Palms - Americana

Our week in review

2012-02-05T13:26:00.001-05:00

We're now in North fort Myers for the month and looking forward to staying busy seeing stuff, doing things and seeing friends and family.

We spent one day biking around LakePark which is pretty much right in the middle of Fort Myers. Once you get inside the park you'll think that you're 30 miles out int the country. They have a big lake, beaches, kayak and paddle boat rentals, one,two and four seater bikes, a miniature train to take rides around the park on, about 8 miles of hiking and biking trails (paved) and a garden.

Boardwalk and rental area

Bike path

A little cloudy one day so we went to the Edison Ford Winter Estates, we only planed on spending a couple hours here today so we just wandered around the gardens, we're saving the museum and homes for a rainy day.

Just about all the Heritage plants are for sale in the nursery.

a lot of color

Two in the bush

Fig tree

Air plant

Star fruit

I love the twisted trunk filled with air plants

Eighty degrees and sunny so we went over to Pine Island to bicycle the south half of the island. First thing we did was spot a Book sale sign at the library, so that's where we spent our first hour. The ride south to St James was pretty straight and level and boring, not a lot to see until you get to the south end and because it was a Saturday all the motorcycles were gathered at the outdoor bars with the bands playing. The one bar was karaoke and they sounded pretty bad, the other had a three piece band doing a country rock and roll which wasn't to bad. Other then the bars there is absolutely nothing there, maybe next week when we do the north end it will be better.

A fast Pepsi stop here

All along the path they had the power poles painted up

One of the houses at the end of the trail

Of course this house was right around the corner.

We almost traded for this tandem

Perched on a nest near where we parked.

Circle B Bar Ranch Reserve

2012-01-30T00:12:00.000-05:00

We spent a couple of hours hiking around the Circle B Bar Ranch Reserve today, There were a ton of people there but there was also a lot of nature to photograph.

Circle B Bar Ranch INFO

As always click on pictures to enlarge.

This dead tree reminded me of a big dog chewing on a bone.

Mommy eagle watching over here little chick in the nest.

Trying to swallow his catch.

Me and my Shadow.

Smile

We got her about noon, one of the volunteers told us to really see a lot more we should come back around 7am before the crowds get there.

Gonna have to get a bird book so I'll know what they all are.

Airs Above the Ground

2012-01-28T19:30:00.001-05:00

Today we drove over to Myakka City to watch the Lipazzan Horse's practice, Every Thursday and Friday at 3pm and Saturday at 10am they open the practice sessions to the public. This isn't a refined show but a training session for the new horses and riders, older horses and riders are mixed in to assist with the training. Today they introduced 2 horses that have never appeared in front of an audience or with the music playing on the speakers, it was fun to watch their reaction to the crowds and applause.

The horses are all born black or very dark gray, as they age they start to change color to white and by the time they are adults they are totally white, so most of the horses in the pictures have black or gray tails and mains.

It's a little hard to find out in the middle of nowhere, so pump this address in your GPS or check their .

Web page. 32755 Singletary Rd, Myakka City

The first time we visited we had the privilege of meeting Colonel Ottomar Herrmann, if you read up on their history you will see the role he played in bring the horses to America and how General George S Patton saved these magnificent animals during WWII.

There is no charge but they do pass a bucket for donations.

If you're in the area take time to go see them and if you happen to be around March 11^th, they said that they are going to do a full dress show that day.

Lipazzan Horse's Info

Click to enlarge:

Doing a little dance.

Accepting the applause of the crowd.

Bowing to the audience.

After the Colonel died and his daughter took over she stopped the branding of the horses, they now have microchip implants, and added the Brand to the saddle blanket.

Learning the rear kick, used for when they were in battle.

This maneuver was important in battle, the horse learns to hold this pose for many seconds, this allowed the General to see over the troops so he could tell how the battle was going.

Final Parade.

Marie Selby Gardens - Sarasota

2012-01-27T21:15:00.001-05:00

And yet another one that we haven't been to in years, a beautiful place to spend a couple of hours just wandering around the grounds. The thing I love about this place is the collection of trees.

Marie Selby Botanical Garden

Buddha in the pond

Coffee beans

A tree you don't want to climb.

Interesting information on how trees protect themselves.

Cathy's favorite sign

Sunken Gardens - St Petersburg

2012-01-26T22:44:00.007-05:00

Another place we haven't been to in quite a few years and the flowers are as beautiful as ever.

Sunken Gardens Info

Mote Aquarium – Longboat Key

2012-01-26T22:36:00.000-05:00

It's been about six years since we were last here so we figured we would see if anything has changed. The nice thing about this place is that there are volunteers everywhere and they can answer any questions you have and they provide all kinds of interesting facts about the animals and the facilities.

Located in the parking lot

The Rays were racing each other around their pool. If you go here wear a bright blue shirt, Cathy did and all the animals would come towards here when she was at the side of their areas. Found out that the feeders all wear bright blue shirts and they thought that Cathy was going to feed them.

A snail moving his house to a new neighborhood.

One of the sea turtles

NORMAL FISH

UGLY FISH

They told us that all of these fish can be found locally in Tampa Bay, so think of that the next time you're wading around in the water along the beach.

Calling all Frank Lloyd Wright Fans

2012-01-22T20:02:00.000-05:00

Florida Southern College (Lakeland,Florida) is considered by many to be the most beautiful campus in the nation. Part of the reason is that Florida Southern College contains Frank Lloyd Wright's “Child of the Sun” collection.

“Out of the ground, and into the light, A Child of the Sun'...Thus did Frank Lloyd Wright refer to his Architecture at Florida Southern College; The world's largest collection of Frank Lloyd Wright buildings in one location”.

They offer guided tours and we got there just after the tour had started so we grabbed one of the walking tour guides and spent a couple of hours checking out the campus. I couldn't believe how many pictures I took when I got home and started going through them, so here are just a few.

At the end of the blog are some links to information about the campus and tours.

For Wright fans this is a must.

Child of the Sun

http://www.photoshopshowcase.com/ViewFlashMedia.aspx?AID=110446&AT=3

Walking tour map

http://www.flsouthern.edu/fllwctr/FLLWMapN2.htm

Tour information

http://www.flsouthern.edu/fllwctr/contact.htm

Hollis Gardens

2012-01-21T22:39:00.000-05:00

A few pictures from Hollis Gardens, located at Lake Mirror in Lakeland Florida, it's a beautiful little garden that has 16 different sections and a walkway that circles the lake.

There are a lot of weddings held here.

One of the fountains.

There were a few sculptures around the lake.

"Volunteerism"

And of course some flowers

Mulberry Phosphate Museum

2012-01-20T23:13:00.000-05:00

The Mulberry Phosphate Museum in Mulberry Florida, we had no idea of what to expect when we saw this museum but we figured we would give it a try. They have exhibits in three different small buildings, the first tells the history of phosphate mining in Florida. A lot of stuff about how it was formed and it's many uses, but our favorite building was the Fossil displays. When mining the phosphate they used large drag line buckets to dig down to it about 30 feet below the surface, a side effect of the digging was finding prehistoric fossils which many amateur paleontologist in the area recovered. Now a days with all the modernization of the mining procedure they don't allow anyone on the property and nobody really knows how many fossils are being destroyed.

When you see this in the parking lot, you'll know you're in the right place.

This was the predecessor to the Manatee, this was a small one and it was twice the size of a manatee today.

Baby Whale, the head is at the left and the tail was destroyed by the steam shovel.

Land turtle

Mastodon

A saltwater crocodile, from the skull size it would have been close to 30 feet long. This is a cast model the original is in the Smithsonian.

All of these fossils were found within a few miles of the museum, the whale was found just a couple blocks away.

Some Bike Trails in Central Florida

2012-01-15T17:39:00.000-05:00

We've had some great weather while we've been in Central Florida and have been able to get out on some of the bike trail, both the Rails to Trails and the County Greenways. The trails around here are fantastic, they are all paved,14 foot wide with parks or rest areas every few miles, plus they give you a wide variety of surroundings. From tree cover areas that make you feel as if you were in the middle of nowhere, to right through the middle of towns with bike and coffee shops on every corner. The people in the area really use these too, we haven't been out on the weekend (Football) but even on the week days you have to keep your eyes open for all the traffic, bike, ped, roller blades, joggers, dog walkers, baby strollers and even horses.

Here's a few pictures of the trails.

