Day 74 - Collier Seminole State Park, FL

It was a day at home today. We got the floors cleaned, defrosted the refrigerator, sat outside on a warm Florida day, did some reading and did some napping. As I cannot find Brett at the moment, I assume he is off doing some visiting.

I cooked the sausage somebody gave us at the last park. Wild boar is very tasty.

The neighbors with the noisy dogs left this morning. The new neighbors on the other side left this morning to go touring and the ranger rented their site to somebody else. Apparently it has been resolved without bloodshed. We are dug in for the week and shall not give way.

This is a day the Lord has made; rejoice and be happy.

And so I shall.

Day 73 - Bradenton, FL to Naples, Fl

We were awakened early this morning. Some clever tenters put their Husky in a crate and then left him alone. He was howling pathetically the whole morning.

We drove to Collier Seminole State Park in Naples, FL and will be staying here for a week. It is the only site I could get that covered Thanksgiving. The campground is an open format. So while the sites are large there is no vegetation hiding you from the neighbors. But it looks like there are plenty of trails to bike on and lots to see in the area.

Dear campers in site #116: Did you know that your 3 Yorkies miss you terribly when you leave them alone in your RV for the afternoon? I know because they barked the whole time - even when Brett was trying to nap. If you do this again tomorrow he will report you to the ranger and you will be asked to leave. Signed: the camper in site #117

After the aborted nap we took a walk around. A man named Barron Collier had a lot to do with establishing this park. He owned a lot of land here and offered to pay to finish building the Tamiami Trail if he could get a county named after him. Ta Da! Naples is in Collier county.

The park has a big marble monument on the grounds honoring him. There is also the Bay City Walking Dredge machine. This thing was built early 1900's and was used in building the Tamiami Trail. First the dynamite broke the limestone into little bits. Then the dredge scooped it up and it was used for the road. It is a huge and wondrous piece of equipment.

The dredge was built in May, 1924, and was shipped to W.R. Wallace & Co., of Ft. Myers. It was later sold to Alexander, Ramsey and Kerr, a construction company controlled by real estate magnate Barron Collier. Collier spent $1 million, financed by bonds issued by local road and bridge districts, but was still 31 miles from completion. He ran three shifts, one coming from Tampa, one working on the Trail, and one returning to Tampa. As the Florida land boom was underway, Gov. John Martin was elected in 1925 on the pledge to complete the Tamiami Trail "come hell or high water."

The State of Florida took over the project in 1926 and continued to use walking dredges. A 20-foot wide canal, blasted out of solid limestone under the grass and muck of the swamp, was straddled by the dredge which scooped up crushed rock for the adjacent roadbed. More than 2.5 million sticks of dynamite were used on the Trail.

During 1927-28, the Bay City dredge was employed to construct ten miles of the Trail from Black Water River to Belle Meade Crossing (intersection of US-41 and FL-951)

On our walk we also discovered a camper in need of assistance. Brett gave him a hand setting up an Easy-Up tent that wasn't all that easy to get up. Good deed done we explored the Rec hall and discovered a little lending library. It is one of those take a book leave a book arrangements. Brett found enough to keep him busy for the week.

Just for fun this evening I spilled pasta cooking water every which where. None of it landed in the dinner but plenty of it needed to be mopped up off the floor. I am such a klutz.

The temperature has cooled to a nice 66 degrees. It is relaxing time again.

Day 72 - De Soto National Memorial

I always check the "Things To Do In xyz" lists whenever we get to a new spot.  High on most of those lists for Bradenton is the De Soto National Memorial.  This was about a 20 mile drive from the campground.  It gave us a chance to see the wilds of Bradenton on the way over.  I wouldn't exactly call it wild (except for the traffic and the stupid driving tricks we encountered).  I did notice the "trailer park of doom" next to one of the pretty rivers here.  This  development was set exactly at the same level as the water.  I believe that an unusually high tide would put the place underwater.  Yet people live there; lots of people live there.  The De Soto National Memorial is at the end of a residential street (with very high end homes) right on the water.  In addition to a nice little visitor center, there is a one mile nature trail and an area where re-enactors do historic stuff during the high tourist season (i.e., Dec. - Apr.). 

A volunteer met us at the door of the center and gave us quite a bit of information about the park and about De Soto.  When we said we would be interested, she took us to a small theater and started up a 15 minute film that discussed De Soto's expedition to America in more detail.  This film was very well done as were the interpretive displays.  I love interpretive exhibits.  Even if they aren't done by the best artists but have some kind of useful information, I applaud them.  If I'd know there was such a career, I think that I would have become an interpretive exhibit designer. 

