Ft. Myers

Sunday, October 12, 2014

Today we moved south about 85 miles to Ft. Myers.  Our journey was mostly on I-75, arriving about noon.  Whew, hot again, 90+ and high humidity.  We decided to check out Ft. Myers Beach, only a few miles from our campground.  Wow, being Sunday, a holiday weekend (Columbus Day), and a Pirates Fest, it was Party On!  at the beach.

Although there was a nice breeze it was hot, so after a nice little walk, we headed home.

Monday, October 12, 2014

Today we’re off to Sanibel and Captiva Islands.  The Island is heavily residential with lots of big and expensive homes.  Half the Island belongs to the J. N. Darling National Wildlife Refuge.  There is a 4 mile wildlife drive with turnouts overlooking a wetlands.  Some pictures follow.

Reddish Egret

Rosette Spoonbills

Mangrove

Mangroves grow wild around here, and as you see, it would be impossible to get through a stand of them.  They seem to grow with no direction.  Their root system covers a large area and is intertwined.  It is a curse for developers.  In fact, there has been efforts to eradicate them, until finally it was realized their importance in protecting the shores from erosion and helping to dissipate hurricane winds and storm surges.

The beaches at Sanibel are rated some of the best for swimming and shelling.  A storm appears to be approaching, so we didn’t stay long.  We found some interesting small shells.

 

Tuesday, October 14, 2014

Today our interest takes us to the winter home of Thomas Edison.  With lots of Edison history in Port Huron and at Greenfield Village, this was a must visit for us.  His estate is located on about 14 acres of land along the Caloosahatchee River that he purchased in 1885.

While he had visited Florida previously, his selection of this particular area was made because of the bamboo and other tropical plants present.  Edison wanted to develop bamboo as filament material for his light bulb.  Light bulb filaments lasted maybe a couple hours at this time.  A carbonized bamboo filament lasted hundreds of hours.  As we know, tungsten became the preferred material.

About this time, Edison and Ford became friends.  In fact, Ford bought a house and property next door to Edison on the River here in Ft. Myers.  Edison developed the battery and generator for Ford’s cars.  In the late 1920s, Ford asked him to look for a domestic source for rubber. At this time the US used 70% of the world’s rubber production for tires, all of it was imported and subject to political, price, and weather impacts.  Kind of like oil today.

Edison had a botanical garden growing hundreds of plants and a laboratory to test them for latex content.  He was searching for a source that could be grown anywhere across the US and and found that Golden Rod, as in the “weed”, worked and could be grown nationwide.  After WWII synthetic rubber was developed, basically ending further research.

Well, it wasn’t our intent to turn this into a history lesson, but Edison was a fascinating guy.  He has almost 1100 patents.  We figure he was probably viewed a little kooky in the day with all his inventions.  Following are a few pictures of the Estate.

Edison Winter Estate

Edison Living Room

Edison’s Study and Moonlight Garden

Some interesting plants,

Palm and Coconut

Bougainvillea

Shoreline in front of Edison’s house

Edison Dock / Pier, (only pilings remain).  Pier was used for barges bringing materials and boats carrying Edison or Ford.  No roads or railroad reached this area until the 1910s.

Ford Winter Estate

Ford Living Room

As stated above, Edison researched plants that could be used for rubber production and grown in the US.  Since rubber was extracted from plants in South America and other tropical areas, he planted and/or tested over 14,000 plants in his botanical laboratory on this site.  The lab has been reconstructed and it looks as if the clocked stopped here in the 1920s.  Even the dust looks original.  This was Dan’s favorite in the complex.  Some picture’s follow.

Edison is known for many inventions, like the phonograph and

the movie camera. In fact, his Edison Studio in New Jersey produced the movie titled “The Great Train Robbery”  A 10 minute silent western.

His work with the light bulb and electricity generation is one of his big accomplishments.  He made the light bulb practical and created the electrification system necessary to put it in homes, streets, and buildings.  He had to invent each component used in this system and those used in the power station.  One of his generators is shown here.

 

Thomas Edison was a remarkable man.  He lived to be 84 and continued working right up to his death.  Many of his achievements came when he was in his 70s. We are glad we had an opportunity to stop here as it provided more insight into his life.

At some point we need to visit his West Orange, NJ lab, now a National Park site.

Wednesday, October 15, 2014

Fort Meyers has been an interesting stop.  It is a bit lower key than Sarasota and much less traffic.  Tomorrow we head into Big Cypress Preserve and The Everglades, part 1.  We will visit the southern part of the Everglades during our stay in Homestead in a couple of weeks.