One of the rest areas on the Orange Trail

Downtown Oakland Florida right near one of the trail heads.

We even saw real live cows along the trail

right down the middle of main street in winter Garden

Downtown winter Garden

Bike bridge over the turnpike

Killarney Station, bike shop snacks,restrooms and parking

Just a rest area out on the trail with shade and water

They were doing some tree trimming on the trail so they have a flagman on both end directing traffic, you just can't get away from it.

Rest area where they rent bikes

Museum in downtown Winter garden

Riding along the Little Econ River, we saw to Gators while riding this trail which goes right through the middle of Orlando.

Crossing over the Little Econ River

Nature Preserve on the trail

Really don't know what this is

Downtown Winter Garden

The paved section is called Rails to Trails, I call the left side Tracks to Trees. It was neat that they left some of the original tracks along side the trail.

A couple of Happy Bikers

Leu Gardens - PHOTO HEAVY (28)

2012-01-14T17:06:00.001-05:00

Don't Blame Me !!

It's not my fault, Cathy let me loosein a garden with a camera and I got a little carried away.

We spent a couple hours in theafternoon walking around the Leu Gardens in Orlando, the temperatureonly got to 60 so it was a little chilly in the shade and by the lakebut it was a beautiful garden and we were surprised by how my bloomswere out.

There are over a dozen different gardens on the grounds with over 200 varieties of Camellias, including a very rare Yellow Camellia which we never found. With the chilly wind and it getting late in the day we only covered half of the property, put off the tour of the house and I still took about 150 Pictures.

Just a sampling of the pictures we tookthere.

I had Cathy stick her hand in to show the size of these leafs and this was a medium size one.

Never heard of this one before. It's a GREEN ROSE,, really, you can see the little bud to the left of the bloom. You can call it a rose but it still looks like a weed to me.

Fort Christmas

2012-01-13T18:02:00.000-05:00

Did a road trip over to Christmas Florida to tour Fort Christmas. It's been about 15 years since we were here last and they have added a ton of stuff, the first time we were here the only building was the reconstructed fort. Today it covers over 25 acres and contains a full size fort about ten other buildings that have been moved here from their original sites and is being developed into a living history museum, along with a large picnic and recreational area.

Each of the buildings is filled with displays and artifacts and today three of them had a docent present to answer any questions. There is a school house here that started as a one room school then went to two and eventually three rooms and was in use into the 60's, the cool thing is that three of the ladies we talked to attended this school.

This is a very well planned and laid out park, donations are accepted, we spent about an hour and a half seeing the park.

More information on Fort Christmas.

Here are some pictures of the park: Click to enlarge.

This Bronze was made by a man that was raised in one of the buildings in the park, at first we thought that it might be a Remington, but no.

"Scent of Man"

Around the park we found about seven sets of trees like this, A live Oak with a Palm either right next to it or growing out of the root system.

A simple wreath, it is Christmas after all.

and of course, Christmas is CLOSED Christmas.

Albin Polasek Museum & Sculpture Garden

2012-01-07T17:43:00.000-05:00

Drove over to Winter Park a spent a fewhours at the Albin Polasek Museumand Sculpture Garden. I had never heard of him before, but forsome reason I love Sculpture Gardens and it's part of our gardensociety membership, so why not.

We started in the museum section of thehouse where they had a traveling exhibit dealing with Cold WarRussian propaganda posters. It was interesting to see how the postershowed Russia as the kind, gentle, loving, giving government and theUSA was the mean, brutal, godless country out to destroy everythingwe could.

From there it was across the courtyardto the other section of the house and a 20 minute film to learn aboutour host. Then the guide showed us parts of the house and some ofhis work while answering our questions, after showing us the familychapel we were on our own to tour the Garden.

There are over 200 pieces of his workon the grounds, he did sculpture in stone, plaster, bronze, concreteand wood, plus paintings.

Here are just a few pictures of what weenjoyed.

This is the place

Coming up the driveway to the house

View out the window to the back yard.

One of his first works, carved wood, he did this when he was 15.

I can't remember the entire story behind this one but the original is on display in Nebraska and if you look you will see that she is holding an ear of corn, so she is known as the original Corn Husker.

If you were a close friend of the family and had a baby he wold make a bronze like this as a baby gift for you. This one was lost for about 70 years before the family realized what it was and donated it to the museum last year.

This was one scary looking guy, I didn't want to take his picture but he made me.

This is a copy of the much larger one in the garden.

The Wanderer

There were so many that I can't remember all the names.

I tell ya this guy was really scary, and I didn't take this picture.

The 14 Stations of the Cross in bronze, painting are in the chapel.

The weather is starting to takes it toll on some of his works.

That's it , a great place to spend the afternoon.

How we spent our week in pictures

2011-12-27T22:12:00.001-05:00

Bike path near Orange City Florida

We managed to make it 7 miles back to the trail head and our car on this rear tire.

Condo complex the kids are staying at with the other grand parents

Our version of Abby Lane

View from the condo

Pool at the condo

Bike path along a canal from Inglis Florida to the Gulf

Canal

View at the end of the trail

They like to let people know well in advance when the rides will be.

Trail head in Inverness florida

Mural at Inverness trail

Old trail depot in Inverness, now a restaurant.

Park and lake along the trail

The entire trail in 46 miles, so far we've covered about 1/2 of it.

Riding the easy way

December 26th 2011 near Coleman Florida,
Our 2005 PT Cruiser.

THE SHADOW RIDERS

Have a Safe Holiday

2011-12-22T12:53:00.000-05:00

Ponce Inlet Lighthouse

2011-12-17T20:07:00.000-05:00

Click any picture to enlarge, Photo heavy Blog.

Road trip over to Ponce Inlet, Florida. Our goal was to do some bike riding and go to the Ponce De Leon Lighthouse. We made the Lighthouse our first stop, there are eight different buildings plus the lighthouse to visit. Each is filled with different displays telling the history of the area, the light and the U.S.L.H.S., U.S. Lighthouse Service, had never hears of this service before, turns out that it was absorbed by the Coast Guard right before WW I. There is a 20 minute film that covers the history of the Lighthouse, after that we spent probably an hour and a half exploring the museum. Of course here are a few pictures.

First thing you do is face the challenge head on and look up to see your goal.

Just a little over half way up we decided to take a little break.

As we were taking our break this is the sign that they have on the wall for you to read. Not very encouraging is it.

203 steps later and we were out on the observation deck.

As close as you can get to the light.

View of the Inlet

Don't look Down.

Take a look at the little ledge right below the railing, about 15 feet down. It will come up again in a story later.

After our climb down the same 203 steps our rubbery legs took us over to the Lens Exhibit Building, other then the view from the top of the lighthouse this was our favorite building.

Part of the display of lenses.

The restorers here at the museum are considered the foremost experts on Fresnel lens restoration in the world.

This was a very small bulb in this lens but it was very blinding to look at.

This is the story involving the ledge at the top of the lighthouse

A few other interesting things we found there.

Ninety miles of open sea in one of these.

Old time fire extinguisher.

After that we unloaded the tandem and started out riding down the coast, about three miles down the path the wind changed and the fog started rolling in so we cut it short and called it a day.

The fog rolls in fast.

The dread Pirate Roberts protecting a parking lot.

War Memorial.

Blue Springs

2011-12-14T23:31:00.000-05:00

Today we biked the Blue Springs section of the Spring to Spring trail, from the trail head it was about 3 miles down to Blue Spring State Park. They normally charge $2 entrance fee for cyclist, but the Ranger was a little confused when we pulled up on the tandem, one bike two people, after a little thought he said $2 and sent us on our way. We rode down and took a walk on the boardwalk back to the spring, the sign said that there were 86 Manatee in the park today which was pretty good since there were only about 50 people. We were there for about an hour and spotted about a dozen Manatee before we hit the trail again and headed back to the trail head. Ended up riding about 12 miles. Volusia County has a fantastic bike trail system and you could probably find a different trail to ride everyday.

Train passing over the bike path tunnel.

River along the boardwalk

Very weird tree.

In just a matter of minutes we were able to train this Manatee to roll over. Manatee Whisperers

Manatee of a different color.

We almost got a ticket because Cathy cabled the bike up in a handicapped zone.

Spring to Spring Bike Trail

2011-12-10T21:15:00.000-05:00

The rain never showed up today so we loaded up and drove over to the Spring to Spring Bike Trail. There are three parking areas for the trail, we choose the one in the middle, it seemed to be the biggest and easiest to get to, it's located on Hwy 4162 just east of Hwy 17 (GPS 28.86627N / 081.31574W).