We had the opportunity to try on one of the helmets worn by Spanish soldiers (imagining how hot these must have been in the Florida sun) and to wear about twenty pounds of chain mail.  The chain mail turned out to be useful against arrowheads but not so much against the cane arrows which would splinter, embed themselves in the soldier and then cause him to die of some infection or other.  Plus I bet those babies were hot in the sun too. 

Maybe De Soto's mother or De Soto's wife thought that he was a good man.  I do not.  He became a wealthy man on looted gold during his expeditions to Peru.  Once he tasted the rewards of conquest he dreamed of matching the deeds of the conquistadors.  When he got a license to explore La Florida he thought he would do so well that he would be awarded a governorship of a territory.  After landing somewhere near Tampa in May 1539 his army spent the next four years traveling some 4,000 miles across the southeastern United States.  It was a futile mission, doomed by unfamiliarity with the land, hostile Indians (of course they were hostile, he kidnapped and killed a whole lot of them) and the overzealous pursuit of riches.  De Soto lost half his 700 soldiers to sickness and Indian retaliation.  He found no gold and established no colonies (the king had requested that he do so).  After three years, he died of a fever and was buried in the Mississippi River.  What was left of his army abandoned the mission and got themselves back to Mexico.  This expedition was inconsequential for the Spanish but devastating for the Indians it encountered, leaving behind disease and social dislocation.   I was interested to hear the park volunteer speak so openly about the failures of the man and to see that the National Park Service literature does not gloss over his acts of inhumanity. 

De Soto's army traveled with 700 soldiers, 400 horses, 2 women, a few priests, some pigs and war dogs.  These huge dogs were trained to hunt and eat humans.  If a conscripted (read kidnapped and enslaved) native guide gave bad information, De Soto turned the dogs on him. 

Now imagine that you are a hapless tourist who had just heard this tidbit and you are beginning your walk down the nature trail.  Also imagine that you were not informed that life sized interpretive "people" were placed all along the trail.  Let me say that I was glad we were pretty much the only folks walking around when I turned the corner and saw these two.  Again, I salute the exhibit designers at this park.  What a genius idea to place these figures out in the mangroves to give you another perspective.

The park has an absolutely gorgeous Gumbo Limbo tree.  This is also called a Tourist Tree because it stands in the sun, turns red and peels.

There is a mile long nature trail that takes you out through the mangroves and along the river's edge.  The trails are exceptionally well groomed and there are plenty of benches along the way should you feel the need to rest.  Fortunately for me, today was a cloudy day with temperatures in the mid seventies.  I had no problem making the walk.

We really need to plan our sight seeing and eating times to coordinate with each other.  As is common with us, we somehow manage to begin at around high noon and then in a couple of hours are starting to become fiercely peckish.  Such was the case again today.
Brett, ever alert, spotted a Five Guys and needed to eat there. 

Since we don't have any in Maine (that I know of) and we've never eaten at one before we decided to go ahead and give it a try.  I was surprised to see the peanuts.  You grab a paper dish and scoop some nuts for snacking while you wait for your burgers.  There's a sign that says "because of allergies" you cannot take peanuts out of the building.  The burgers were okay and the nuts were a treat.  But this was 2:30pm and it put a serious damper on dinner plans.  Before we left I put chicken breasts with a mushroom, wine sauce in the crock pot.  That went into the refrigerator for another night. 

Brett's stupid driving trick of the day was to pull off the highway way too quickly when he spotted diesel for 3.72 a gallon.  This was the best price we'd seen but he used the credit card and ended up paying 3.83 which is the price at most of the other places as well.  It wasn't really worth the stunt driving after all.  But I still love him.  He did spot an eagle for me on the way home!

Another kid incident:  The little guy who camped next to us and mistook Brett for his grandfather was having a raging hissy fit outside.  His own grandfather discovered the problem.  Little dude was drinking orange juice, and like a good healthy Floridian he was drinking juice with pulp.  One of those little bits of pulp had plugged up his sippy cup.  This ticked him off big time.  Can't say as I blame him. 

