Exploring the area

We haven't gone anywhere too exciting lately so thought we'd go see some of the local must see's. Manatees are very large (about cow size; thats why they're called sea cows, I guess) and live in the fresh water rivers. They don't like cold water and hundreds of them migrate to the local electrical generating plant because of the warm discharge water. So, if you want to see lots of Manatees you have to go there. Do you see them?

After shooting a dozen pictures, this is the best I got. The inlet was loaded with them, its just that they stay just below the surface until they need air, then they slowly stick their nose out and roll back under. In the previous picture, all the bumps on the waters surface are Manatees. This is the tail of one. Its hard to tell size buts thats about 3 feet across. After a half hour of this your mind goes numb.

I did manage to get a picture of this one anyway. Because they lay just below the surface they are often hit by boat propellers so they are collecting for rescue and repair. Pictures are available in the gift shop for a nominal fee for photographers who didn't manage to get as excellent a picture as I did.

Next we decided to go to the harbour front in downtown Sarasota. At the park entrance stands this statue. When VJ day (the end of the war with Japan) was declared hundreds of thousands of people crowded the streets of New York to celebrate. The photo on which this statue was based was shot by a New York Post photographer on that day in August of 1945 of two strangers who just happened to celebrate with a kiss and he took their picture. This is one of the most famous photos ever taken. The statue is made of aluminum and should be able to take hurricane winds. I just hope her dress can as well. This statue is a must see as well.

There is a lovely park at the marina with walking trails and fountains. The bay is filled with yachts and sailboats.

 If you recall the Christmas boat parade we watched, it was at this bay. Its a little easier to see the sights during the day.

We also stopped at the same Tiki Hut for lunch. Its a lot more relaxing this time without the hundreds of revelers who were here at Christmas. Its a lovely day with a warm wind blowing off the water and the sun finally heating things up a bit.

 On the far side of the park one can relax and enjoy the lovely day. That is Sarasota Bay in front with the bridge in the background taking people to St Armands Circle on Lido Key. Thats an exclusive shopping area we had wandered through in a previous posting. These warm days have been few and far between this winter so our timing couldn't have been better. Now if the rain will just hold off till we get home.

Airboating on Lake Okeechobee

Since we got here we have wanted to get out into the swamps and everglades and see wild Florida. The airboat is perfect for doing that, plus it looks like a lot of fun. We picked up a couple from the campground and headed for Lake Okeechobee which has miles of what we were looking for.

The airboat is an aluminum flat bottomed boat with an engine mounted on the back and an airplane propeller connected direct. Its very noisy and if my hat blew off I wouldn't be reaching back to grab it, I'll tell you. This was right behind me. It has a top speed of 50 mph and he took it up there; great fun.

The real benefit of these things is that they can go anywhere in the swamps and reeds. If a mud bar is in front, he just speeds up and slides over it. My problem was that I was sitting at the side and some of the reeds slapped me as we whipped by. Darn things stung so I leaned left when in the reeds.

Once out of the large lake area we went down one of the tributary creeks. According to the driver, this creek hasn't been touched by man and looks like it would have 200 years ago.

Its been cold, but we were lucky today that the sun came out. Gators started climb up on the bank to soak up some sun so we got to see a few. We were feeling quite cocky sitting there in our big heavy airboat. We wouldn't have gone so close in our canoe I'll tell you. This guys about 9 feet long.

We saw a lot of birds and turtles. With the noise of the airboat we sure weren't sneaking up on them, I think it was the speed, we got there before they could react, or they were just used to the noise, one or the other. If you look close you can see a turtle on a log just ahead on the right hand side. It was over a foot long; not our little red sliders at home.

Here's a big cypress tree along the edge. Notice the root knobs sticking up all around it? These are 2 to 3 feet high. They help the tree breathe so if the area floods the tree doesn't suffocate as long as these are above the water. Isn't nature amazing?

Another airboat company uses this stream as well so this is kinda what we look like. You may have noticed no one has a life jacket on. They are on board and we were shown how to use them but we were told that if we fall in its a lot easier to just stand up. The deepest water we went through was around 3 feet deep. Not like our streams and lakes back home, these are just shallow muddy puddles.

I don't know what it is about us and water. Just after we turned around to come back it started to rain. Fortunately we were only a mile or so from a bridge we had gone under so we stopped there till the rain stopped. But we still got soaked.

We sat for a few minutes while the storm passed. Notice our driver on his I phone; he's checking the weather and has the satellite picture of the storm cell thats raining on us. It stopped shortly and we made it back fine. By the time we got off, it was nice and sunny again. Our friends are farmers from Saskatchewan; I think they enjoy rain.

By the time we got back to the campground we were treated to a beautiful sunset. Another day of adventure in Florida!