Our stop tomorrow is at Midway Campground, a NPS campground near Ochopee.  It is unlikely we will find WiFi for the next several days. We’re having fun sharing our adventure.

Sarasota

Thursday, October 9, 2014

Today we left Clearwater and moved south about 65 miles to Sarasota. In route was the the Tampa Bay Sunshine Skyway Bridge.  At about 4 miles in length, this is an impressive structure!  No pictures of it though, as we were driving.  Our home for the next couple days is Sarasota Sunny South RV Resort.  This campground has several park trailers with full time and long term residents. It lies within a residential neighborhood, a little urban for us, but has all the amenities to make a long term stay enjoyable.  There are a number of in-park activities like community cookouts and many social gatherings.

Yesterday we made a visit to a not too well known, little park in Tampa that was not mentioned in the last post.  The park is called Lettuce Lake Park and is a Pinellas County Park.  The draw for us was a 1 mile boardwalk through a swamp that borders the Hillsborough River.  Along the boardwalk you see an amazing variety of birds, along with big cypress trees.  A few pictures follow.

Lettuce Lake

Swamp Lettuce

A Little Blue Heron

The swamp.  Looks like you could walk across, doesn’t it?

Dan’s new camera has a 50x zoom that came in handy for critters here.

Ok, back to Sarasota.  After getting set up we drove over to The Ringling.  This is the estate of John Ringling of the Ringling Brother’s Circus.  The Ringling brothers and their circus originated in Baraboo, Wisconsin.  There is a circus museum there that Lynn has seen.  He and wife Mable made Sarasota their home and built this palatial house and out buildings in a Venetian motif.  The house, built in about 1920, and its surrounding property is called Ca’d’Zan, meaning House of John from a Venetian Italian dialect .  John had amassed quite a fortune from the circus, his real estate holdings (he owned most of Sarasota), railroads, and some oil drilling ownership in Oklahoma.

Unfortunately, Ringling’s fortune didn’t last.  The Great Depression caused a big real estate crash in Florida and people stopped attending the circus, because they could not afford it.  As a result, Ringling blew through his money.  To top it all off Mable died.  At his death, 7 years later, creditors took all but about $300, however John had bequeathed his Art Museum and the estate to the State of Florida.  John and Mabel had no children.

The house was not open Thursday evening, but a Circus Museum and the Art Museum were.  The Circus Museum had some interesting stuff, but nowhere near the collection in Baraboo.

The cannon used in the human cannonball act.

One of 140 circus wagons the circus travelled in early 1900s.

Ringling’s private railroad car used by John and Mabel in the early 1920s

The Art Museum contained many works that John and Mabel purchased abroad.  Most were portraits, not our taste, but the courtyard was impressive.  The sculptures and the night lighting made it special.

Friday, October 10, 2014

As you should know by now, we dig gardens!  So today we visited the Marie Selby Botanical Gardens.  What attracted us to this one was the largest collection of Epiphytes of any garden in the US.  We bet you’re all asking, what are Epiphytes?  They are plants that grow on other plants.  They are not parasitic, nor do they use the host for anything but a place to hang on.  Examples are orchids, ferns, bromeliads, and mosses.

Most Epiphytes reside in South and Central America.  The Gardens sends expeditions into these areas, almost annually, in search of unique plants to add.  Here are a few pictures.

These are Bromeliads, also known as air plants. One Bromeliad that you all know is a pineapple.

The next couple are ferns:

The were many varieties of ferns.

This flower is in the begonia family.

The following are some of the very large collection of orchids:

And there were other plants too -

Pitcher Plant- it’s carnivorous

A member of the zebra plant family

 

Bird of Paradise

The Marie Selby Gardens is the estate of William and Marie Selby.  They gained their wealth through the success of Selby Oil Company.  Marie’s passion was gardening.  Unlike the mansion Ringling built, Selby’s was modest.

Within the estate grounds is the Christy Payne Mansion.  The house has been transformed into a Museum of Botany and Arts.  Currently on display are works of Angela Maria Isaza, who specializes in an art form called  Batik.  The technique uses cotton fabric that is dyed, layered with wax to mask areas from the dye, and repeated until the image is complete.  The wax is then removed by ironing.  It provides a remarkable piece of art.

Saturday October 17, 2014

Today its off to the beach.  We checked out Siesta Key beach yesterday and it looked fabulous, sugar white sand and FREE parking!

