Florida

Fred and Lois-The Travelin' Texans


Henderson Beach State Park	Boardwalk and white sand	Jelly fish

Hillsborough River State Park	Cypress knees	Suspension bridge in park

Fort Foster	Pressed tea	Kayakers up the rapids

Florida Botanical Gardens - Mandevilla	We didn't see any!	Beautiful mosaics here!

Papaya fruit	Bananas	Sand Key beach

St. Petersburg skyline	Pete the Pelican	Grapefruit

		Full-size shuttle model

Full-size fuel models	Shuttle engine nozzle	Shuttle engine

Crawler transporter	Atlantis model	Atlantis ready for launch

Equipment bay of shuttle	Bottom of shuttle showing tiles	Closeup of idividual tiles, #V070-391-445-714

5 engines of the Saturn V rocket used to make the trips to the Moon	Original Apollo Control Center, used for all the Moon landings	The Saturn V vehicle was 363ft tall, the same as 2 shuttles, the Statue of Liberty or a football field

Lois and Fred after their trip to the Moon with their own Astronaut	We did see one!!	Ambassador II

Atlantis STS-112





Manatees wintering at Blue Springs State Park

Park turtle laying eggs in driveway	Fred is relocating the nursery on advice from Game Commission	Eggs are transluscent

Tuba Christmas Winter Park, Florida	Fred is third from left with red hat	Another fun trip to Disney World

As we got ready to have fun	Oh, what a hug!	Dancin' up a storm

Hannah, Goofy, Stephen	Mickey and the gang	Too cold!

The fish are finally biting!

Take me out to the ball game!	Houston Astros

Jeff Bagwell	Craig Biggio	Jose Cruz

Pilated Woodpecker	Our Florida Home	Jack Allen, Andrea Brown, Jackie Jones, Linda Allen, Katie Brown

Jackie Jones, Office Manager, and Lois	Jackie, Lois, Fred, Katie	Steve Brown

On Monday, 9/23, we came into Florida on Hwy 98 that runs right down the Gulf Coast beaches. The sand is the whitest white we have ever seen. With the sun out the beaches are almost too bright. The other difference in the beaches is that the sand is so fine that it feels more like powder than sand. The sand is originally from the Appalachian mountains and is mostly quartz. Another reason for its color is that there are no sediment-loaded rivers bringing top soil into the water. The shallow waters in this area are a beautiful emeral green. The green color comes from the sun reflecting off a harmless micro-algae suspended in the water. The high winds from Hurricane Isidore and the cold front up north result in "red" flags on all the beaches that mean, "Do Not Even Wade" in the water. We asked the park ranger how they determine the level of danger with the surf and he showed us two things. For one, as soon as the wave broke on the beach, the current pulled the foam under and swept it back out to the ocean. Second, real big waves were breaking out on the second sand bar. We took their word for it and just walked on the sand. The beach was littered with pieces of dead jelly fish. Even though they are dead, they can sting for quite a while. Some were still all together and you could see the interior parts, while others just looked like someone had dropped drops of shiny, clear jelly.

On Wed., around noon, we came back from a Walmart run and they were putting plywood on the guard shack windows. We stopped to get a weather update and they told us they were evacuating the park. We quickly packed up and moved north and east about 4 hours to Tallahassee. The rain continued, but there were no high winds. We stayed there for 3 days until all the weather had moved on. We finally saw the sun three days later. From Tallahassee we moved on toward the south and stopped at Hillsborough River State park, just north of Tampa. It is right on the river and the terrain is what they call "Pine Flatlands". The forest has pines and hardwoods and the ground cover is mostly "saw palmetto" and vines. The "saw palmetto" is only about 3 ft. tall and the blades are very ragged and sharp, thus the name. The early settlers used the blades to make brooms.

The Hillsborough River originates northeast of here and flows out of some springs and some swamps. The water is very clean, but looks dark like tea. Because the water flows through miles of swampy areas with exposed tree roots and other decaying vegatation, it picks up "tanic acid" and that gives it the darker color. When you are looking into the rapids where the water is flowing over the rocks, it actually looks just like iced tea.

Fort Foster was a fort used in the early 1800's when the whites were moving into the area and was an attempt to protect them from the Seminoles. The soldiers were only in the area during the Fall and Winter because the Summer months were known as the disease months due to the mosquitos. Over time and after a couple of wars, the Seminoles finally were moved to Oklahoma. The "pressed tea" you see in the picture above was from the orient and was a way to carry tea out into the field. When you wanted to brew tea, you just scraped off what you needed and saved the rest for later.

The "cypress knees" grow up out of the ground and water next to the main tree. I always thought they were new trees trying to start growing. They were actually growths that come up to provide the tree with a source of gases that were not available in the soil because it was covered with water most of the time. This is just another way "Mother Nature" provides for plants to survive.

We also met up with a kayak club out of Tampa here to play in the river. They normally are a group that paddle in the bays and surf around Tampa. An interesting fact is that most of them were in their 40's and 50's, not young chickens and most were couples.

Our trip to Kennedy Space Center was a fabulous day, even though we have seen some of the same things at Mission Control in Houston, the special films we saw today told the stories in a very special way. The pride I felt as you saw Armstrong hop down on the Moon made tears in my eyes. I remember watching the landing on TV, but don't remember the facts that they lost communications 3 times during their decent, had to take over manual control of the Lunar Lander to make the landing, had to change their original touchdown point due to big rocks and almost ran out of fuel before they landed.

We made the much anticipated trip to Disney World. The first day we got to the park about 3pm so we went by boat over to the Magic Kingdom Park where we caught the monorail. With the monorail we visited all the in-park resorts, each a huge hotel with a different theme. We got back to our park just in time to see the fireworks display over the Magic Kingdom. The park has an excellent bus and boat transportation system to get you anywhere you want to go. We just have to walk a short distance from the camper to the bus stop. On our first day we visited the Disney MGM Studio Park. Many of the features here are based on movies such at Star Wars and Indiana Jones. The park is also an active movie studio with movies and tv films being filmed there. Our big adventure was to ride the Rock and Roll Roller Coaster, but that turned out to be a mistake. The first jolt of acceleration to a speed of about 1,000 mph. , at least it seemed like that, was a clue that we should not have gotten on it. After the first acceleration it immediately went into a loop, then it "rock and rolled" thru fast turns, barrel rolls and sudden drops. We were going to get a picture after we got out of the ride, but our digital camera does not take images of 'green things'.

Our second day took us to the original park, Magic Kingdom. It is built around all the Disney characters with Mickey Mouse as the main feature. The best part of this park was the western saloon revue ,a musical, comedy show. It was great. The magician was asking about which states people were from. When he got to a group from Texas, all the Texans gave out a big yell. He made a big deal out of that, saying that people from Indianna, or Ohio don't say anything when you mention there state, but Texans always go ----- "Way to go Texans". We rode some more sedate rides today, slow and quiet rides. The music and characters in the park are all excellent.

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