Edison and Ford Winter Estates, Ft. Myers

About an hour and a half drive south of us is the winter retreat of Thomas Edison and Henry Ford. If you don't know who they are, Google them and get caught up with the rest of us. Mr. Edison was more than pleased to pose with Carmen when we arrived.

In this and the previous picture is the Banyan tree that sits on his estate. It is the largest one in North America. Banyan trees drop vines down from their branches and when they attach to the ground a new trunk forms. All those trunks behind us were once just small vines. When the new trunk gets large enough, the tree spreads farther outward using the new trunk as support. They can cover many acres.

Thomas Edison bought this property in 1885 and had the houses built in 1886. When he bought the property, there were no roads so all material was brought in by the Caloosahatchie River. The property was deeded to the city of Ft. Myers in 1947 and all the furniture, pictures and even the board games are original. The buildings are beautiful and wide open so the breezes could blow through with wide porches to keep the sun and rain off.

He designed the landscaping for the entire property and planted trees from all over the world. These are Royal palms he had planted. He also planted a 1 1/2 mile row of them along the street outside his property and Ft. Myers became known as City of Palms.

Almost all of the plants on the property were planted based on a master plan by Edison. Wherever you walk you come across new and different plants and they are laid out to maximize their beauty.

A lot of the plants were planted for a specific function. This is a Mysore Fig tree which he and Harvey Firestone planted because they were trying to figure out how to use the rubber in the plant for tires. The large Banyan tree was also a rubber producer and was a gift to Edison from Firestone in 1925. There was also a lot of  bamboo planted because Edison was trying to make filaments for his new light using bamboo strands.

Time for a coffee and a sandwich as we sit and relax in the shade. We picked a perfect day and are enjoying the warmth after weeks of near freezing temperatures. In fact, a beer probably would have been more enjoyable than the coffee. Oh, well.

Henry Ford was good friends with Edison and in 1916 he bought the property next to Edisons and built his winter home there. We are taking a stroll through his garden, although he was a bit quiet. Must have a lot on his mind.

He brought this model T down from Detroit as a gift for Edison. They used to drive around the back country in it before roads were built, trying to find new fishing holes and hunting areas. Must have gotten stuck a lot based on the marshy countryside around here.

This is the pier that Edison had erected so that they could get the materials needed to build and improve his property. The river is so shallow that the original pier was twice as long as this so larger barges could dock with supplies. He had a boathouse and a summer house built on the pier as well as railroad tracks so wheeled carts could be used to speed the movement of supplies off the pier. They would sit in the shade of the summer house and fish off the pier as they enjoyed the breezes over the water. Sounds pretty idyllic, doesn't it?

Along the front of the property, thousands of exotic orchids were planted and it became known as orchid lane. It was the wrong season for them but we did find this pretty gardenia. Just imagine thousands more and you get the idea. I haven't even touched on the museums which feature most of Edisons original material he used to invent the light bulb, the phonograph, the moving pictures and the hundreds of other inventions he patented. It was a great place to visit. Hope you enjoyed the tour.

Wilderness Canoeing

One of our neighbours at the campground belongs to a Florida canoe club and invited along on one of their trips. We were excited to go until he told us that they usually see over 200 alligators along this stretch of river. Not wanting to miss such a great opportunity, we called the kids, put our affairs in order and signed on.

We went through a canoe rental company and they outfitted us and dropped off at our starting point. Our friends had not yet arrived so we decided to get the rust out of our canoeing skills. After all, these guys belong to a canoe club! You will notice that in all the photos of us we are wearing our life vests. We are trying to set an example for any grandkids who may check out our blog. Also, we figured that it would be awful hard for an alligator to swallow us with out of these huge things on. A hundred meters up the creek (I'm not sure I like that expression), we spotted our first wildlife, a great Egret. Thats the white dot in front of Grammie.

Around the next turn, we hit the jackpot. Just over Grammies right shoulder is a blue heron, large and majestic. All the other black fowl (or should I say foul) are vultures. Either they heard we were coming or they migrate here for the winter. We later found out the latter was true, but we were on edge till then.

I might as well kill the suspense right away. The temperature was about 40F for the day and apparently alligators don't come out when its cold. We did see a small one swim in front of us but, by the time I got the camera out of its water proof bag, it was long gone. That's all we saw was one scrawny alligator. After worrying about being attacked by hordes of bloodthirsty reptiles, it was a bit of a disappointment really. We did see this and from a distance it looked like an alligator skating across the frozen pond. But, the pond wasn't frozen and that was just a fallen tree trying to tip us over.

