Cambier Park, Naples

"I hear some music, where is it?"

Great acoustics!

I saw an advertisement for a big band concert at the downtown Cambier Park in Naples today, so after doing my laundry this afternoon, I headed off on my bike to see what that was like...it was a beautiful but cool day for most Floridians....most people had on windbreakers, long pants, and sweaters. But since I'm not acclimated to Florida heat, it was a balmy day for me---shorts, short sleeve T shirt and sandals were what I had on. If I lived here all the time, eventually my body would think that 60 degrees with a fairly stiff wind blowing like today was CHILLY, but I thought it was very comfortable! The concert had a great turnout, I would say at least a couple hundred people came out today in the middle of this beautiful afternoon to hear the concert band play....it was great! I love big band music..one of my favorites played today was "String of Pearls". Here are some photos of the concert goers today: I'll bet the people in the bottom photo are not from Naples! They are dressed like me!

beautiful setting

"I'd rather be chasing squirrels"

z-z-z-z-z-z-z

Thomas Edison, Ace Inventor

Edison' s lab

It rained and rained and rained today...we didn't get going anywhere till about 1:30 this afternoon. We decided today was a great day to go visit the Edison and Ford summer home/lab/garden complex in Fort Myers. These are his summer homes, gardens and lab as they were approximately in 1929. Thomas Edison was a prolific and amazing inventor, over 1100 patents in his lifetime, and for awhile, he was getting one patent a year for 65 years straight!....I was excited to go visit the museum and lab today to find out more about him. I always talked about him when I taught as he supposedly had learning disabilities and probably was attention deficit as a child. His mother pulled him out of school because he couldn't focus and pay attention and so she homeschooled him. We thought the museum was a little disappointing as far as how it was organized. It was very chopped up inside by rooms, making it difficult to get the flow of things as far as his inventions and the history of his life. The first room you enter from the gift shop was set up for some artist/author presentations, and where to go from there was confusing. The one tour guide that was getting ready to take a small group out was hyperkinetic, fast talking, and we just didn't think we'd enjoy that rapid style of delivery. Besides, he reminded me too much of my former ADD students! We need time to digest information 'cuz we're getting OLD! So we watched a couple of videos, checked out all of Edison's inventions and enjoyed seeing his lab, which was being renovated. It still was neat to physically walk thru the lab to see where he and his cronies did all their research and experimentation.  You could almost step back in time and FEEL the presence of greatness and innovation at work in the lab.

There are a couple of ways to explore the complex...to see the homes and the botanical gardens was $20.00 a person...we just did the museum and lab for 11.00 a person. As a side note, there was a banyan tree in the front of the complex that was given to Edison by Harvey Firestone (Firestone Tires) in the late 1800's. The tree was originally was about 4 feet tall and 2" in diameter. It now is an ACRE in  diameter and has 360 roots! Edison's wife was very interested in gardens and flowers. The grounds has an incredible number of different types of plants, flowers and trees...the botanical gardens part would be amazing to explore as well.....

statue of Thomas Edison in front of THE banyan tree

When we got back from Fort Myers, we decided to eat downtown at Bert's Seafood and Chowder House. They had a special going on for two complete 3 course dinners, a bottle of wine and dessert for $32.00 for the two of you.  Beef tenderloin tips in a fabulous wine sauce, mashed potatoes, asparagus, Chardonnay or Pinot Grigio and your choice of strawberry shortcake or chocolate cake....it was delicious! What??!!! No seafood and we were at a chowdah place?  Well, beef tips just sounded better to me, I'm not a seafood person and they were wonderful! I do like my chowder tho'....maybe next time.  Tomorrow is Sunday, laundry day..doubt if we will go anywhere but you never know where Eldo and Sparky will end up! As things turned out, I ended up at a park big band concert..photos tomorrow...See you later!

