The very rare transparent Butterfly
Just hatched and drying their wings
This is a real easy one to drive by without noticing, it's off of US-41 in the middle of an S-turn and on a side street that just looks like a residential street, it turns out that the society owns the entire street. This is without a doubt our favorite garden so far, it covers about 13 acres right on the bay,
has two homes one is the visitors center and gift shop the other is a museum on one floor and the main floor is where local artist have their art shows. There is a coffee shop and two small cafes and tons of benches around to just sit and relax. Following the pathway we went through many different types of gardens, through around and under the banyan trees, there is also a green house where they sell many of the plants that they have on the grounds. There was really just to much stuff here to write about it all and I could have posted another dozen or so pictures and still not have covered it properly.
Banyon Tree,
After we left I got mixed up in traffic and we ended up back on Long Boat Key, so we went south this time and ended up at South Lido Park, so we got the picnic basket out and grabbed a table. We had a nice picnic lunch with about a dozen squirrels that decided to join use to see what they could get, after lunch we took a little walk on the beach around the point. The first thing we came across was a kid fishing and he had caught a small shark, about 12-14 inches long, he was trying to figure out how to get the hook
minutes it bite through the line and swam away. A hundred yards father down we found a bunch of jelly fish washed up on the shore, sure makes you want to go swimming at this beach, get stung or bite your choice. We also watched a red tail hawk hover for about 2-minutes before making a dive into the water from about 40-feet to get a fish. A pretty interesting little walk for us.
We did the outlet mall thing in Ellenton, Cathy with her coupons and a little black magic managed to buy a $24 top for only 11-cents, she even amazed the cashier with that one. On the way home we stopped at the Manatee Historical Village, we were here about three years ago and it was kind of a rough neighborhood, but since then they have really cleaned the area u and are doing a great job of restoring the historical district of the town.
The village is a freebee so you gotta like that, they have about 10 buildings that have been moved here and restored. The main building is the KW Wiggin's store, which also houses the museum. On the grounds you will find the Fogarty boat works, Manatee's first court house which is the oldest remaining court house in Florida, a church, smoke house, sugar cane mill and my favorite the Stephens house which is a Cracker Gothic style home, don't know what it means but I want it. It has a huge hallway that is open to the outdoors and gives you a breeze no matter which way the wind is blowing.
The indoor aquarium is fairly large and has probably 50 different displays, everything from a 2-foot long lobster, without the butter, clown fish, coral reefs, to some great fossils.
From here we stepped outside and found Molly the Mollusk, a 27 foot-long giant squid, this one was found in New Zealand and had been preserved, this is the only place in the USA that you can see on of these on display, no one has ever seen a live giant squid in it's natural habitat. No pictures of it, it was too ugly. There is also a model of a 14.5-foot hammerhead shark that was caught 2006 (World record).
It was feeding time for the sharks so we climbed up to the top of the 135000 gallon tank to watch them, We were all ready for a Jimmy Buffet style "Feeding Frenzy", but instead all we got was the care takers putting cut up fish on the end of a pole and holding it in the water for the fish to take, except none of the fish appeared to be hungry. The tank itself held a variety of fish: nurse, bull, black-tips and sand sharks, grouper, tarpon, snook and redfish, makes you want to go back out to the car and get your fishing rod.
Hang Tough is a green sea turtle (vegetarian), he was brought to the Mote with several injuries which left him blind so now he just swims around in his tank, using his flippers as a white cane to keep from swimming into the wall. You can't touch them but you can get within a foot or so of them when they come to the side of the tank.
Another favorite are the manatee's Hugh and Buffett, they were born at the Miami Seaquarium and transferred to the Mote in 1996, they are trained to participate in the scientists research so they can try and save more of the manatee out in the wild.
It's a hot sunny day and we're right in the middle of all the snowbird traffic as they work their way into south central Florida and drive all of us EARLY snowbirds crazy, so it's time for a little escape from reality.
and started to sell some of the plants and fruits. When so many people wanted to walk through the garden he started charging a small fee. The garden continued to grow and during the 1930's it became one of the top roadside tourist attractions in Florida, showing people what the tropic Florida was really like.