Well, our friends and the other canoe experts finally arrived and off we went. This was true wilderness canoeing. We didn't see anyone else or any sign of humanity along the Hillsborough river. It looked like it must have 200 years ago. We spent most of our time weaving around fallen trees, dead heads and sand bars. We soon found out that the average depth was about 3 feet but by then it had started to rain and the life vests helped us stay warm, so they stay on.

Around every turn there more birds to see. Because this area is a wilderness park, few people venture in here so lots of birds roost here for the winter. We saw a number of flocks of white Ibis like these ones.

This is a Roseatte Spoonbill. Their beak does look like a spoon and they are pink because they eat mostly shrimp. Only saw 2 of these; must be uncommon. The shoreline around him was pretty standard, Trees growing in the water and marsh plants everywhere. Probably perfect for shore dwelling birds such as these.

The trip we took was divided into 2 sections, one 2.5 miles and the other 2.4 miles. Because of the winding overgrown nature of the river, it took us about 3 hours to get to the midway stop and have our lunch. It had rained most of the trip and we were just glad to eat, stretch our legs and have a whiz.

After a nice break we headed out on the final leg of our adventure. You will note by the clothing displayed, that it continued to rain as we continued.

Heres a better picture of a great blue heron. He looked as wet as we did and decided not to move allowing me to get a nice close shot. The river was very windy and as it narrowed, the current picked up. Sometimes we wiggled through a blockage only to be pushed onto a fallen tree by the current. I've never paddled such a constricted route and by the end was getting pretty proficient at almost, but not quite, tipping over.

As we neared the end, the rain stopped and the sun tried to come out. I swear steam was coming off our life vests. No alligators, no dunkings, and no serious disagreements, I'd call that a darn good trip. As we paddled up onto the beach, the truck arrived to take us back to our car; perfect. One of the other canoeists, a canoe instructor, said they were worried we'd be able to keep up and not long into the trip felt we were pushing them, so he felt we could fit into their rarefied level of canoeists. Just another canuck in a canoe, nothing special.

Starting 2010 in Florida

After Christmas the weather was beautiful and we did a little exploring which, of course, includes checking out more of the local beaches. New friends from Saskatchewan are taking a stroll with us.

This is Siesta Key beach, just south of Sarasota. According to the locals, this has been voted the most beautiful beach in the world. The sand is a white powder, unlike the other beaches around, and is quite dazzling to the eyes in the sun light. Our resident pirate, Yosemite was impressed by the power of the vast ocean, but his vessel, not so much.

We did go for a drive to see what was in St. Petersburg, or as us locals call it, St. Petes. This is the skyway bridge to Tampa and St. Petes. The bridge is very high to accommodate any possible ship entering Tampa Bay.

We had lunch as the Docks at St. Petersburg beach. We tried the shrimp patties which our friends recommended; they were delicious. This is seafood country so you have to try everything. Dolphins were jumping just beside this boardwalk. I took at least 10 pictures and never got a shot of one, so you'll have to take my word.

All our friends are moving to other campgrounds on Dec 31st so we decided to go out for one last supper before everyone heads out. This was a good Mennonite restaurant in Sarasota, with food that schmecks. Although we couldn't find pig tails, the food was just like at the Stone Crock in St. Jacobs, back home.

Its the new year and we're on our own at least for now. Its a good opportunity to review whats happening at the campground. Its just big enough that it takes us about 45 minutes to walk all the streets and trails.

As in Yuma, there are lots of fruit trees planted on the sites. Its considered bad form to go onto someone else's site to pick fruit, but we did find this grapefruit tree that was unclaimed and we managed to pick a dozen or so over the weeks before the site became occupied.

One morning around 8 AM, Carmen said she saw a lot of smoke so I went to see what was up. A few rows over from us, a trailer was fully engulfed in flames. I got there just after the fire trucks. It went up like a torch and most of the water was sprayed on nearby trailers to keep them from burning as well. Apparently, a young guy (about 22) was living there. He had no money and his hydro had been cut off. He was using candles for light and one fell on his pillow. He grabbed the pillow and threw it into the bathtub, unfortunately the bathtub was plastic and it burst into flames. He ran out without time to even put on shoes. He lost everything. The campground has a used trailer for sale so they let him move into there and most campers donated money to help him out. When you think you're having it tough, just think of this guy. PS. The truck in the picture is not his, its his neighbours; he rode a bike (which he lost as well).

If you've been following Florida weather at all, you know its been cold down here. Last night it froze so Yosemite, being a good Canadian, decided to go ice skating on our car roof. Just a bit smaller than the ponds of our youth. Yesterday it never got above 35F with a cold wind and rain. Apparently this is the coldest for this time of year in over 25 years. Good timing on our part, huh. Every Canadian you talk to down here says the same thing; at least we don't have to shovel it.