Kayaking at Manatee Park

Off to Manatee Park in northern Fort Myers today, about a 45-50 min. drive north of Naples. Eldy isn't really sure whether he likes kayaking or not...it just sort of depends on where and what kind of conditions, so he decided to head out to the Miramar Outlet Center a few exits away while I kayaked for 2 1/2 hours on the Orange River. Kayak rental is $15.00 an hour for a single, not bad. You paddle out a small cove out into the Orange River and turn right heading right by the Florida Power and Electric plant discharge canal.  The manatees LOVE to swarm there early in the day until the water warms up further out in the channel and the gulf. I went at noon and there were what seemed to be over 50 manatees hanging out right by the plant. I saw a  mother and her calf, and a big guy swam right under my boat close enough to lift it just a little like going over a big  log. WHOA! There were so many of them it made me nervous that one might come up and flip me over! But no sharks to worry about here, and other than that big lug coming under me one time, the rest of the time I watched carefully as nostrils after nostrils came snorting up for air. Cool! There were LOTS of them....

Comin' atcha!

gentle duo

What's even cooler, is, that I picked a great time to go out kayaking, right around noon. Apparently, the water wasn't warm enough in the channel for the manatees to head out for the sea beds so they were hanging out by the warm discharge water. The water has to be warmer than 68 degrees for them to digest their food. Two hours later, when I came back through, they were gone except for a couple!  So the best time to see manatees in Manatee Park is early in the morning rather than later in the day...I'm so glad I got to see them again! While I was out paddling the river, I didn't see any alligators, that's ok..we've seen LOTS of them other places. I didn't see very many birds either, but as I came around a bend in the river going the opposite way from where all the manatees were, I saw longhorn cattle (!) grazing in somebody's front yard. It appeared to be quite a nice house and there were six or seven startled cattle staring at me as I came around the bend. I tried to get an initial photo of them, but they were just as startled seeing me as I was seeing them so they boogeyed out of there. I hate to say it, but I think my presence caused a mini stampede. I got their rear ends as they left the yard. I didn't see any fences at all to hem them in, but there must have been some around the property on the other side of the house. When they got to the other side of the yard, they stopped and looked back as if to say, "WHEW! That was a close one!" That's something you just don't expect to see, cattle in somebody's nice green grass front yard on the river! We are going to go see the Thomas Edison complex tomorrow in Fort Myers 'cuz it's going to RAIN.....see you then!

Smallest Post Office in the US

At least that's what the sign says! The Ochopee post office used to be an irrigation pipe shed and was pressed into service for post office services after a fire in 1953 burned the Ochopee general store which housed the post office. It's been in service ever since. They serve three counties (!) and get stamp collectors and people from all over the world wanting a postmark from this itsy bitsy teenie weenie yellow--er, white post office. (That's an obscure reference to the song, Itsy Bitsy Teenie Weenie Yellow Polka Dot Bikini for the youngsters reading this blog!) Where is this little P.O.? In Ochopee, FL, of course! (Three miles east of the intersection of Highway 41 and 29.) We stopped and took a photo of it on our way back from 10,000 Islands National Wildlife Refuge....wow, now THAT is a beautiful place!

10,000 Islands National Wildlife Refuge

It's in the Everglades area and it's gator and bird country. Thirty-five thousand acres of refuge....2/3 of it are mangrove forest...the rest of the refuge is marsh and ponds...and there's a tropical tree there called the gumbo limbo. I just love that name! There are tons of shore birds and wading birds to watch and of course, the gators....there is a short walking trail here and this is where we saw this alligator, just off to the side in a marsh....We saw a duck with a red bill, not sure what kind it was but it was interesting. I love the water patterns and the reflections around this duck....it looks like some kind of style of painting and I didn't do a thing to the photo! 

Here's another interesting (?)  same kind of duck photo...the reed reflections caught my eye. Because we were on highway 41 coming back from the preserve, I told Eldy, let's watch for alligators again...in about the same spot along the canal along the highway where we saw the four alligators together, we saw FIVE today. Sunning themselves and hoping for warmer weather, I'm sure! I didn't take a photo, there was a cop pulling over someone and we just thought we better keep going. It's not the best place to stop and gawk, that's for sure. We did stop further up the road and get this bad boy! See you later, alligator!