We started out heading south first to Lake Monroe Park, this was roughly 3 miles and all of it was through the woods or along side ponds, none of it was near any roads. Lake Monroe park has a boat ramp, fishing pier and 44 WE campsites with a dump station. After that we headed back north past the parking lot with the car so Cathy could see that we weren't lost today as we were yesterday. The other part of the trail runs along a road but it's 50 feet back behind all the Palm's and you can't see the road until you have to cross it to head up to DeBary Hall. We met another couple there and after 30 minutes of conversation about other bike route in the area, they have a web page ( Bike Florida), dedicated to Florida Bike Paths, we headed back to the car. About half a mile from the parking area is Gemini Springs Park, a spur of the bike path runs back through the park. After a short walk around the springs the smell of steaks being griledl made us race back to the car and head home for dinner.

Not as long a ride as yesterday but a very pleasant 11 miles.

Gemini springs Park

A 911 Memorial for a local boy who went to New York, joined the NYFD and died in the collapse of the towers.

Green Springs Park Bike Ride

2011-12-09T18:44:00.001-05:00

It was a little overcast to day but it was warm and there is a chance of rain tomorrow (Saturday) so we loaded the tandem on the back of the car and headed of to Green Springs Park, over by the Historical town of Enterprise,Fla. Green Springs Park is a little hard to find since it's not on the maps, or at least the ones I have so here's the GPS data 28.86306N / 81.24881W, this is to the parking lot.

The park is very nice it has a couple picnic areas, kids play area an entrance bike path to a section of the East Central Regional Rail Trail, right now there is only about 3 miles or so paved and completed but when they finish and tie everything together it will be close to 50 miles.

Reflections in the spring, you can see why they named it Green Springs.

One of the Boardwalks

Area still under construction

We started out going right when we hit the trail and after about a mile it hit a main street that had the path along side it, too much traffic noise so we turned around and headed the other direction. After about 3 miles we had to go around a small barricade, the path was paved but the wood fence was still under construction, after another mile is turned to very hard packed dirt, another mile and we hit the construction crew pouring concert for the driveways that crossed the path and we were forced onto the street about 50 feet from the path. There was no traffic and we were just getting warmed up so we continued on down the road, we came to a fork in the road and we took it, a little later we came to another fork and took that one too. Well one thing led to another and we just kept wandering around taking what ever road or street looked interesting until we finally decided that we were totally LOST. There are a zillion little lakes in this area so none of the road go straight for more then half a mile and 99% are dead ends, the good news is that I had a small hand held GPS in the handle bar bag tracking our distance and the bike route. Twenty minutes of playing with that I pretty much figured out where we were and roughly how to get back to the car. I had noticed that the longer we wandered around lost the deeper and growlier Cathy's voice became, once I told her I knew the way back and it was just a few miles, her happy go lucky voice returned and I was able to stop worrying about my unprotected back. Twenty minutes and two wrong turns later we were back at Green Springs Park, as we approached the car I sped up went past the car and asked her if she was ready for LAP TWO, that's when I felt a hard smack right between the shoulder blades of my unprotected back. A quick check of the odometer showed that our 3 to 6 mile ride turned into 19 miles.

GREEN=Paved YELLOW=Paved under construction RED=Packed dirt

Now believe me, if any of this was my fault I would gladly take the blame, but I'm having a hard time convincing Cathy that all the blame falls on her shoulders. I'm going to need a little help her from Odel over at Semi-True Tales on this one (Ex Fighter Pilot), I need him to explain to her that the pilot rides up front and the navigator rides in the rear seat, so when we get lost it's the fault of the rear seat. I'm glad you guys are back on the road, I missed your writings.

Cathy's not really as small as she looks here, it's a Tandem bike and the front half is a 21 inch frame and the rear half is a 17 inch frame, plus the camera angle, but if the picture was bigger you would see that she's not peddling, at least that's what everybody we pass always tells me.

That's it for today but I sure hope Cathy has learned from her mistakes and does a better job on tomorrows adventure.

A Little bit of THIS and a whole lotta THAT

2011-12-05T22:44:00.000-05:00

Just some stuff we found this week messing around.

Cumberland Island National Seashore Museum.

This large block of oak was found at the bottom of a well, they were placed there so when the bucket was lowered into the well it sat on the block of wood and didn't stir up any sand or sediment.

This is what's left of a statute that was at the Carnegie mansion on the island, the picture is what it looked like when it was in the garden.

This display of uniforms is to let you know about their part in the war of 1812, we always heard that the last battle was the Battle of New Orleans, fought after the treaty was signed. well even after that the British attacked the Battery Point Peter at the mouth of the St Mary's River. Since they out numbered the garrison 1500 to 80 it wasn't much of a battle, but it was the last fighting of the War of 1812.

St Mary's River Front

The Nation Park ferry that takes you to the Island, you need to make reservations during the busy season. If you're lucky you'll have to stop and wait in the river while a Trident Submarine enters the port. Really something to see,they're escorted by gun boats, helo's and have a SEAL team on deck.

Show how windy it was this day and I like this picture.

Fountain in Riverside Park.

National Park Headquarters, nice pace to work.

Map of Cumberland Island. If you go to the island take a backpack with plenty of water and food, get the early ferry and plan on spending the day. But don't miss the last ferry or they leave you there for the night and you're on your own.

The tide is out so these are stuck in the mud.

a semi tall ship at the end of the harbor but you can't get out to it.

SUGAR WORKS RUINS

Click to enlarge and read.

Just down the road and across the street from the main gate to the submarine base.

Part of the Sugar works ruins.

more ruins

and even more, this was a very large operation.

Close up of the Tabby wall, a mixture of sand ,lime and sea shells, the walls are about 18 inches thick.

This trees old enough and looks like it might have been an Indian trail marker tree.

WOODBINE AREA

We parked at the Satillia Riverfront Park and took the boardwalk, about 1/2 mile over to the Bird Sanctuary.

The board walk takes you under the Hwy 17 bridge and connects with part of the Georgia Coast Rails to Trails bike path.

Walking along the path and spotted this grave, it had a stone but we we're wondering why it was here all by it self.

and then we found out the rest of the story.
Click to enlarge and find out for yourself.

Here's a picture of Cathy and I, might use it for our Christmas card since it's a reflection in a Christmas bulb.

Continuing down the bike path.

Ended up in a little city park, already for the Holidays.

More ruins, the ruins of Woodbine Theater, not as old as the Sugar Works.

Under the Hwy 17 bridge on the boardwalk.

SIGNS WE FOUND

So it's OK to Treaspass before the sun goes down.

The building was collapsed but what a great sign.

At least they're honest about it.

And that's it for St Mary's.

Jacksonville - Sally Corp

2011-12-01T22:29:00.001-05:00

We finally said good-bye to Savannah and drove down to Woodbine/St Mary's, about 7 miles north of the Florida state line, we're staying at the Walk-About RV Park. This park changed owners about a year ago and is now owned by a nice young couple from Australia and their 4 kids. They have made a lot of improvements and are a real pleasure to deal with.

Today we drove down to Jacksonville, our first stop as always when we're here was Penzey's Spice shop to replenish our spice rack, if you've never been to a Penzeys then you don't know what you're missing.

After getting our spice fix we drove downtown to the Sally Corp.. They make animated robots and such for amusement parks, private corporations and any one else that wants one. We had called ahead and they said that they could squeeze us in with the noon tour, you must make reservations for a tour, we ended up being with a small (20 4^th grade kids) school tour. At first we thought that it was going to be geared towards the kids but it was very interesting for the adults also.

This company has been here for 30 years and has their robots all around the world. Our guide explained that it got it's start when three students at Wake Forest had a project which required them to give a talk on stage in front of an auditorium full of people. They were all very shy and none of them wanted to give the talk, so they bought a mannequin, ripped the head of and put a few motors in the head that would make the mouth move when ever they pushed a button. Then they had a lady friend record their speech for them. When it was time to give their talk they placed the head on the podium, turned on the tape and started pushing the button to make the mouth move with the speech. They all passed and that was the start of Sally Corporations, why Sally well that was the name of the mannequin and she's still employed there.

This was a fun tour and lasted about an hour and we were amazed at the great questions some of the fourth graders asked.

The first stop showed some of the different characters they have made.

