Toccoa Falls and Easy Company

Time to do some catching up on what we’ve been up to while in the Georgia Mts. Other then trying to stay warm, we did manage to get in a few road trips on the sunny days.

The first day we headed over to the city of Toccoa, to visit Toccoa Falls, which is located on the campus of Toccoa Falls College, there is a small charge to walk back to the falls but it’s worth it. Read the sign below to find out about this killer falls.



60 feet higher the Niagara Falls, it's just a short walk from the gift shop.

After leaving the falls we drove into town and stopped at the old Railroad Depot, which has been turned into two museums. The first is a museum about the county, which has a very interesting history; it was surprising to see how many famous people have come from this little town. But then we passed through the doors to see what we really came for The Currahee Military Museum; this covers the history of Camp Toccoa, the Paratroopers Training center for the 506^th, 501^st, 511th and the 517^th. This was the home camp for Easy Company better known by the name of the movie that was made about them “A Band of Brothers” This was one of the best little museums that we have been to in a few years, they have done an excellent job of collecting and displaying numerous artifacts from the soldiers and their families.

After leaving the museum we did the driving tour which took us to the location where the original camp was, the still have the foundation of the front gate and have placed a monument on it, also back down the road in the fields you can still find the fire hydrates and some street signs that are left over.

These T-shirts were issued to the soldiers that trained here, this is the only known original to exist, since the soldiers wore them when they went of to battle, they were all destroyed and thrown away. This one was given to a girlfriend in town and that's why it's still around.







The Movie Band of Brothers was based on soldiers that trained here. This is a picture of the cast from the movie.










Easy Company (Band of Brothers) held their 60th Reunion here.













Click on this to enlarge so you can read it, it tells about the stable in England that was converted into a barracks for Easy Company to use while they were staging for D-Day. The museum has one of the original that they had dismantled and shipped here.













The Stable/Barracks









Inside the stable










This is a letter written to one of the soldiers from his mother, when they were dismantling the stable it was found wedged between two of the planks.











If you follow the driving tour you end up out where the original camp was, the foundation of the front gate is still there with the monument on it. Down the road and in the woods you will find some old street signs and fire hydrants showing where the streets and barracks were.










This town is also the home town of George Washington Hitt, he was crippled and in a wheel chair, he had very little use of his arms and hands yet he had an incredible talent, holding a pair of surgical scissors upside down and using only his thumbs he cut out shadow pictures that are just unbelievably intricate in their design.

Leaving Chattanooga

We left Chattanooga this morning after a month’s stay, other then going to Michigan to visit with the kids, and shovel snow; we really didn’t do too much due to the very cold weather this year. Last year at this time we were running around in shorts and this year we were fighting over the extra blanket.

During our last week here we drove over to the library book sale at the mall and stumbled onto the Medal of Honor Museum. They were just recently forced to move from there other location which was about 5 times bigger the store front that they are in now, but even with this little space they managed to put quite a lot on display.

My favorite was a display of envelopes that a father did some art work to before sending them to his son over seas there were about 50 of them but this is a picture of my favorite one.

Cathy figured out that we were only an hour drive away from Winchester Tenn. So we drove over there for a day so she could do some research. On the way home we decided to take all back roads and as we normally do, we found some things.

Say hi to Sir John Templeton, of the Franklin Templeton Funds, he was born here in Winchester, which is in the county of Franklin, hence the name. He built a private library to house all his papers and it sits on the top of a small mountain over looking the valley and Winchester.

Just outside of Tracy City we found a park where they were hundreds of civil war era coke ovens, as you drove down the road the side of the road was nothing but coke ovens, they were everywhere. The close up picture of the inside of one show how hot these things got, the bricks are glazed over from the heat.

About another ten miles down the road there was a sign for Foster Falls, can’t pass that up, half a mile into the woods we parked the car and followed a nice trail about another 200 yards and found a very pretty falls, we stood on the observation platform in the snow to view it, and here I thought that we left all that white stuff in Michigan.

We broke camp in the rain, then drove all day through the mountains on little two lane roads in the pouring rain to our new location just outside of Cleveland, Cleveland GA that is. We set up camp in the pouring rain and then as soon as we got inside to have lunch the rains stopped and the sun came out. WE went into town for a little shopping and when we got back we found out that we had missed the first televised game of our beloved Tigers, that will never happen again. I hope.

A day in Jacksonville

We started out the day by driving down Main Street from the north end to the St John Riverfront Park, where we walked around the park for about an hour and toured the Jacksonville Maritime Museum. Just a little place but it covers the history of the waterfront and shipping on the St John River.


After a little walk around the waterfront we headed over to Fort Caroline, this fort was established by the French in 1564 and lasted a year before being attacked and destroyed by the Spanish. It's not a very big fort but did have some nice views of the river and salt swamp.