Tomorrow is another travel day.  We are headed south towards Naples, FL where we will spend Thanksgiving.  And it looks like we will not be homeless RV'ers starting the Friday after. There must have been a few cancellations and I was able to book two nights near Melbourne Beach and another two nights at Fort Clinch near Jacksonville.  So yay!

Day 71 - Manatee Village Historical Park

We did finally make it to the park but needed two tries to do it.  We got about a mile from the campground and discovered O'Brien's Farm market.  Though to be fair, the first thing we noticed were the workers out picking in the fields.  Then the signs announcing the market.  We just had to stop.  I did have a grocery list with me so there were legitimate vegetable needs to be satisfied.  I don't think I've met a friendlier bunch of people running a farm stand.  A nice man wanted to know if we'd ever been here before and would we like a tour.  Of course we'd like a tour!  So he described the 500 or so acres that comprise the farm and then showed us the "pick your own" operation which isn't quite ready to go yet.  To me, pick your own involves getting down on your knees in the soil.  To O'Brien's it means walking up to a beautiful raised bed and tenderly pulling a fresh head of lettuce out.  Or walking around these "tower" things where the strawberries grow and just plucking them from eye level.  All the veggies I got today were picked for us just this morning (by those field hands we saw earlier).  Somehow I managed to spend $30.  I got grape tomatoes, cucumbers, green pepper, jalapeno pepper, lettuce, strawberries, tangerines, gummy bears (don't know how those got into the basket...), milk and butter.  Also Brett bought a bumper sticker.  This is a very serious purchase because Brett's truck believes in nothing.  The sticker says "NO farmers, NO food".  We took all our stuff back home and then headed out again for the museum.

 Manatee Village Historical Park is a collection of restored buildings and artifacts relating to the area around Manatee.  It is free although they do accept donations.  Honestly, after seeing the amount of stuff and the care that has gone into the displays it would be hard NOT to offer a donation.  The first thing that caught our eye was this 1913 locomotive.  It was built to haul timber in Florida and is called Old Cabbage Head because of the shape of the smoke stack.  We had to play on it and pose for pictures before we moved on to any of the buildings. 

Update:  According to a sign on the grounds, the name "Cracker" comes from the cowboys who drove cattle along the Cracker Trail.  The whips that they used made a loud, cracking sound.

Wiggins Store is the first building we came upon.  It was built on this spot in 1903 and is the only building in the park that is in its original location.  This was one of the area's first brick buildings and features some energy-efficient construction techniques:  air pockets between each two layers of bricks and porches on three sides of the two story structure.  The ground floor held the general store.  Today there is a recreation of the store that contains lots of the products that would have been found there.  I noticed a bottle of Father John's Medicine which made me laugh because my mother used to make us take this stuff.  Guess it was around for a long, long time.  The second floor provided overnight rooms for customers who traveled from remote parts of the county to buy goods.

This is one of the exhibits showing a hotel room.  It looks pretty sparse to us but was quite luxurious at the time.

The boat works building was a busy looking place.  I noticed the machine belts and thought that it was probably also a dangerous place to be when all of them were running.  There were lots of old tools (most of which Brett could identify).

The blacksmith shop is a reproduction of the type that might have been used in this area.  All the other buildings are restorations and buildings that were actually in the area (albeit moved to this location).

This is a sugar cane mill.  A horse or a mule was hooked up to the low end of the log and walked round and round.  Somebody would feed sugar cane into the rollers and the juice was boiled down in a kettle next to the smokehouse.  The house is "Cracker Gothic" style.  It was built to take advantage of shade and insulation and air circulation.

Pine blocks elevate the house 2 1/2 feet off the ground to allow air flow under the house.  The large front porch shades and cools the breeze before it enters the house.  The large central hallway with a high ceiling funnels the cooled air through the house.  I can attest that it felt nice and cool inside.

Although the furnishings are not original to the house, they are typical of the period and represent what most likely would have been found here.

Construction began on The Old Meeting House in 1877 then halted when a yellow fever epidemic claimed the lives of the pastor and many of the congregation.  But two years later the church opened to house the first Christian congregation south of Tampa on the Florida mainland.  It is still a consecrated house of worship and frequently hosts weddings, baptisms and other religious events.

The Court House was built in 1860.  It is the oldest building in the park and the oldest remaining building built as a courthouse in the entire state of Florida. 

The judge's chair, witness chair and bookcases are original furnishings.  The rest are handcrafted replicas.  The interior is lined with new wood that was milled to specification.