The tour guide putting on a mask of LBJ, if you've been to the LBJ Presidential Library in Austin, this is the mold that they used to make the robot there.

Mark Twain

A sample they used to show the different movements.

They just finished this one and it's going to a Temple in India. It was made from the photos and measurements of the real person.

They use human hair on the robots and each one is placed in individuality, it can take this girl up to 20 hours to set all the hair in this beard.

T-Rex breaking out of his crate.

At the end they have an animated shooting gallery for the kids to try their shooting skills at.

Savannah Waterfront

2011-11-26T15:37:00.000-05:00

Just a few pictures of the Savannah Waterfront. We decided to head over and walk around since it was a nice day and we were hoping everybody else would be shopping Black Fridays at the mall, NOT.

We're at the Hardeeville RV Park so it's only a ten minute drive to downtown, the trick is to exit onto Hutchinson Island right when you start to cross the bridge and park at the Westin Hotel or at the Convention Center (Free) then walk between them to the free ferry dock. The ferry runs every half hour and it's about a 5 minute ride across the river to the waterfront, you can get off at either end of the waterfront.

It was a little crowded and most of the restaurants and shops were full so we just wandered around for a couple of hours then grabbed the ferry back to the island.

One of the Ferry boats

Savannah Waterfront

Click to enlarge and read about the Olympic Cauldron pictured below.

Convention Center on Hutchinson Island

Shops and Restaurants

More shops

and more

Narrow street and it's one way for the cars but the trolley goes both so when it's coming at you, you better get out of its way. When the cars are right up against the curb there is only about 6 inches clearance
.

One of the busier restaurants

Fountain, the real ship is in the river and open for tours.

War Memorial

Waving Girl, waiting for her lost Sailor love to return to Savannah, he never did.

Walkway between buildings leading to the second level.

Second level, the stairs take you to the third level and the main streets of downtown.

We walked around the main street area and a few of the squares then headed back to the ferry. There is so much more to see and do here I could write another 30 pages and post a few hundred more pictures.

Over the years we have spent about 8 weeks in the Savannah area and still always find new things to do and see.

Georgia Southern University or GSU

2011-11-20T14:41:00.002-05:00

About an hours drive west on I-16 took us to the city of Statesboro, home of Georgian Southern University, We started out at the visitors center to get our visitors parking pass which you have to have to park on campus. Our first stop was at the Wildlife Center where they have one of the best Raptor displays we've ever seen. They were just finishing up a Birds of Flight demonstration when we arrived so we only saw about 5 minutes of that before heading out on the nature walk. All the birds here are on display out in the woods along the trail, they are tethered in a natural environment.

Peregrine Falcon, the fastest flying bird in the world, can reach diving speeds of 200 MPH.

A barn owl, sleeping in the barn

Bald Eagle, all the bird here are unable to survive in the wild due to injuries.

The claw of the Golden Eagle

Golden Eagle

How did this little guy get in here, if I recall ,this was a Sparrow Hawk.

Owl with a nice home in a hollow tree.

All of these are out doors along the nature trail, during the summer if it gets to hot in the afternoon they move them indoors.

You gotta problem ?

After about an hour and a half we went over to the other side of the campus to the Botanical Gardens, not quite as impressive as the Wildlife center but a nice 45 minute walk around the gardens, it's getting lat in the year so I'm sure there will be a lot more blooms in the spring.

Remember these, they were using it for a slide show.

These looked like Sea Urchins

Just stuff we liked

The barn had a bunch of farming displays

One more stop while we're here and it's at the University's Museum. Here they have fossilized skeleton of a 78 millions year old Mosasaur, not exactly sure what it is but it's big. Twenty-three feet long it took the archeologist over eight years to uncover the skeleton and get it ready for display.

The Big Guy

A blue Nose Dolphin

Also there was a temporary exhibit “ Archeology of Camp Lawton “ this about the former Civil War Confederate prisoner of war camp, the school and student are conducting an archeological dig at this location in Jenkins County,

And that pretty much took up our day. Now a week end of Football to relax with.

Road Trip

2011-11-20T14:39:00.000-05:00

A little road trip today, starting at the Savannah Visitors Center, not so much to find out about Savannah since we've been here so many times but to see Battlefield Memorial Park which is right behind the visitors center. This is the site of the Revolutionary War Battle of Savannah which took place October 9,1779, it's reported to be the second bloodiest battle of the war. After winning this battle England thought that they would continue on and take back control of the Colony’s. Over 800 were killed or wounded during this battle and the memorial has 800 stones to represent them.

From there it was a 30 minute drive down to Richmond Hill, this was well on it's way to be coming a ghost town until Henry Ford showed up to build a winter home here. He also bought 85,000 acres, built 272 buildings which included schools, churches, a saw mill and homes for his 600 employees.

The small Kindergarten building is now a museum.

About another 8 miles takes you to Fort McAllister, which was also on Ford Property and he was the one that started the saving and reconstruction on this historical fort. What the Fort is most famous for is this is marks the end of Sherman's March to the Sea, this is where he was able to re-supply from ships so he could continue onto Savannah and up the coast. The fort is all earthworks with underground tunnels and rooms, there is a nice museum which explains the fort and area's history along with the story of the sinking on the stockade runner Nashville.

Henry Ford and Fort McAllister

And after all this he lived through the war.

WHAT IS IT?

On the way home we made one more stop at the Savannah – Ogeechee Barge Canal Museum. Nobody was there and everything was closed up but we were able to walk down the tow path to the remains of Lock #5.

The legend of "The Little Lost Girl Of Lock #5" all they ever found was a single shoe.

WHAT IS IT: It's a deck prism (it's upside down for display reasons) it would be flush with the deck of a ship and would distribute the sun light into the room below deck.

Another sign we spotted.

Tybee Island

2011-11-20T14:37:00.000-05:00

Doing a little catching up this week end.

Last week we woke up to a beautiful day and loaded up the tandem bike for a ride around Tybee Island, it's about a 30 minute drive from the park. We parked and unloaded at the Lighthouse and were ready to go as soon as we figured out their parking meter system, they take credit cards. We took off for the far end of the island where the pier is, just wandering through the neighborhoods.

These guys are all over the island, so don't think you can skate by with out paying the piper.

The back street didn't have any traffic on them at all.

A lot of interesting houses and cottages to rent.

The Pier

Business area down by the beach

As soon as we got down to the pier and were getting ready for a walk on the beach the wind shifted and that can make a big big difference when you're on a bicycle. Within 10 minutes we went from sunny sky's to a cold heavy fog, the only good thing was that the wind was at our back so it helped speed us back to the car. We did get to spend enough time on the island to hold us for another few years or so.

From Sunny to this in about 10 minutes.

Signs

2011-11-15T08:19:00.000-05:00

We got into the Savannah area yesterday and after getting set up we drove over to the new Visitors Center at the Savannah National Wildlife Refuge. After watching a 10 minute introduction film we took the short trail they had around back (there is probably 30 miles worth of trails in the preserve).

Now everybody is used to seeing these little signs when they’re on a nature trail.

But how often do you see signs like these.

Columbus Georgia

2011-11-12T15:47:00.001-05:00

Long Blog - Busy Day

We started out the day at the newNational Infantry Museum at Ft Benning, it's located at a locationwhere you don't have to pass through any of the gates manned withguards. This museum opened in 2009, prior to that would had to gothrough an MP check point and get a pass to go to the back section ofthe base to the old museum. I'm going to start with telling a littleabout the old museum, it was in an old three story building that wasone of the originals on the base, if you saw the movie “WE WERESOLDIERS” it was filmed on this base and the housing where thesoldiers family's lived was the same street that the museum was on. Across from the museum at the Park/Parade grounds there were abouttwo dozen different monuments to the different units and such. Ithink that we were the only ones there that day, the museum had tonsof one of a kind artifacts on display and half of the displays wereout in the open. On the one floor every unit had a large stainedglass window of their unit insignia hanging, what I'm saying is thatthe old museum was great, so If I don't sound to excited about thenew one you'll know that I'm comparing it to the old. Which thankGod we were fortunately able to tour years ago.

And now the NEW Museum, OK, If youhave never been here this new museum is fantastic, after entering thelobby and being greeted by a docent you climb the last hundred yardramp. This takes you from the first American infantry in battleright up to our current conflicts. This walk is filled with videodisplays and very well done, once you reach the second floor youstart the exhibit area, They have so much squeezed in here that Ifound it a little confusing to follow and be sure to see everything,but there are some great artifacts here so don't miss them.

