Florida 2007-08

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Finally to warm weather	Panhandle beaches are beautiful	Sand Crab
		Pensacola Naval Air Station
Officers' Club from Philipines	USS Ranger	Back seat of an F-4 Phantom
	Blue Angels of the past	Glider Trainer
Great Horned Owl	Barred Owl
Bald Eagles	Caracara	Tortoise
	Hungry Hippo
	Manatee
	Close up and personal	Dennis ready for sponge dive demonstration - Tarpon Springs (Note)
Sponge Diver
View from high up	Topiary Gardens
Banyan Tree (Note)		When these roots reach the ground, they start another trunk.
		Screw Pine or Walking Tree
	Good picture for mirror image	Roller Coaster ride
Almost to the top	Water Skiers
Hydro-foil Ski		Barefoot Skier
		In the Everglades
John, Brenda, Lois, Fred (Note)	Grass River	Alligator nose and eyes
	Sunbathing
	3 month old	4 year old - aren't I brave with its mouth held shut?
	Spirit of Pennekamp (Note)
Glass bottom to reef		Lois was feeling better here
"Bowling Alley" - dredged out channel		Mangrove Swamp
	Limestone Quarry Chiesel (Note)	Mangrove Sprouts
Lunch on the Gulf	Wanted lunch too!
African Queen - Bogart and Hepburn	Key West (Note)	Ernest Hemingway Home Museum
		And southernmost bathroom stop
Cuban fighting rooster-protected-Note	Sidewalk acrobat	A little Karaoke
Key West Sunset
Wiggins Pass beach	Willet
Ft. Myers beach	Diving Pelicans	Ft. Myers beach crowds
Lover's Key State Park	Edison and Ford Estates (Note) World's largest Banyon Tree	1929 Model "A" Ford
Mysore Fig
Office area of Edison's lab	Edison cylinder phonographs	Edison Kinescope (movie projector)
Wax cylinder juke box	75,000 watt light bulb	Henry Ford's personal Ford
1st Ford V-8 - 1940	Gaylord Palms ICE	Craftsmen from China create this spectacular display!
		John and Brenda
	Whee-e-e-e!!
Our Disney Adventure	Mike and Kathy Gwinn

When we visited Tarpon Springs, FL we took a ride out on a 'sponge boat'. The sponge industry is still going strong in this area. Many years ago, the Greek's learned about the sponge areas in the Gulf of Mexico. These divers still use the diving gear shown in the pictures. They use a full body rubber suit that has a helmet for their head and air is pumped into the helmet. They dive in deep waters, sometimes over 100 ft. When they cut a sponge they leave a little piece of it so it will regrow over the next two years. They mark the location with GPS so they can return to the same spot and harvest the new sponge. (Return)

The Banyan tree is also known as the "walking tree". As its limbs grow outward from the main trunk, they drop long, dangling roots. As those roots reach the grown, the create a new trunk and in this way, the tree 'walks' away from the main trunk. The largest Banyan tree is actually in the Edison Estates park. It covers over an acre. (Return)

We took a wonderful airboat ride today out into the Everglades National Park. The airboats are powered by Cadillac engines and really get up and go. On the way out, we saw several alligators and the water was full of fish. Did you know that there are only two types of alligators, American and Chinese? All other things you might see that look like an alligator are actually crocodiles. There is another big difference - alligators only live in fresh water and crocs prefer salt water.

The everglades were given that name by the Seminole Indians that were forced down into this area by Gen. Andrew Jackson. His troops pursued the Indians down to the tip of Florida, but the water there was too salty - the Indians called it "sour water". The Indians fought their way north and began to find that the water was more fresh and they called it "sweet water". When they reached the sweet water, they were moving into the everglades and the soldiers would not come into the everglades to chase them. They made their lives here on isolated islands called "hammocks" where they hunted the many wildlife that live here and fished. The woman used the mud off the bottom of the everglades for treatments to their skin. The name for the everglades actually came from the word "glade" which means each blade of grass and the fact that you can only see grass 'forever' when you look toward the horizon.

