5 p.m., and Paul joined her around 8.

We'll tell you more about our trip to Pittsburgh in our next post.