The one room school house reminded us of a similar one at the Norlands Living History Museum in Livermore.  We sat here for quite a while.  Brett read me a lesson from McGuffey's Eclectic Reader.

I tried to pay attention and I would say that's a good thing.  It looks to me as though the teacher was losing his patience.

We wandered around the buildings for over 2 hours and had a perfectly wonderful time doing it.  Our timing was lousy insofar as lunch was concerned.  We were both starving by the time we found a Publix where we could do our grocery shopping.  Remember the rule of thumb about not getting groceries when you are hungry?  Good rule.  Oh, but I found Buffalo Chicken Macaroni and Cheese which turned out to be the most wonderful thing.

Brett took a walk to the dumpster this evening and stopped to have a conversation or two along the way.  He met our neighbor who is here working a construction job building a stone house here for somebody from Maine (the stone is coming from Maine).  He had been in Maine previously and built a house in Kennebunk.  I guess he and Brett got along because Brett came home with a package of wild boar sausage.  Maybe on his next outing he will meet somebody who will give him a few acres of land!

A busy and educational day was had by us.  More to come.

Day 70 - Lake Manatee State Park, FL

This was a day to go with the flow. And the flow said to hang out and read and relax. Done!

Why do they call it a live oak? To differentiate it from the dead ones? It's probably because they are evergreen and look alive even in the winter.

Brett was dreaming last night that there were children outside making "myeh, myeh" noises. This woke him. He discovered the noise was me snoring. Sorry about that! At least he doesn't dream anymore about people trying to kill him. I wonder what I was up to when he had those dreams.

Florida State Parks are full up on the Friday after Thanksgiving. We will have to try to find a place at a commercial park. The ones I've checked so far are also full. I'm sure it isn't an insurmountable problem. There's always a truck stop...

The talkers next door are gone, replaced by more talkers who spent over an hour swapping life stories with another new set of neighbors. They haven't been over here yet. I'll have to think of something really interesting to regale them with.

It looks like morning is the best fishing time here. The boat ramp parking lot was pretty full when we went on our morning bike ride.

Lowell called me today. I like it when he does that. He seems to really like Seattle and is enjoying the challenge of grad school. But he has a hurt arm which may be from a pinched nerve. I don't like knowing he is in pain.

So far the only wildlife we have seen here are squirrels, ants and Mosquitos.
The squirrels dash around and scold us for being here. I dropped a piece of popcorn on the ground and the ants absolutely covered it. They've probably carried it off by now. It might be a good idea to not stand still for too long while outside.

So I will sit still inside for the evening.

Day 69 - Sebring, FL to Bradenton, FL

Brett thinks that he must be developing a certain allure. Yesterday a beautiful, blond German woman stopped at our site while he was sitting outside. She asked him if he could fix her bicycle. I guess he just looks handy! He fixed her bike. She was smiling, he was smiling. Joy to the world.

We only had about 60 miles to drive today so it was a leisurely morning. There was a line at the dump station so we had to wait a bit. Lucky for us that there was plenty of shade.

My favorite place name for today was Troublesome Creek.  I wonder if it floods a lot.  A little research showed:  Troublesome Creek was named after an Indian left behind by his tribe to die, but didn't, and stayed to "trouble" white settlers, hence his name and the name of the creek by which he lived. He further stated he'd also heard another version that it was so called because of the difficulty in constructing a bridge across it.

Our drive took us on the Cracker Trail. I asked myself "what is a cracker". The word comes from the English word cracker which means boastful. The term is used as a proud or jocular self-description. Since the huge influx of new residents into Florida from the northern parts of the United States and from Mexico and Latin America in the late 20th and early 21st centuries, the term "Florida Cracker" is used informally by some Floridians to indicate that their families have lived in the state for many generations. It is considered a source of pride to be descended from "frontier people who did not just live but flourished in a time before air conditioning, mosquito repellent, and screens."

The Florida Cracker Trail runs from just east of Bradenton, and ends in Fort Pierce. In years past, this route was used for both cattle and horses. We did, in fact, pass many cattle and quarter horse ranches. The area is very agricultural. There are also many large citrus groves along the route. The fruit on these trees looks ripe to me. Oranges are harvested either by hand (workers climb ladders to reach the fruit) or they are shaken from the trees and then picked up off the ground. I didn't see any actual harvesting happening but November to April is when it usually happens.

I happened to notice this gentleman standing by the side of the road in a little town called Zolfo Springs.  What caught my eye was the LL Bean bag on the top of his cart.  "Start here, go anywhere!"

