Henderson Beach State Park

This was our last stop before heading home.  The park is in Destin, Fl which is renown for great fishing, some of the finest beaches in the country and good restaurants.  This is Spring break time and it lasts for about a month due to the fact that different states schools have different schedules.  Since the Florida panhandle gulf beaches are so nice the kids come from all over the country. Good thing we made reservations months ago.  The campground here at Henderson has about a half mile of beach for the use of their campers, so it is not crowded like the commercial areas.

Fishing for pompano and enjoying the crystal clear water and colors

Dolphin, but Nita yelling sharks

These 2 guys are serious pompano fisherman with 17 rods

Sand almost like sugar



Taking a rest



Spring break kids

Dinner at Deweys of Destin, owner has his own fishing fleet and serves fresh caught fish.  Nita has grouper and I have mahi, doesn't get much better that this food.  With this picture we say goodbye to the blog postings till the next trip

Fort Pickens

Fort Pickens is the largest of 4 forts built to defend Pensacola's Ban and it's Navy Yard.  Construction began in 1829 and completed in 1834.  A work force of skilled African American slave labor was used to construct the fort.  It is located on a barrier island in the gulf south of Pensacola.  The Naval air station is just across the bay from the the fort and it is the home base of the Navy's  Blue Angles jet fighter flight team.  On the 15th we were entertained by the Blue Angels practicing over and around the fort.  The island is not far above sea level and suffers from frequent flooding, the last major hurricane shut Fort Pickens down for several years.  The beaches and water are beautiful.

Nita's sister and husband live nearby and we enjoyed visiting and dining with them.

The Fort and cannon

A jumpy electrician on our electrical plug in

These tiny flowers looked like snapdragons and the leaves smelled like a cross between mint and sage, might be good as a spice

Nita's sister Wilma and Nita

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Grayton Beach State Park

On the way to Grayton we spent a night at the Stephen Foster park in northern Fl.  It has a great campground and a tall  97 bell carillon tower that plays the old Stephen Foster songs, you have to be kind of mature to remember them, we used to sing them in grade school.  Grayton park is in the Florida panhandle on the gulf.  We attended a rally there with 48 motor homes like ours and almost twice that amount of people and a mixture of pets....dogs, cats, parrots and a cockateel.  It was an enjoyable 4 days with fish frys, pot luck lunches, pancake breakfasts and late night Texan hold um poker games.  David and Candy who hosted the rally did a magnificent job.

The group picture of the View/Navion rally folks, picture taken by Micheal Vickey holding the foremost dog called Hudson

 Frying the fish, our host David in plaid shirt

Lunch entertainment, David and Candy's son Matt on the violin

 One of the potluck lunches



She never folds  but always wins.

Candy, our hostess getting some needed nourishment 

Blog Pause

To make a long story short my email account got hacked during our trip and we were unable to post new blogs.  If you got an email from me saying I was in Spain and needed money I apologize, we were not in Spain and not destitute for money.  I have drafts of the posts that we couldn't send and will now post them a little belatedly. 

Tortoise and shells

An endangered Gopher Tortoise heading in to his den, his shell is about 18 inches long. This one on the Koreshan settlement.

 

Shelling on Sanibel Island. Island is in the gulf just west of Fort Myers, a popular tourist spot with tons of tourists. We now have a load of shells to cart around.



Orchid Tree full of blossoms, not a true orchid but kind of looks like one

Koreshan Historic Site

We spent the last four days at the Koreshan State park in Estero, Fl. The site was established by Dr Cyrus Teed in 1894 who moved a group of cultish followers from Chicago. Teed who had taken the Hebrew name "Koresh" planned to construct his New Jerusalem at Estero. He had hoped it would become a great city where people would come to practice his religion of Kreshanity, he also taught that the earth surface was concave on the inside of a sphere. Teed and his followers believed he was immortal , he died in 1908 at the age of 69. They put his body in a bath tub expecting him to resurrect, after 10 days and growing mold the state forced the group to bury him. His body was washed out to sea during a hurricane some years later and he has still not returned. The last Koreshan member died in 1982 and donated 305 acres of the holdings to the state of Florida. The Koreshans were industrious people and established stores, limber mills, machine shops, power generating stations, etc. for the settlement and neighboring community. Quite an interesting place to visit, for more info do a google search on Koreshan Unity.