The new museum is much more family orkid oriented with a rifle range (not open yet) restaurant, snack bar,Imax theater and more.

The thing we didn't like was that twodisplays were gated off and closed, The Revolutionary War and the Warof 1812, when we asked why they were closed they said that they werestill trying to raise funds to finish them. Now they had the fundsfor a restaurant, a snack bar, an Imax and a rifle range (all ofwhich require admission charges) but not for the two displays thatstarted this country on it's way to greatness and the first footstepsof the American Infantry Soldier which this museum is named after.

Please don't let me discourage you, ifyou are in the area this museum is defiantly worth your time to stopand see.

Here's a few pictures:

New Building

Statue in the lobby

Combat Infantry Badge, this is what it's all about.

Click to enlarge, these rules still make a lot of sense.

Shows how the displays are a little crowded

One of the two closed sections that we wanted to see

A few miles down the road and you'llfind the National Civil War Navel Museum, it was originally named theConfederate Navel Museum but has since changed.

This museum gives you a great historyof both Navies during the Civil War. One room is dedicated to theCSS Jackson, which was designed to be a blockade runner, it wasconstructed of Pine,Oak and they encased in Iron siding. This vesselwas sunk and after 100 years the hull was found and raised. It's ondisplay and they have made an aluminum frame work that shows what theships original design was.

They have a section of the Gunboat CSSChattahoochee on display, there is a life size replica of the turretfrom the Monitor, which is much larger then I ever imagined. Theyhave recreated a section of the USS Hartford, Admiral Farragut's flagship, with displays showing what navy life about ship was like. Ithink they made it look much nicer then it really was.

Hull of the CSS Jackson with aluminum framing showing her full size.

more of the hull

Another room holds a large collectionof flags, all of them are original, and explain the ship they werefrom and it's role in the war and battles. There is much more thereto see.

Hall of Flags

Gun turret of the Monitor, life size.

Model used in making the TNT movie "The Ironsides"

USS Hartford, Admiral Farragut's flag ship

Click to enlarge and read about the amazing Horace King, for years now it seems like every time we turn around we're running into something about Horace. We even stumbled over his grave one year.

After you leave the museum you can walkout back and enjoy a stroll along the Chattahoochee River Walk.

On the way out of town we spotted theColumbus Botanical Gardens. This is a work in progress and from whatwe found out it is run by volunteers. We walked through it in about30 minutes, they have a 20 years plan and it should be fun to watchas they keep adding new sections.

This made a pretty long day since itwas about an 80 mile drive each way so the last thing I wanted to seewhen we got home and I opened the shade on the rear window of theslide was the widow shattered. I check with a few neighbors and theysaid nobody was mowing or weed wacking in the park today so I guess Ican rule that out, but there was an impact point in the middle ofthe window so we're thinking that it might have been a bird strike. No sign of a dead bird below the window but then again there areabout 500 cats in the stables behind the park.

We found a guy through Camping Worldthat is coming out Thursday to replace it for us. Hey it's onlymoney, what ever we don't spend the kids will.

Robins Air Base Museum

2011-11-12T15:34:00.000-05:00

After leaving Chattanooga we did ashort drive down to Adairsville for the night, this gave us a chanceto drive over to Canton and have dinner and a few hours conversationwith some old friends from Michigan.

(FYI) We stayed at the Leisure Time RVPark which is about ½ mile off of Exit 306, Passport price is412.50 for the first night, it was very easy in and out and had thefastest WiFI, free or paid I've ever used, It was free.

The next day was the fun part, Drivingthrough Atlanta or the west by pass as we did, it didn't really helpmuch. The worst traffic started 30 miles north of Atlanta, Stop andgo for about 45 minutes with out an construction or accidents, prettymuch just stupid drivers that have to change lanes 22 times per mile.

After that it was an easy drive to ourCoast to Coast home park Southern Trails in Unadilla, we're going tospend our free week sitting around and and relaxing with a day tripor two squeezed in.

TripNumber One

TheMuseum of Aviation, at Robins Air Force Base. The museum is locatedright off the base so you don't have to jump through hoops to get toit, just park and enjoy and it's free.

It'sbeen about 7 or 8 years since we were last here and we heard thatthey had added a new building and a few new displays, so we werelooking forward to seeing the additions and changes. After about twoand a half hours of wandering through the museum and grounds wedecided that it was a toss up. They greatly reduced a few of, whatwe thought were their better displays to make room for some newaircraft displays. One display that was reduced to about 20 percentof what it was before was the section on the “FLYING TIGERS” theearly American pilots that flew against japan for China, and thedisplay on the “TUSKAGEE AIRMEN” the first Afro-American fighterpilot unit. Before both displays gave you a very in depth historythat made you want to learn more about these men, now they are just amere mention of them.

Thenew Display is the section called “Down to Earth” this iddedicated to the history of the 507^th Parachute InfantryRegiment (PIR) and their part in the Invasion of Normandy. This iswhat we'll remember about our visit this time, there is a smalltheater that has a 56 minute film about the 507^th thattells of the 2000 men of the 507^th that took part in theinvasion and how after a few month less then 800 of them returnedhome. This was one of the many units that was air dropped 20 milesfrom where they should have been and gathered at a small Frenchvillage only to have to defend it from a German unit that outnumbered them 10 to 1 until they were over run.

Thefilm has interviews with many of the members from the 507^thduring a reunion and trip back to France and the little village tohave a monument dedicated to the members who died there. The film isvery well done, maybe a little long but I don't know what they couldhave cut, and it will give a pretty good tug on your emotions.

Justa few picture from the museum.

Warthog, my favorite.

A great display and movie

Copy of the Monument in France.

When we lived in Oscoda, Michigan we had these taking off and landing over our house 24/7 at Wurtsmith Air Base.

What! You've never been to Chattanooga

2011-10-29T21:00:00.003-04:00

Well what's wrong with you.

Cathy and I have been coming to Chattanooga for probably over 20 years, the first time we came here and went downtown it made Detroit look safe. But they have done so much to the downtown river front area that it's hard to believe, every year there is something new to see. One of the things is that most of the development is by private companies or investors, The two aquariums, the Art museum, the new baseball stadium, theater house, all the restaurants and tons of other things just means you can't get bored. And that's just in the city.

This year so far we discovered the huge new VW plant and the Amazon warehouse distribution center, we found these because you have to drive past them to get to the new Nature Center which is located on the old TNT munitions factory property. This was is use during WWII, we drove around the perimeter road the other day and it was about 7 miles, everything inside of this is either paved biking/hiking trails (about 10 miles worth) or dirt/gravel trails for hiking/Mt biking (probably another 8 to 10 miles).

I'm trying a slide show here which is pretty big, about 70 pictures from the last few years of Chattanooga and the riverfront area. The river front has a 8 miles paved hiking/biking trail that runs right along the river, (about 85% of the trail in right on the river) there are a few areas that go around homes or buildings but not much.

As Forest Gump Said

2011-10-29T20:26:00.000-04:00

SH*T HAPPENS !

After a week in Crossville Tenn we did a nice easy drive down to Chattanooga, since we were going right by a Sams Club on the way to the park I decided to gas up the rig. About a block from Sam's a guy cut in front of us and hit his brakes so that he could make a right turn into a hamburger joint, half way in to the drive for some reason he stopped with the rear end sticking out into our lane about 2 feet. Well, I managed to nail the brakes hard enough and swerved a little to the left so that we didn't hit him but a block later when we pulled in for gas I thought that the front right tire was on fire there was so much smoke coming out of the wheel well. It turned out to be just the brakes, no fire. So after gassing up we drove 4 miles to the Campground which happened to be at Camping World, after registering I made an appointment to take it in first thing in the morning.

Of course they have to order the parts so the we stayed around camp Friday until they called at noon and said all the parts were in and that they were picking up the rig in 20 minutes so we would have it back by 5pm. The problem was the brake caliper froze and wouldn't release the brake, so we had to replace the calipers on both side. He recommended doing both since Ford redesigned the calipers and it's better that they are both the same. We have 59000 miles on this rig and this is makes the third set of calipers. If Ford has a better idea I would like to know what it is. Since they had it up on the lift and half torn apart I decided to have them do new pads and replace Ford's other great idea, the 18 inch long rubber brake lines, which were what broke down the last time and caused the other calipers to freeze up. After 5 hours and and 2 tons of money the brought the rig back in time for us to set up in the cold rain.