Mama Mia! Manatees! Lots of 'em!

Isn't this a beautiful photo of the gentle Florida giant called a manatee? Photo is courtesy of National Geographic, by Brian J. Skerry. Although they can be about 10 feet long and can weigh up to 1200 pounds, they are a graceful and gentle giant.

Yesterday I said you need to sometimes spend a little money on a tourist attraction to learn something new and get an experience you won't forget. Well, yesterday, we chose a tour that gave us the experience of a lifetime.....and some important knowledge I needed to know about where to kayak. I'm gonna be a little vague on what tour we did for reasons of my own.  Eldy and I went out on the rivers, lagoons, inlets and whatever else you call them to look for wildlife--gators, manatees, dolphins, birds...So far the gators have been covered, we were able to do that on our own without spending any money except for gas. We hoped to see manatees or dolphins....manatees we did see, at least 20 to 30 that surfaced and there were many, many more underneath us and all around us. We saw the "footprints" on the surface all over the place..they were popping up to breathe with little snorts everywhere! It sounded like lots of snorkelers blowing out their air hoses. What was really cool, was one of them had apparently been in captivity for care for an injury at one point, and he was used to people. This manatee came right up to us and wanted to be petted! So I did! He rolled over to get his belly scratched! His skin felt like a rough and slimy orange skin and he was covered with barnacles. He hung around for awhile looking for lots of attention. We saw a mother and her calf--that poor manatee mom is pregnant for a year, then nurses the calf for a year..so it takes awhile for the manatee population to grow with all the obstacles in their way---the gestation period, collisions with motorboats, habitat changing and disappearing, fish nets and lines, illness, etc.

Manatee hand/flipper bones

We learned a lot more about them....did you know manatees have fingers underneath their two front flipper skins? They have fingernails, too! They need to be in water that is warmer than 68 degrees or they can get pneumonia. They can live 60 years or more...Their closest relative is the elephant. I can see the resemblance, that's for sure. They can swim up to 20 miles an hour for brief periods of time. They eat about 100-150 pounds of sea vegetation a day...wow! That's a lot of "salad"! They are VERY intelligent mammals and have excellent hearing.

We also saw osprey, different kinds of herons and egrets. We were thrilled with our trip! One thing I did find out is that the area we were exploring (out in a marina and near some residential waterways) was hazardous for a kayaker. The manatees can easily tip a kayak over and the water was full of agressive bull sharks. We didn't see any, but that made me think twice about going kayaking by myself. I may be an experienced kayaker but I'm not knowledgable about Florida waters and water hazards. So when and if I do go kayaking, I will check thoroughly about sharks, etc. and just to make Eldy feel better, I will PROBABLY go with a guide. Thanks to a clarification from our trip yesterday, I found out that Manatee Park in Fort Myers would be a great place to kayak, no sharks! It was a beautiful, really great day yesterday and it is everyday with Eldo...we never know what the day holds in store.....see you later!

The REAL Alligator Alley

One bad boy!