The founders house, Dr Teed or Koresh





Machine shop, all tools powered by the one gas engine in the side room





Teed's model of the Earth, earths surface on inside of sphere, center is sun, moon and planets





Diesel engine driving generator for electricity





Members cottage

Leapin Lizards

Some of you may remember a funny, now called a comic strip, called Little Orphan Annie. One of Annie's favorite exclamations was "Leapin Lizards". While in Long Key a little lizard leaped on our picnic table and gave us a show. He was a Brown Anole male lizard. The male has what is called a dewlap that he extends from the bottom of his throat to attract a female. He flashes his dewlap quickly, then retracts it, must have taken 2 dozen pictures before getting one with it extended. Mighty pretty guy but didn't see any girls appear, some other guy must have had a bigger dewlap, what else is new.



 

Who could resist this guy




Another nice camping spot in Long Key 

 
A lonely little mangrove growing in the Atlantic off Long Key.





Play it and they will come. Fellow camper singing and playing guitar, was nice of him to share his talents.

Wading with crocs

Another Sunday morning in paradise. We sleep with the windows open at night and even though it gets to 80 in the daytime we haven't needed to use the ac. Sunday morning breakfast is usually a switch from cereal and fruit to something more exotic, usually pancakes, blueberries, mangos etc., ran out of all the good fruit so just had eggs and toast today, should have fixed those cinnamon roll in the tube, maybe later.

There is a bike path along the key highway, yesterday hopped on the bike and went into Marathon and bought a bag of shrimp for bait. We caught one small fish and fed others some nice shrimp. You need a boat for serious fishing at this spot, but it's fun wading around the shore and mangroves fishing, who knows, maybe we will land a big one soon. As you can see it doesn't take much to entertain us.

 
Nice spot to read




Juvenile White Ibis searching for bugs in the sod with that nice long bill, he will turn white as he matures.



Wading with crocs

Curry Hammock state park

CH is located in the middle of the keys, just above Marathon. It's a small park with 27 camp sites and about half the sites are right by the ocean. Reservations open 11 months in advance and book instantly.

Atlantic beach about 30 feet behing our MH

Nita trying to catch the main course



Stay away from this guy, Portuguese man of war, his tentacles will sting.

Thomas Edison & Henry Ford

The winter estates of Edison and Ford are in Fort Myers, Fl. Ford worked for the Edison Company before starting the Ford Motor Company. Edison bought the land in the frontier town of Fort Myers in 1885 and in the next two years built two houses and a laboratory. In 1914 Edison invites Ford to visit his home and two years later Ford buys the adjacent property and home. In 1927 Edison, Ford and Firestone established a laboratory here to develop a quick growing, domestic source of natural rubber.

The properties front the Caloosahatchee River and are filled with many beautiful trees and plants.

Harvey Firestone and President Herbert Hoover were guests of Edison.




 

Edison main house on right and guest on left.




 

Illuminaire In Edison family room with early produced Incandescent bulbs.






Porch with river in background.



Ford home on left and Edison on far right.

Roots of Mysore Fig Tree

Firestone gave a 4 foot banyan tree to Edison in 1925. This tree is now an acre in diameter and the largest in the continental US. The white milky sap of this tree can be used to create rubber. Edison and guest in foreground.

Manatees have the right of way

Well it's pretty exciting here on the locks and canal. There are loud speakers on the lock and we can hear the conversations between the boats and lock master. If it's a big boat coming we frequently walk over and stand on the side of the lock and watch the process. Yesterday morning a large barge and tug came down the canal from Okeechobee and requested passage. They opened the lock gate nearest him and 3 manatees swam into the lock headed toward Ft Myers. The lock master told the captian he couldn't come into the lock until they went through the whole cycle of lowering and raising the water to get the manatees through. The captain was upset and said he had a schedule to keep, but they made him wait for about a half hour to get the manatees out.