So here ends my bitch, and I'm not going to let any of this bug me because it can always be worse then it is, it's only money and we're in CHATTANOOGA and we love CHATTANOOGA, so now we're going to go have some fun.

Spotted this on a walk

2011-10-24T18:14:00.000-04:00

I wonder what this guy is thinking?

University of Tennessee Gardens

2011-10-17T20:35:00.002-04:00

Since our beloved Detroit Tigers went down in flames the other night we decided we had to stop crying and get out of the house so we took a drive down to the UT Gardens, right on the Tennessee river. We were really going to go down there Saturday figuring it wouldn’t be as busy as a school day until we realized that LSU was in town for a football game against the Volunteers. When the Vols are playing at home you don't want to be anywhere near downtown.

It's not a big garden but is very well done, one of the things they do is try to adapt plants from all over the country to grow in Tennessee. We spent about an hour and a half touring the gardens and they are free.

The best way to tell you about the garden is just to post a ton of pictures, so here they are.

(Click to enlarge pictures) Don't know why but when I tested the blog and clicked on a picture to enlarge it, it opened a program, I think Picasa and made kind of a slide show which showed all the pictures in the blog but no captions to explain the photo. It may have some thing to do with Google+ but I can't figure it out.

Something called a Flapjack

Something called Flapjacks

Fallen Heart

Monolith Garden

Giant cricket

Busy Bee

Rose garden

Pond at the Rose garden

I liked this idea, it's just a small metal table covered a mesh and then covered with rock and dirt and a small garden. They also had a bench done like this, they looked much better then the picture shows

Close up of Flapjack

We're staying at the Escapees RV park about 15 miles north of town,

We're the little Brown one in the middle on the right.

Buy me on Ebay

2011-10-15T19:34:00.001-04:00

Well at least a picture
.

I was playing around looking at things on Ebay and found a guy selling a bunch of old newspaper photos of the Detroit Police, and HA there I was.

I'm the good looking (but still very mean looking) one with the star above his head. Hiding behind the watermark.

CLICK TO ENLARGE

A Wish

2011-10-15T19:02:00.000-04:00

If I had just one wish it would be that every wife who's husband loves to BBQ would buy their hubby a Charcoal Chimney for Christmas, or better yet buy it right now. With the end of summer most places are putting them on sale so they're nice and cheap. You can get them for anywhere from $8 to $50 depending on how fancy you want to be.

Charcoal Chimney link

With one of these you never buy charcoal lighter again and you'll be amazed at how wonderful your BBQ will taste being cooked over clean coals rather then stuff that was drenched with that nasty funky stinky lighter fluid which flavors your food so it taste like C@*P.

They're easy to use just crumple up a single sheet of newspaper and shovel it in the bottom, load it up with coal and light the paper through one of the holes in the bottom. 10 to 12 minutes later you'll have white hot coals to cook with, minus that nasty smell and taste, and your neighbors, like ME will love you for not stinking up my RV and forcing me to close all the doors and windows when it's 75 degrees out.

If you're really cheap like me you can make your own out of and old coffee tin, just use an old fashion type can opener (the ones with the pointed end that we had to use to open our beers before the pull tabs) or drill some ½ inch holes in the side (not the bottom) of the coffee can at the bottom rim and use a pair of pliers for your handle.

Your neighbors will love you for it.

You've probably figured out that it was a beautiful day and about half the park decided to BBQ and they all used ½ a can of lighter fluid to start there coals, which means we had to close up the rig and turn on the A/C.

Oh well, it's just a wish, I have another wish but I can't tell you about that one.

Leaving Michigan is hard to do.

2011-10-02T20:29:00.000-04:00

No I don't mean that it's hard to leave all our Michigan friends and family behind or that the resort has been so relaxing that we're going to miss it or that the chilly,wet weather is bringing the beautiful fall colors matched only by New England.

No what I mean is we were taking the rig in for new shocks and it failed to start, plenty of battery but no spark to the engine. I start the rig every two weeks during the summer and let it run up to operating temperature but this morning nothing. OK time to give Good Sam road service a call and get a little service for my money, after about ten minutes on the phone with them and they had a tow truck on the way. We're in the middle of no where so the truck had to come from about 30 miles away, and then tow the motor home about 20 miles to where we were having the work done. It would have been about a $300 tow but Good Sam took care of it.

We started out with a bad Mass Sensor, whatever that is, they replaced it and it started right up, once. Fortunately Cathy and I were going to spend a few days at the kids house doing Football and Volley ball events with them, . Turned out to also have a bad fuel pump, it appears that the motor home company put in an extension on the wiring harness back to the fuel pump, problem was they didn't use the proper gauge wire which caused it to burn out. No I'm not going to mention Thor Corporations, Four Winds Five Thousand motor home. Once they found out that the extension was the cause and that it was bad they started looking for a new one when one of the mechanics noticed that the original wire harness was long enough to reach without the extension. I love how the pump is in the gas tank so they had to drop the tank to replace it, labor was 4 times the amount of the pump.

We were still at the kids when they called so the next morning I left there at 6:30am drove 130 miles to the RV Center, while I was checking out they pointed out that I had a bad bulge in the right front tire. I only have about 25000 miles on them but they're pushing 6 yrs old so my next stop was the tire shop, a couple hours there and I was ready to head back to the resort and set up the rig. After that it was a simply 110 mile drive back to the kids,just in time to shower eat dinner and go to the volleyball games.

Two more days of kids volleyball and football, and now we're back at the resort relaxing for the day, watching OUR LIONS go 4 & 0, Tomorrow we'll be closing up shop here and packing everything and then hitting the road Tuesday.. We hope.

Michigan State Museum

2011-08-09T18:19:00.000-04:00

Started out early to make a road trip to the Meijers Garden in Grand Rapids Michigan,about half way there the clouds moved in and the rains started. Not a good day for the gardens but a rainy day is always good for genealogy research, so we made a right turn and headed for Lansing and the State library and Archives. Cathy is big on genealogy and I really don't care about it unless she finds someone that was very rich, so while she was in the archives I went to the state museum which is in the same building.

I've been here at least a dozen times but I always spot something that I never noticed before, there were no school buses in the parking lot so I knew it would be quiet today.

The museum covers the entire history of Michigan and it would fill a lot of pages so I'm just going to post a few pictures.

The first thing you see when you get off the elevator, the Old's Museum is a few miles from here.

There is a section about the building of BIG MAC or as we call it in Michigan The BRIDGE.

This is a piece of Float Copper from the U.P. , it's 8 foot by 4 foot and weights about 4000 lbs and is 99.9 percent pure copper

Of course they have to have a section on the auto industry

Every time I round the corner and see this beautiful 57 Corvette, it reminds me of my very first car. It was red too.

The sticker price on the car was $3450.00

One of the great things about growing up in Detroit was MOTOWN, we had some of the greatest music in the country right in our backyard and they all preformed every chance they had. Any kind of a festival or fair they were there and most of the time it was FREE. You could go to the State Fair and in one day see at least 5 headliners on stage.

My favorite and the love of my youth, Diana Ross, during my teens a probably saw her perform 25 times.

And this is who every Detroit kid wanted to grow up a be, Al Kaline, Mr Tiger. A kid I went to High School with lived next door to Mr Kaline so I was fortunate enough to have met him quite a few times.

Date Line 1957

Anybody that follows football knows that we may never see this headline again.

Just a pretty stained glass window I liked.

I didn't realize until I got home and started looking at the pictures, what a great trip I was able to take down memory lane.

Guess I'm a little glad it rained today.

Just stuff

2011-08-06T07:10:00.001-04:00

I just noticed that it's been over 6 weeks since I posted a Blog. It's not that I've been to busy, it's just that we haven't done that much since we got back to Michigan.

We ended June at the kids house, I had to drive the grandson back and forth to Driver Training class for a week, then we had two days back at the park before we were back at the kids to House/Pet sit for 8 days while they went north to a family reunion week over the fourth of July. It was during that heat wave so we had free air conditioning for the whole time.

This is the little girl that we were taking care of while House sitting

An aerial view of our park, we're the little red squiggly line near the lower center.

Lighthouse Village Resort, Homer Michigan, 780 membership sites and 10 Coast to Coast sites.