It didn’t disappoint. Sunny 90 degrees on October 11th, and we’re at the beach!  Rubbin’ it in for our friends in Michigan!

As many of you know, we are keeping our eye on possible wintering locations.  Although Clearwater was nice it was way too busy and traffic was a pain.  Sarasota looks pretty good, lots of things to keep you busy, but still a bit busy for our taste. 

Next we move onto Ft. Myers.  Stay tuned!

Sponges, Glass, and Seashells

Sunday, October 5, 2014

Wow it was 50 in the trailer this morning, actually needed the heater to warm it up a little.  We have enjoyed our stay at Rock Crusher.  Each shower and toilet were in their individual room, so it was like your private bathroom.  It was unisex, so had to remember to drop the lid!

The only aggravation we had was a little plant called a Sand Spur.

 

See those little picky things?  They stick to anything that touches them and the picky things are stiff and really hurt when they get in your sandals, toes, and fingers.  They grow only in sand, and are “in bloom” in the fall.  Errrrr!!!  They were all over our camp site.  If they had run the lawnmower over our site before our arrival it would have helped.

Our next stop is Clearwater.  The park is called the Clearwater Travel RV Resort.  Beautiful landscaping, concrete pad, all the amenities.  Well the landscaping was beautiful.  Because the grass was wet and soft from Saturdays big rain it now bears some sizable ruts where we backed in.  We feel really bad about it.  

After getting setup we decided on two things to do.  Get a DQ Blizzard, we are junkies, and then visit Tarpon Springs.   Probably a little known fact, Tarpon Springs is one of the busiest fishing ports in Florida and the only sponge harvesting area in the US.  The town is primarily Greek and diving for sponges is their gig.  They used to use hard helmet diving, now its like scuba, but with air lines and weighted boots.

Sponge is harvested using a hand manipulated rake.  If firmly attached to rock or coral, the sponges are cut.  They grow back and do so within 3 to 5 years. Each must be 5 inches or larger to take.  The sponges then go through a drying and washing process to remove the membrane that coats them.  The sponge is actually a skeleton.   They are more durable than synthetic sponges and hold far more water.  As the pictures show, there are many types and shapes.

The town centers around the sponge docks and loaded with Greek restaurants and gift shops.  It reminded us of Mackinaw City and Leeland, though they are not Greek.  There is a really big store called the sponge factory.   They sell just about every size and type of sponge here.

The boat shown below are part of the sponge fleet. 

Monday, October 6, 2014

It was a cool and cloudy start today, so we thought we would go into St. Petersburg to see The Chihuly Collection and the Morean Glass Gallery & Hot Shop. Conveniently, downtown parking was cheap and a downtown trolley/bus took you around for 25 cents per stop.

Dale Chihuly is an artist that uses molten glass as his media.  His work is really unique.  We first saw some of his work in a large ceiling display at the Bellagio in Las Vegas.  His works have also been in Phoenix, but after our visit a couple years back.  Its hard to describe his work, but once you see it you will not forget it.  The collection in St. Petersburg is presented by the Morean family, who has several galleries in St. Petersburg.

The pieces are lighted externally in a way that the light plays off the colors and shapes.  The following pictures do not do justice to them.

Pretty neat aren’t they?  We recommend anytime you have an opportunity to see Chihuly’s work, do so.

A few blocks away is the Morean Gallery and Hot Shop.  The Hot shop does glass blowing demos every hour.  It was one of the most interesting glass blowing demos we have seen, a couple of pictures follow.

This link will take you to a video of the demonstration.

Morean Hot Shop Glass Blowing Demo

The gallery had some really neat pieces for sale, although tempted we passed them by.

Tuesday October 7, 2014

A day at the beach!  We went up to Honeymoon Island State Park.  Supposed to be one of the top ten beaches in the US, according to the brochure. The Park is pretty cool and has lots of history.  It got its name from the original owner who built honeymoon cabanas out of grass to give it that tropical island feel.  It did not do well, so the State of Florida acquired it.

Top 10 beach it isn’t, and we’ve seen a couple right?  Beach is short, rocky and water gets deep very quickly off shore.  It seems to be pretty popular though, as quite a few visited today.  Gulf Beach SP in Alabama has it beat.

We decided to take a look at Clearwater Beach, which we did out the window as we drove by.  Nice white sand, but at $3/hour to park, no maximum, we didn’t stop.  We ended up at Sand Key, a Pinellas County Park.  Nice wide beach, lots of shells, although small.  So we wandered along picking up shells.  We agreed we wouldn’t do that, we have tons of shells, but hard to resist!