Once you enter the garden the sun disappears as you walk through tunnels formed by the heavy canopy of tropical growth, follow the trail and you will soon be walking through a bamboo forest, crossing steams on little arched bridges, spotting tropical birds and cascading waterfalls. Continue on viewing some of the 50,000 different varieties of plants, back to the
butterfly garden and house were you can rest up and maybe have a butterfly or two join you on your shoulder, finish up at the cactus garden before you head back out into the real world of noise, traffic and confusion
This area passed between the Spanish, British and Americans until 1821 when the Florida Territory was ceded to the US and US troops were sent to occupy the stone fort, which now stood there (built by the Spanish in the mid 1700's).
The next day it was another journey to find the mouth of the St Marks River at the Gulf of Mexico and St. Marks Lighthouse and Wildlife Preserve. The lighthouse is a large brick structure that was built in 1829. During the Civil War the Confederates used the lighthouse as a lookout to watch the Unions blockade ships and raiding parties. One of these raiding parties was able to fight off the Confederate troops and set fire to the wooden interior staircase of the lighthouse thus preventing it from being used as lookout any more. This helped the Union in landing troops for the Battle of Natural Bridge which took place just south of Tallahassee, but that's another story. PS the Confederates won.
They have a lot of trails through this area and we took a short one along the water, the first thing we discovered was that the trail near the water was covered with thousands of Fiddler Crabs, as soon as we would get close they would start to run for cover, it looked like the entire beach was moving and the sound from their shells bumping together sounded just like rain. After about a half mile walk down the beach we started to return and noticed and a few hundred birds were walking down the beach where we had
just been, as we got closer they took off and we found the killing fields of the Fiddler Crabs, all that was left was bird tracks in the sand and the large claws of the Fiddler Crab. Oh! The humanity of it all, Oh! The humanity.
After recovering from this terrible site we took the Levee trail, which followed the coast, but in the other direction, it just so happens that this is the start of the Monarch Butterfly migration, every fall the butterflies head to an area in southern Mexico to spend the winter. They mass up on the gulf coast to feed and get ready for there flight across the gulf to Mexico, the bushes were covered with bright orange a yellow butterflies and everyone there was taking the worlds greatest butterfly picture, including me.
This thing is called a Georgia Thumper, the told us that they were a little small this year because of the drought. It's on a 2x4 so you can see how big it really is.
During the War of 1812 the British sent Colonel Nicolls to the Apalachicola River region located in Spanish Florida to build a British post. Its purpose was to recruit and train Seminole Indians and runaway slaves he built the fort just 60 miles south of the US territory line. When the British pulled out of Florida at the end of the war they left the fort well equipped with cannons, ammunition, guns and kegs of black powder. They left the fort in the hands of 300 escaped slaves and a handful of Indians; the fort was soon renamed “Negro Fort” It attracted over 800 escaped slaves who settled and started a community. The US Military made demands to their counterparts in Spanish Florida to return the escaped slaves to their owners in the US and destroy Negro Fort, The Spanish refused to answer and plans were made to attack the fort.
Col. Clinch led his infantry and surrounded the landside of the fort and ordered them to surrender, their answer was to open fire with their artillery. On July 27, 1816 US gunboats moved up the river and opened fire on the fort, after a short exchange of artillery, one of the US rounds, a heated canon ball, went through the open door of the powder magazine causing hundreds of kegs of black powder to explode instantly destroying the entire fort. Over 270 men, women and children died in the explosion.
In 1818, Lt. Gadsden was ordered to rebuild the fort; he built his fort inside of the earthworks of the original British post and named it Fort Gadsden. Years later during the Civil War the Confederates used the fort until an outbreak of malaria forced them to leave.
The earthworks still remain for both the British Post and the US Fort, they have an nice interruptive center there and a trail which take you to the Renegade Cemetery, where there are the remains of a small brick tomb where the dead from the explosion where buried.
We wandered around the forest a little and came across a sign for the Bloody Bluff Cemetery; we searched the area and only found one stone. Here endth the lesson.