About 10 days to ourselves at the park doing this and that, cleaning stuff,cutting the grass, working on the garden, fixing things breaking things and watching Tiger Baseball, we're in first place. Then it was back to the kids house to again House/Pet sit for 9 days while they were of in the Boston area for a little road trip. They hit Niagara Falls, West Pointe Academy, Salem, Mystic and Boston Massachusetts. They went to a Red Sox game, hugged the Green Monster, did a Segway tour of Boston, went whale watching and a ton more things that I can't think of.

We spotted this one in a Walmart's in Battle Creek, Michigan I was really hoping that it had a For Sale sign on it since it looks like it still has a lot of life left in it.

I tried to explain to them that Cathy and I are the retired ones with a motor home and that we're the ones that should be doing all the running around and that they should stay home and go to work everyday. But since it was the two hottest parts of the summer so far the free A/C made up for it.

Down by the dock

Hopefully next week we'll get over to the Lake Michigan side to tour a garden we've been wanting to see for a couple of years , if we do you'll probably hear about it.

Back Road Discoveries

2011-06-15T20:05:00.001-04:00

It's been awhile so we decided to take a little road trip up around Marshall Michigan. After miles of corn fields, narrow roads and dodging the potholes in the road we spotted what a first looked like an old abandon airfield. As we got closer we saw a chopper taking off so I pulled in to take a look around. There was one lady in the office that ran the whole place, I talked with her for about 20 minutes an got an hours worth of history about the place.

Right out of a WW II Movie

Mr Brooks donated the property to the city of Marshall with the provision that it always be used as an air field, it was about this time that city of Marshall was changing over from brick paved streets to cement. Mr Brooks said that he would take all the old bricks and stock piled them on the property, then he contacted someone in the Federal government and had a small CCC camp built and the CCC used the paving bricks to build the three buildings for the air field. The main hanger and a smaller out building still remain.

The Airfield is used by some glider pilots (NOTE: they also built some of the gliders here that were used during the D-Day invasion) and a bunch of those crazy people that jump out of a perfectly good airplane. She said the it really gets busy on the weekends because of people flying into eat at Schuler's restaurant. When I was just a wee lad my folks would make a once a year trek from our home in Detroit, about a three hours drive back then, to Marshall so that we could eat at Schuler's. The reason I remember this is that back then I had to wear a suit and tie to enter the restaurant at least with my parents I did. Today the restaurant is divided into the main dining room where the old ways still exist, and the Pub room where it is casual for lunch and dinner.

Any how, after leaving the air field we drove into Marshall and figured we would give the Pub section a try for lunch. We both went with the Grilled Triple Cheese sandwich with tomato and spinach, a bowl of Tomato Basil soup with homemade potato chips ($10). WOW, when she brought our order the sandwiches were over hanging the plate, a large bowl of soup and so many chips, that were great, that we had to get a to go box to take over half of them home. If you're ever near here you can't go wrong stopping for lunch. (115 S Eagle St, Marshall MI 269-781-0600 Just south of Michigan Ave)

The lady at Brooks Filed also mentioned the Southern Exposure Herb Garden just north of town, so we thought that we might try walking off a little of our lunch there.

Another good choice, the gardens is basically used for weddings and other such parties, the property contains a 1835 farm house and numerous out buildings, all restored to original condition and surrounded by beautiful gardens filled with small walking paths. While walking around the paths we stumbled onto one of the owners, Curtis spent 34 years in the Air Force and calls this place his 2^nd life. While chatting we mentioned that we travel Full time and he had a bunch of questions about that, then he explained that, that was what he had planned for his 3^rd life.

Pictures from Southern Exposure

One of the buildings where the parties are held

Iron bench in the shrubs

1953 Chevy

This place is really beautiful but hard to capture in Pictures

After that it was back to base camp to watch our Tigers beat Cleveland and move into FIRST PLACE.

A SPECIAL REPORT for Margie

2011-05-10T22:40:00.000-04:00

We're back in Michigan and I need Margie's help.

Here Cathy and I are getting ready to enter the NEW Culvers in BELLEVILLE, Michigan.

and we wanted your advise, should we just get the Original Butter Burger or should we go for the one with Cheese.

Sorry I had to do it.

Armstrong Air & Space Museum

2011-05-07T13:16:00.000-04:00

A baby faced Korean War Fighter Pilot

Every year we stop here in Wapakoneta for at least 5 days before heading to Michigan for the summer and every year we say that we are going to visit the Armstrong Space Museum which is right across the road from us. Well this year we finally did it, both of us have visited the museum before but it's been at least 30 years so we were due.

The museum starts with the first experiments in rocketry and goes through to the Shuttle, with a heavy concentration on Armstrong of course. Neil was born and raised right here in Wapakoneta, his first flight was in a Ford Tri motor with his dad when they skipped Sunday school to take the flight because it was cheaper Sunday mornings. He did his flight training and received his pilots license from the local (now gone) airport.

The Mercury Seven Astronauts.

They have a large number of original items from the space program on display, too many to mention here. We spent about 2 hours here and pretty much covered everything including a ten minute video in the main room. During the video they showed them being retrieved from the capsule after the lunar landing, they had to put on special contamination suits before settling on the deck of the aircraft carrier. Once on deck they walked straight to a containment vehicle were they would live for the next 25 days to make sure they didn't bring anything back from the moon, the interesting part here for Rvers is that the containment vehicle was a modified Air Stream trailer, which was made only ten miles from here in New Jackson,Ohio.

Neil Armstrong's Space suit that he wore while walking on the moon during the Apollo 11 Mission.

A special style Pepsi-Cola for drinking in outer space.

My favorite display. These models are built to scale, if you look at the bottom right you will see a small white line I drew next to the Mercury Redstone rocket that was used by the Mercury Astronauts, right behind it is the Saturn V rocket used to take Armstrong to the moon.

Just a little bit of a difference in size.

Anybody that has followed the Space Program, from Sputnik and Echo right up to the present time will find this museum a worth while stop.

It's a LOVE-HATE Thing

2011-05-04T17:59:00.001-04:00

We love the State of Ohio but we hate Ohio State, M GO BLUE...............

We spent 11 days in Lancaster Ohio and it rained for 10 of them, We wanted to get down to the Hocking Hills area and do some hiking but the weather never gave us the change, so we just laid around and kicked the little bit of head colds we picked up in Louisville and then moved to Wapakoneta.

This is always our final resting place before we get into Michigan for the summer, I guess instead of saying final resting place I should say our final place to rest. We're at Lake Village Resort which is a Coast to Coast park, the part we like is it's a good location and it has a huge indoor pool with two hot tubs and a sauna. Since it's rained everyday this comes in handy.

We drove over to Marion to meet some friends for a long lunch, on the way there, taking the back roads, we came across this marker. This is one of the things we love about Ohio, it seems that just about every little town has some sort of history connected with it.

Just a little ways down the road we spotted a little cemetery which looked like it need to be explored, there were quite a few G.A.R. markers but then we spotted this set of lost stones. It seems like they lost their way one way or another and nobody could figure out where they belonged so they set them all in concert in a nice row.

Lost souls of Henkle Cemetery

After lunch we took some more back roads and ended up in the City of Kenton, while driving past the St Mary's / Grove Cemeteries we spotted this maker on the side of the road.

It only took us about ten minutes to find the grave site.

There was another recipient of the MoH here but we couldn't find him.

Notice that the plaque is old enough that they still used the phrase Winner, since this isn't Charlie Sheen and WINNING, they should change that to Recipient.

This the first headstone that we can recall that was designed like this.

I'm going to assume that he was a Cannoneer.

Almost forgot, the other day when we were in Lima we stumbled across the original Kewpee's Hamburger Restaurant, right downtown. This was the restaurant chain that Dave Thomas wanted to buy but when the owner refused to sell Dave started Wendy's. Kewpee's is the home of the original Square Burger and they are gooooood.

You can't see it in the picture but cars are lined up down the street waiting to get to the drive thru window.

This is all the seating they have inside, step up to the counter order and pick up your meal then find a seat. Notice the Kewpee doll in the corner of the restaurant.

Time for the HOT TUB!!!

Rain-Thunderstorms-High Winds & Hail

2011-04-25T16:43:00.000-04:00

That's it, nothing more.
We've had this type of weather for the last ten days and the same is predicted for the next week.
SeeYa when the sun shines again.

Road Trip Finds

2011-04-15T20:44:00.001-04:00

We're about 20 miles south of downtown Louisville and since they are gearing up for Thunder on the River this weekend and have a bunch of road closures and detours we decided to just do some exploring south of the city.