At last report, we were going to just take it easy today, trying to figure out something to do since it's so cold for Florida today...53 degrees...notice I didn't say it was too cold for me!  We decided to go explore further south in the Everglades City area and just check out some of the tourist attractions. I've heard of "Alligator Alley" and it's even on the map, it's a section of  I-75 as it starts to turn east. Sometimes the alligators are known to frequent the waterways beside the highway. You might be able to see one but you're traveling so fast it would be hard to spot them, I would think..At any rate, I was looking out the window as we were passing through a section of the Everglades thinking it was rather barren and uninteresting at the moment, and Eldy casually says, "I see an alligator." I'm thinking, oh, sure...he's jokin' with me. He said, "No, really! I saw one." I said, "WHAT?!! STOP THE CAR!!!!" And that means....Yep! Jeannie has to take a photo! Or two, or three or more....I've been a little grumpy as I haven't seen 1) dolphins 2) manatees or 3) alligators yet. Well, turning around was easier said than done...It's highway 41 south, two lanes at that point, and there just wasn't a good place to reverse...Eldy went a little further, then found a parking place to turn around...I started looking at the water filled "ditch" that was running along parallel to 41. I saw heron after heron after heron, (several different kinds), egrets, and just tons of different kinds of birds on branches, on the water's edge, fishing and waiting for the BIG ONE, and then----"I SEE ONE!....I SEE ANOTHER ONE!!! OMG, I SEE FOUR OF THEM RIGHT TOGETHER!" But we had to continue driving as there were people following behind us....So we pull off finally at a parking spot, and walk a  little along the guardrail and I got my photos of a couple of BIG ones. I tell my guy, "Eldy, we have to go find the four of them.."  Being the great guy he is, he doesn't say, "How come? You've got at least four photos of these guys already."  No, siree, he knows four at once would be the ultimate gator photo, and we aren't going to have to pay an arm and a leg to see 'em, it's FREE! So let's go find them! What a guy! And we did. Bless his heart, we drove back and forth along this highway, turning around at least three times to find these guys.....the only problem was, the sun was blinding the LCD display, so I couldn't focus on what I was seeing, but here's what we did see:

Cool! Tomorrow, we are going to see manatees, guaranteed or your money back! Yes, it's one of those touristy deals, but sometimes that can be a great learning experience and well worth it...we'll see you then!

RVing isn't always what it's CRACKED up to be!

We were waiting to get settled in before calling someone and finding out the bad news...too big for a repair? $3,000 for a new windshield...OR the much preferable "Yup! We can fix it, and it will only cost you about a hundred bucks." I voted for the hundred bucks, and that's what it was..Safelite came out within just a few hours of the call. We really enjoyed talking with the humorous tech who really knew his stuff. It was an interesting process to watch...first he attaches a suction cupped mirror device to the inside of the windshield. Then he attached a device to the outside that sucked the moisture out of the crack, then the same device applied resin to fill the crack, the device then suctioned moisture out of THAT, and then he attached another device which was a mini super powerful UV sunlamp designed to cure the resin.....In the middle of this whole procedure, he made a crack (ooh, sorry about that terrible pun!) about "this is where the windshield might shatter"....we nervously awaited the outcome, it was ok...whew! The "star" crack is still visible, although less so. The hour long procedure can't make the really hard hits totally disappear, but our "bullet" is filled, the windshield is intact and it's guaranteed not to spread any further! Good enough for us!

What do you do when it's really cold for Florida? The high today is going to be 53 in Naples. Go check out a museum! This morning I went to the Naples Museum of Art. I wanted to see the Stephen Knapp: Lightpaintings show and some Dale Chihuly glass...it was COOL! The admission was $8.00 to get in. There are three floor galleries...you are not allowed to take photos, so unfortunately, you'll have to go and see everything in person on check it out online: The Naples Museum of Art--the Chihuly pieces of glass they have as permanent exhibits are fantastic! Dale Chihuly is an American born artist. There is a ceiling on the third floor made of Chihuly's glass, over 600 pieces of glass. It's called Persian Ceiling. Wow! Then, the Stephen Knapp Lightpaintings were awesome! These were pieces of metallic coated glass mounted with stainless steel brackets to a background, then a light shines on the entire piece, refracting the light into prisms which splits the colors of the spectrum into all kinds of angular, colorful reflections extending past the mounting board onto the walls...The actual pieces of work use as little as five pieces of glass to upwards of 30 pieces or more. The glass pieces themselves are small, you could hold them in your hand easily, but the final result with the light shining on all the glass pieces is a wall emblazoned with many, many different angular pieces of color. This brochure photo is just to give you an idea of the end result. It's much prettier than this!

Tomorrow the weather is still going to be somewhat cool...maybe low 60's...we're on a warming trend heading into the week...low seventies by Friday and high seventies by Saturday.....Right now, it's 5:00--- here! Time for a beach drink! (Inside the motor home, too cold to sit outside!) .....bye for now....