Lake Manatee State Park in Bradenton, FL is a 556 acre park located on the shore of 2,400 acre Lake Manatee.  It is made up of pine flatwoods, Sand Pine scrub,  marshes and hard wood forest.

 There are 60 campsites here.  We have a site that is on the corner of the loop facing a path.  It is fairly private with lots of growth in the buffers.  There are neighbors across the road but they are leaving tomorrow.  Brett happened to meet them just before we went for a bike ride.  The lady of the house is quite a talker.  We had to pretty much back away and get on the bicycle to avoid hearing the second half of their life's story.  I'm sure they are charming folks, just a bit too long winded.

We biked over to the lake for a look.  They keep it stocked with fish and there were a few people out fishing from their boats.  This (like many others in Florida) is a very popular campground on the weekends.  I suppose there will be even more fishermen then.

The edge of the lake is full of pickerel weed.  The roots have rhizomes which allow them to rapidly colonize.  These plants have become invasive in many tropical parts of the globe but they are efficient biological filters of polluted water.  I am absolutely certain that nothing could make me go wading here!

It was warm and humid enough today to run the air conditioning.  We had a brief run in with the power pedestal which kept tripping the circuit but got it figured out and got the place cooled down nicely.  After a little nap, Brett decided that he would like to go out for dinner.  I'm hardly ever one to say no to an invitation of that caliber so off we went.  We found a little place called Michelangelo Pizzeria.  The chefs were definitely Italian (Sicilian I think) and the food was excellent.  We had fried mozzarella, chicken Parmesan and penne with chicken with broccoli.  We had enough left over to make lunch for tomorrow.

So now we are fed and happy and settled into our new spot until Friday.  We'll have things to explore and tales to tell.

Day 68 - Highlands Hammock State Park, FL

When the Boy Scouts decide to leave, they are gone!  This place emptied out faster than our bank account while buying diesel.  We are back to a fairly empty and very quiet campground now.  A few more campers came in this afternoon but it is a pretty sedate bunch compared to the scouts.

Cute kid encounter: there are two little boys staying right next to us.  One of them who looked to be about two was out on his little bicycle with his grandmother walking beside him.  They stopped at our place to say hello.  The boy got off his bike and came over to the door where Brett was standing.  He looked, and looked, and bent sideways and looked some more.  Then he said "Papa??"  Nope, you need to go next door for him.  I suppose when you are a little guy every old man looks a bit like your grandfather until you take a really close look.

Brett went over to the ranger station this morning and bought two tickets for the tram ride this afternoon.  We rode our bike over and were there in time to get seats in the front row.  It's a wonder we were there on time.  Brett picked up a few magazines at the little trading library here and was relaxing in the restroom poring over a copy of "Concealed Carry" when it came time to leave.  He had no idea there was a magazine devoted to the art of carrying concealed weapons.  He thought he should read up to try to understand the people we are living amongst.

 Ranger Brenda was our tram driver.  This was a 1 1/2 hour narrated drive and well worth the $5 ticket price.  The tram traveled some of the same road we took the bike on yesterday but then turned off the main path to follow a canal in a section of the park that is closed to the general public and we started to see critters.  There were a lot of alligators and turtles as well as birds.  We were in virgin forest; the hammock is very dense growth.  Among the animals seen in the park are gray squirrels, raccoons, white tail deer, alligators, turtles, birds, snakes (water moccasin like to curl up next to the road and there are pythons all over the Everglades), bobcats, wild boar (not native), armadillo (not native), black bears, panthers, spiders (we saw the golden orb spider whose web looks like spun gold) and mosquitoes.  Then we learned that the southeast has its own big foot type creature called the Skunk Ape.  It has supposedly been sighted in the park.  After hearing about all these creatures and seeing a few of them, I'm not sure I should be going outside!

Our neighboring tram passengers were a group of Mexican ladies who were having a wonderful time.  One of them thought that she saw a fish in a tree and will probably never live it down.  We spotted them as city dwellers when we found out they didn't know what a culvert was.  But they certainly could spot the alligators.

We took another bike ride around the park loop later this afternoon.  It was very pleasant in the shade.  Once we returned home, we got the laundry done (thanks Brett!) and then had crock pot chili for dinner.  More relaxing seems to be in order now.


Tomorrow we move on again.  I am anxious to see what adventures await.