I guess you could call today's trip a Grave trip because that's what we found, some extremely interesting grave sites. Our first discovery was at Long Run Cemetery located about 15 miles east of Louisville. This was the site of one of the first Baptist churches in the territory and the foundation is still present in the center of the cemetery. The main draw to this cemetery is that Abraham Lincoln's Grandfather who he was named after is buried here.

Notice the original spelling, you could have been driving around town in a Linkhorn.

While we were walking around the cemetery we found four more Revolutionary War Veterans buried here, Lincoln's Grandfather was also a Rev. War Vet.

And then we spotted another marker that was The Great Uncle of Harry S Truman.

But we're saving the best for last. Just under a mile west on Simpsonville, Kentucky, on US-60, is a much newer cemetery, this one was dedicated January 26^th 2009. It's small and only has 22 stones but it marks the mass grave of 22 members of the 5^th U.S. Colored Cavalry who were massacred here on January 25^th 1865, by a group of southern guerrillas.

Click to enlarge

In Memory of 22 members of the 5th USCC

For History or Military buffs, there is a very interesting web page that tells the story of the massacre and the effort by locals and ancestors to make this monument come about.

5th U.S. Colored Cavalry at Simpsonville, Kentucky

Be sure to scroll down on this site to the story of what happen.

The 5^th USCC was also present at the two Battles of Saltville a year earlier. In the first battle a large number of troops (40-80) that were left wounded on the battlefield were executed by Confederate troops.

Another great day of wandering through history.

Just Taking it TennessEASY

2011-04-10T21:45:00.000-04:00

We left Knoxville a little over a week ago and have been sitting around in Crossville, Tennessee, at one of our favorite relaxing parks, nothing special just a nice area for day trips and a quiet campground.

Of course we did have to sit through that monster storm that hit the Midwest last week. We got four inches of rain, winds gusting up around 50 mph and a few tornadoes touched down about 20 miles north of us. Other then losing power for about 20 minutes and a few more gray hairs we came through it OK but listening to a weather radio and looking at the map is not my idea of a quiet evening. A short week later and we're setting record highs yesterday and today.

We did take a day trip around to Rock Island State Park, Twin Falls, and Falling Creek Falls State Park.

Here's a few picture and descriptions. After all that rain the falls were going full blast.

Three different views of Twin Falls, this one is looking down stream.

Twin Falls are probably my favorite waterfalls I've been to.

This view is from right across the river.
The amazing thing about these falls is that they come right out of the side of the cliff, their is NO river up there. They were formed when they built the dam and it flooded an unknown cavern.

And this one is down the trail looking back up stream.

This is the Old Textile Mill in Rock Island State Park. Normally there is an island and waterfall here but with all the rain and the dam open you couldn't see either one today.

An old pump house that feeds the mill.

Normally there would be fisherman out in the river and there would a ton of rocks but today it was like a white water rapids.

After lunch we drove about 20 miles over to Falls Creek Falls State Park. A short walk takes you back to Falls Creek Falls which is the highest falls east of the Mississippi. A few years ago we were here during a drought and there was no water going over the falls at all.

Another little drive and short hike takes you to this falls which I think is named Desolate Falls. There is another trail here that will take you to a suspension foot bridge that crosses the river just down stream from the falls, but it looked a little to muddy today.

The Dogwood was starting to bloom.

Back at camp we found that we had some new neighbors, Jim (Call me Pat) & Nancy Patterson. After BS'ing with them for a while we found out that they also enjoy the sport of Geo-caching, although on a much grander scale then us. We started in 2002 and have a little over 500 finds, Pat & Nancy started in 2006 and will shortly go over 10,000 finds. We picked a nice weather day and jumped into the car and spent the day chasing down caches in the area. We found about 15 and had a nice lunch in town before calling it a day.

Some of the places we found while Geo-caching.

The Old Stone bridge in Cumberland State Park, right by the lodge.

This is the Mill House on the back side of the dam bridge, no it's not a DAMN bridge, it's a bridge and a dam.

This area was Homesteaded in the mid 1930's, over 250 homes were built, many still being lived in and all were built from the Tennessee stone that is quarried around here and in demand world wide.

This is the Crabtree house and is now a museum.

Notice that Pat is trying to retrieve a cache with a pen, this is because a minute earlier when he stuck is finger in there he got stung by a bee.

Pat and Nancy are off today to Nashville to get ready for a NASCAR Race, and Cathy and I are going to sit around for a few more days visiting some friends in the area and our favorite little dive restaurant in town Sister's. It doesn't look like much but all the food is homemade, tastes great and is cheap or should I say affordable.

Damn the day Night Shades & the Torpedos

2011-03-23T15:52:00.001-04:00

We started out the day looking for a Jo-Ann's Fabric store to try and find some string to re-string the damn Day/Night shades. I love these things when they work but they sure are a PIA when one of the strings break. Ours break so often that the small ones from start to finish, I can have them done in under an hour but the big six footers always seem to take ten times longer. It's just a pain working on some thing that long and using 4 strings that are twice as long.

By the time we found a Jo-Ann's then did lunch we noticed that we were only about a five minute drive from the town of Farragut, named after Admiral Farragut. Their city hall has a nice little museum in it, about 40% is dedicated to the town and surrounding area, the rest is to the Admiral who was born here.

They have made a few changes since the last time we were here about five years ago.

New in 2010 is the nice little park in front, displaying a statue of the Admiral and a couple of cannons off of two of the ships he commanded.

Entrance to the museum.

I had forgotten about the cigars, but I remember seeing there around the house when I was a kid. Back when smoking was still proper.

They have quite a few items that belonged to the admiral and a lot more relating to his career.

Here are a few amazing facts about the Admirals life and career, shortly after his mothers death he was adopted by a family friend Navy Captain David Porter, the Admiral was born James Glasgow Farragut but later changed it to David to honor Porter. His career and life are pretty much the same since in 1810 he was appointed as a Midshipman on the USS Independence, He was NINE years old.

During the Civil War he captured New Orleans, opening up the Mississippi for the North, but he was most remembered for is the Battle of Mobile Bay where the smoke was so thick he had to climb up the rigging of the USS Hartford in order to see the battle. It was from here that he shouted out the famous words "Damn the Torpedoes Full Speed Ahead"

Admiral Farragut was the first person in US history to hold the ranks of Rear Admiral, Vice Admiral and Admiral. He died in 1870 and is buried in the Bronx, New York.

His desk from the USS Hartford and cash box that he carried throughout his career.

Just something we found interesting.

After about an hour in the museum we talked with the Docent for about ten minutes and asked were the Admirals birth place was in relation to the museum. He gave us some direction to it but then said 'Good Luck", the property is owned by a developer and was being divided into lots when the historical society stepped in and tried to stop him. So now it's tied up in court and the gate to the property has been locked since then. He told us we could drive by but we wouldn't be able to see anything.

It was only four miles so why not take a look, surprise! surprise!!!! when we got there the gate was not only unlocked, it was wide open. So we pulled in, didn't see anybody around so we walked back to the waters edge and found the foundation of the house he was born in.

Foundation and sketch of his birthplace.

Monument placed by the D.A.R.

A pretty good day, but I never did get those Damn Day/Night shades fixed.

Knoxville Zoo, again

2011-03-20T12:02:00.000-04:00

We decided to make a quick stop at the Knoxville Zoo today since it's free with our membership, or at least we thought it was going to be quick. All of the main roads leading into the zoo were closed due to flooding so after 20 minutes of driving around and a phone call we managed to find a small side street that got us to the parking lot. The place was packed today, we had to park about quarter of a mile from the entrance. Fortunately the two exhibits that we wanted to see were pretty close to the entrance so we got to those real quick then just spent about an hour wandering around enjoying the weather and watching the faces on all the little kids.

Just like last year they are still in the middle of re-doing the zoo, so a lot of exhibits are still under construction and the animals are off exhibit, hopefully they will get going and get all this work done in the near future.

This was the main guy we came to see, the Red Panda, Knoxville Zoo is one of the leaders in breeding this little fellow. This guy was walking around and climbing on things non stop for the 30 minutes that we watch him, I could have stayed there for a lot longer.

This other guy never moved from his deep sleep.

And this one was bonus for us, a white or albino Alligator, in all the zoo's we have visited we have never seen one of this before. This one comes from a nest that normally produces 2 to 4 whites a year, because of their color they very rarely make it through their first year.

March Madness, time to watch Michigan upset Duke