On the way home we stopped by Fort George Island and walked around the Kingsley Plantation, this is out in the middle of nowhere. There is a very small plantation house, unlike the larger ones in Georgia that was built around 1814 when this was still Spanish Territory. The house is in pretty good shape and the are 34 ruins of slave cabins on the grounds.

Jacksonville Day 2

T o day wes was goin tO jackysville gain an desided ta stap at da palce , I thunk its kalled it is wear threy…..mure abut ths a litle lader.


Next Morning.

OK where was I when I left off, oh yeah, yesterday we drove down to Jacksonville a took the tour at the Budweiser Brewery, this place is huge and all they do is brew beer, and give it away free when you go on the tour. They start you out with a short film giving you a bit of the history of the company. From there you go down a long hallway, one side is all windows so that you can watch them brewing and bottling the beer and the other side is a wall with a pictorial history of the company.

The building is five stories tall and each floor is a separate brewery, the one we were at had a sign saying that it bottled 1200 bottles of beer each minute. That’s a lot of beer, all of the beer from this brewery is for Florida and Puerto Rico and that’s all. At the end of the tour they leave you in the courtesy room where you may sample their ware, they have a bar with about 15 different beers that they brew and you may sample them, for the non-drinker they also serve soda, stop by the gift shop, pick up a souvenir keys chain and you’re on your way. It was about an hour but a very interesting hour.

A history of the pop-top Can







This is where the Beechwood aging is done. THe best count I got was that there are 68 of these vats here.

Discovery Gardens

This is a little garden just south of Tavares on Woodlea Road, look for the sign at the parking lot after turning off of US 19 or you'll miss it. This is an extension garden from the university and has over 20 different themed gardens and over 700 verities of plants with a lot of fountains and a butterfly house, a frost had hit the garden about a week earlier but there were still a lot of blooms.

Guard of the Garden

2008

Another Whispering Giant
It's here and that means that its time for us to start moving northward, hopefully at a fairly slow pace. The first thing we did to start the new year out was track down another Whispering Giant, we found this one right down by the riverfront in Punta Gorda.

This one is named "Calostimucu" and is the only Whispering giant that has a carving of a face on both the front and back, the front has a more friendly face with an eagle and the back is a meaner looking face with a bear. I think the reason the Toth made this a double is that the owner of the hotel, commissioned him to do this one and left have room and board at the hotel (free) until he finished. Since it was winter and he was in Florida I think that it took him longer then normal to do this one thus extending his freebee stay at the motel.


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Another day long road trip
We did a little drive out to Gasparilla Island, it took a little to find our way out there but it was worth it. This island was one of the original gulf coast islands that the rich came down to for the winter. It's a very interesting drive through the neighborhoods and city to get to the State Park at the far south end, there is a small lighthouse and museum, a nice sandy beach but no swimming because of the currents.

Naples Botanical Gardens

Walked through the Naples Botanical Gardens today, this is a fairly new garden (4-years old) and when they get it finished in about 4-5 years will be one you don't want to miss. Right now it's about 20-25%, they have a small walking trail with some unusual plants, and an Amazon room with the tropical plants and some spiders, frogs and turtles. But the best part is the butterfly area, it's enclosed with hundreds of butterflies, you can see the cocoons which they bring in and glue to a string on the bushes (see pictures) then the stage were they are coming out of the cocoon and drying their wings. The next room has giant geckos and the room after that had a bird similar to a Hummingbird called Honey Suckle. After that they have a mile long trail that takes you back through a wetlands/swamp area, this is where the other parts of the garden are going to be.
The great thing about this garden is it's right in the middle of Naples and you feel like you're 100 miles out in the wild.

So far this has been a great winter, low 80's everyday and it has only rained at night.

The very rare transparent Butterfly

Cocoons that have been glued to string and hung in the bush.




Just hatched and drying their wings


Giant gecko

Edison-Ford Estates

We're spending December at Indian Creek RV Resort in Fort Myers Beach,. We checked in on the 1st which was a big mistake since everyone else was also checking in, we were in line for an hour and a half before we finally got to our site but it was worth it, we got a great site on a small lake in the back of the resort. This is probably the best run and one of the nicest parks we have ever been to, what ever you want is here.

Took a day and toured the Edison-Ford Estates last week, Edison came down here before there were any roads to get a way from the crowds and years later when he and Ford became good friends Ford bought the house next door. They take you on a tour of the estates and grounds for about 30-40 minutes then they turn you loose to wander around the rest of the property, then when you want they take you on another tour of Edison's laboratory. Every Christmas they give each elementary school a tree to decorate and they put them on display around the grounds; they had some pretty neat ideas.