After the boat ride we were entertained at a wildlife show. It featured a skunk, a huge scorpion, a South American toad that has overtaken southern Florida, crocodille, a lemur and a baby baboon. The handler also worked with a large alligator showing that is you close his mouth, he is not strong enough to open it up. Lois got to hold a 4 ft. alligator as you can see in the pictures - the alligator did have a strap on him to keep his mouth shut. She said the skin was very soft ; maybe that is why they make shoes and purses out of their skin. (Return)

The first stop in the 'keys' is at Pennecamp State Park, home to a boat that goes out to a reef to watch fish. The water was fairly calm so no one had sea sickness problems. This was our first chance to get close to the "mangrove trees". These trees line most of the bay areas along Florida, especially in the keys. They continue to expand their grove by dropping their long seed pods into the water. These pods gradually sink to the bottom and start a new root system. As the grove gets thicker and thicker it then begins to retain dirt and over a long time it can actually create a new island. (Return)

The mining machine shown here was used to take out limestone blocks that were then used to build bridges for the first railroad that went all the way to Key West. This railroad was built by Henry Flagler who made his fortune in oil as a partner with Nelson Rockefeller and Standard Oil. He also built a chain of hotels from Jacksonville, FL to Key West. (Return)

At one time Key West was home to a large, active US Navy base. Besides the Navy base, the main product was fishing and some tourist attractions. Large portions of downtown was once a thriving place for the sailors to spend their money. The Navy closed most of the base in 1979 due to budget cuts. When the base left, most of downtown became vacant buildings. A couple of young entrepreneurs bought most of the buildings and began to refurbish them; some were bought for as little as $1.00. About the same time, a budding guitarist, Jimmy Buffett, started his versions of laid-back, Key West music. Jimmy Buffett made Key West famous again and tourists began to flock to the string of islands called "the keys". Magaritaville, is his restaurant, but we found better hamburgers and margaritas across the street. (Return)

These Cuban fighting roosters were brought to the islands as more Cubans immigrated to the area and cock fighting was a huge sport. When the sport was outlawed, they just turned the roosters loose. Today they roam the streets and are actually protected by a city ordinance. They do a good job of controlling insects. (Return)

Thomas A. Edison came to vacation in Florida in the late 1800's . He had been experimenting with fibers for making a filament for his 'light bulb'. One of the fibers he had used with some success was a bamboo fiber. When he toured this area of Florida, he found a huge growth of bamboo and decided right there to buy the property. Over the years he made many improvements to the property, houses, a swimming pool, a laboratory and beautiful gardens. Edison was friends with Henry Ford and Ford bought the property right next to Edison's. Edison and Ford were also friends with Firestone. During WWI, the trio became aware of how dependent the US was for foreign sources of rubber, it all came from either the Pacific or South America. They each put together $25,000 to create a research company to try and find a plant that could be grown in the US and break away from our dependence on foreign rubber. (Sounds like today with oil.) Edison was the main researcher in the effort and he had plants from all over the world brought to his gardens so he could test them. He did get a 'goldenrod' plant to grow 12 ft. tall and produce a large quantity of latex. As they were getting closer to a plant to produce large quantities of latex, the methods of producing artificial rubber flourished and the plant project was cancelled.

Edison was a workaholic all his life. He normally only slept 4 hours a day and would take short cat-naps at the lab. With his drive and ambition, he applied for and was granted at least one patent per year for 65 straight years. When you tour his museum you find Edison instrumental in creating the light bulb, storage batteries, D.C. current power systems for cities, a method of extracting iron ore with magnets, commercial creation of concrete, improving the typewriter, the phonograph, the dictaphone, the motion picture projector and the list goes on. He is remembered mainly for the light bulb, but he received his first patent when he was 20 years old when he perfected a way to send more than one telegraph message over the same line at the same time. (Return)

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