You can only stay in this park for 2 weeks so we are always getting new neighbors. We had the privilege this week of meeting Bob and Bette Buchheit from Kentucky and having 3 nights of conversation with them, with refreshments, while watching the sun go down. The night before last while sitting on our patio with them we were visited by a little armadillo who casually searched for bugs to eat in the grass about 6 feet from us. Wanted to grab him and pick him up but with my luck he would have probably bit me. We get old neighbors here also, one fellow came up to me yesterday and said hi Halsey, we met last year here, so we did, nice to see Jack again.

Well that's about all the news from the locks, no telling what will happen today. Oh, we did have to change sites this morning, this place is so popular that it gets booked 6 months in advance, so late comers depend on cancelations to get in and have to move to different sites to string together a stay here, no big deal, only take a few minutes to move.






Manatee in the lock





Little visitor





Valentines day potluck

Cow Stomach

We are located on a canal that goes from Lake Okeechobee to the Gulf near Ft Myers. The park is the Ortona Lock run by the Corps, quite a nice spot and we can watch the boats and manatees go back and forth through the locks. For those with many birthdays it's quite a bargain for 12 bucks a day.

La Belle, the closest town is 8 miles west. The area is primarily agricultural, citrus, strawberries, vegetables and the majority of the population is Hispanic who do the labor. Every Sat in La Belle there is a Hispanic market with fruit, veg, clothing, food stalls, etc. It's fun to walk through and observe the people and items for sale. There was one food stall that I found fascinating and the food looked great. Several young men were eating a bowl of soup that looked delicious, asked what kind it was but they didn't speak English, they got the cook and he said it was cows stomach, decided to pass. We left with bags of fruit.



Nita picking up some mangos


Cranking out tortillas and throwing on hot iron plate





Chicken is fresh, there are a couple of goats inside


Our spot on the lock, nita possibly on the phone to you

Fish tacos and more

At the Sebastian Inlet campground I could hop on my bicycle with a fishing rod loaded with a silver spoon lure and be on the jetty in 5 minutes. The tidal turbulence at the end of the jetty attracts a number of different fish gorging on smaller fish. At 4pm yesterday I hopped on the bike , caught 2 two pound bluefish in about 15 minutes, hopped back on the bike with rod and 2 squirming fish in a plastic bag, stopped by the cleaning table, with pelicans, then arrived back at camp with some nice filets. Coated the filets with taco seasoning, sautéd them in olive oil, wow what great fish tacos. The day before made the catch and dipped the filets in pancake batter mixed with lemon pepper seasoning, sautéd in olive oil and had another wow dinner. Think I'm bragging too much, ask Nita, had to scramble to get my share. Darn, forgot to take pictures.

Unusual Event

The night before last the Sebastian Inlet experienced a rare event, the folks in the park we talked to have never seen it happen in the past. We are parked right on the inlet and woke up yesterday morning to what sounded like rain. The noise was being made by Menhaden fish that packed the inlet which is a half mile long and several hundred yards wide. It looked like you could almost walk across the water on then. Evidently a huge school must have been in the ocean and got sucked into the inlet on the incoming tide. The fish nearest the sides of the inlet were forced into shallow water and and they quickly depleted the oxygen and massive amounts of them died. It took many hours for the school to get back to the ocean. The pelicans other sea birds were all gone for the day, evidently they gorged themselves on the fish and went somewhere to rest. Fishing for the anglers was futile as the game fish also had their fill. Menhaden are filter feeders that feed by straining plankton and alge from the water, predator fish love them and they are netted for fish meal and oil.



Stragglers still trying to get back to the ocean, comrades on their sides didn't make it.


Silver colored shoreline of menhaden


Ooh, water getting kind of high. This was today, fishing for pompano but only caught a catfish. Was 85 today and water comfortable.