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.

Marie Selby Gardens

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,
Air plants on a live oak,
Tree with a root system like an octopus ,
Rainbow trunk,
Tree with a bunch of sharp tacks on its truck.





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
out with out putting his hand near its mouth, after about a 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.

Manatee Historical Village

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.
For more info click HERE.