The Circus Is Coming To Town

 Much as I enjoyed the good food and good friends in Ft Myers, it was time to leave the Shady Oaks RV Park and head elsewhere.  I moved up to Horseshoe Cove RV Park in Sarasota, Florida.  This park, even though it was a traditional RV park was very nice.  They even had their own island where Miko and I could wander.  It was like our own personal island.  We had sea views, we had jungles.

I just liked this palm tree

Junior Ranger alert: Sarasota has the DeSoto National Memorial commemorating de Soto, a Spanish explorer, landing on the shores of Tampa Bay in 1539.  It was quite the big expedition - nine ships, 700 men, women and children, 220 horses, war dogs and a herd of pigs.  These pigs are the ancestors of all of the wild pigs in the Americas today.   

A pleasant walk along the sea

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On a happier note, Sarasota is where John Ringling of Ringling Brothers fame, decided to spend his winters.  He built a seaside manor in the Venetian Gothic Revival style, which he called Ca' d'Zan which means House of John in Venetian. He also added on an art museum to house his extensive art collection.  The art museum was ok - it was mostly1800's art, most of which is dark and not my favorite.  They did have one Yves Tanguy painting.  I am a huge fan of Tanguy.  

Les Nouveaux Nomades

Sea side

The seaside plaza (the back of the house)

The front of the house

The most exciting part of the grounds, though, was the Circus Museum.  Who doesn't love a circus?  the very bestest part was the extensive circus model.  Harold Dunn, starting in the 1920's and Howard Tibbals, starting in the late 1950's, collaborated and built a circus village.  Tibbals, at 87, is still adding to the model.  The model depicts a circus train arriving in a town, the back lot of the circus, the side show and the big top. It was amazing in it's scale.  For example, there are hundreds of horses and I don't think I could find two that were alike.  

The circus people's dining tent

The performers lining up to enter the big top

The Side Show

Each of these folding chairs actually folded.  This is only one section of the audience seating.

Center Ring

One of the horse barns

It actually continues around the corner up in the upper right. 
See the people for scale.

Besides the model, there was plenty of other circus sights.

Posters

Costumes

Remember shooting the guy out of the cannon?

Circus wagon wheels

Miko liked Sarasota

Food, Glorious Food!!!!

 

As I am sitting around Jacksonville, I am trying to figure out where I want to go next. I know that I want to go south into Florida. Usually, unless you make reservations a year in advance, Florida in the winter is a tough nut to crack. I figured I might have a better shot at it this year since the majority of the Canadians cannot cross the border. I think I read someplace that normally, the RV parks in Florida during the winter, is up to 50% Canadian. Then I heard from my friend Jon – Jon who I had hung around with in Arizona and Nevada around the turn of the year. He said that he was going to be in Ft. Myers, which gave me a direction to go. I had a tool of Jon's to return, but the real reason I wanted to go there was because of John Mariucci, not the famous Minnesota hockey coach, but his son. Mariucci went to high school with my brothers, which is why I call him Mariucci - that is how I knew him back in the day,  and I hadn't seen him in 40-50 years. Most importantly, he was a phenomenal chef, interning in Aspen and then eventually becoming an executive chef at some upscale restaurants in the Miami area. I needed Jon to reintroduce me to Mariucci. Well, that isn't exactly the reason I went to Ft. Myers but that is what I told Jon. My plan worked and Mariucci ended up cooking us several meals. Prepare to be astounded:

The appetizer - deep fried calamari

Salmon in a lemon butter caper sauce

A shrimp, mussel, pepper pasta

Dessert - presentation is everything

A different dinner, but no less astounding - 

I wasn't the only one who came to Ft Myers. Back in 1885, Thomas Edison came and built a winter estate. About thirty years later, his good buddy Henry Ford bought the estate next door and thus was established the Edison-Ford estates. Actually the estates didn't become joined together until 1990. Edison has been described as being America's greatest inventor – he held 1093 patents, most of which were improvements on other people's inventions. He was totally deaf in one ear and barely hearing in the other. Edison said this was why he could focus and concentrate more easily on his work. His house in Ft Myers was where he came to get away from it all. The estates were lovely, they overlooked the Caloosahatchee River.

My friend Linda and a very massive tree on the estate

I seem to be on a food binge here. 
This came from a food truck on the estate - a giant hot dog with onions and teriyaki sauce. 
Most excellent.

Mariucci's fiance, Sherry took us to Matlacha (said Matt-La-Shay), a little island community. Matlacha is an “Old Florida” fishing village with many art galleries and traditional Floridian cottages. Vibrant, vibrant colors.

This was a front walk into a shop

oipii

Florida does like bright colors. 
 Leoma Lovegrove was the resident famous artist who lived on the island.

Just down the road from the Shady Acres RV park, was the Koreshan State Park which told us of the utopian communal society called Koreshan Unity. They believed that the universe is all contained within a sphere and we live on the inside of the sphere, with centrifugal force holding us up on the edges of the sphere. The sun is actually a battery in the center of this sphere.

Koreshians also believed in celibacy and immortality. The founder – Cyrus Teed was very charismatic and claimed to be the new messiah. If you are celibate, all that energy would go to making Teed immortal. He would then come back and help everybody else become immortal. The community was made up mostly of women. Besides their some-might-say off-beat teachings, I am of the thought that perhaps the celibacy rule caused the Koreshians to eventually die out.

A trail along a river

The river - very peaceful

oipi

I seem to be into tutles lately.  Here is a gopher tortoise in his burrow

The man himself - the Koresh.  I guess he did eventually find some sort of immortality.

I must mention my visit to Cassadaga, Florida which I visited on my way down to Ft. Myers. Cassadaga has been named the “Psychic Capital of the World”. Cassadaga was created by the Cassadaga Spiritualist Camp which promotes and certifies psychics and mediums. It was interesting, on one side of the main street are all these signs “See Your Future”, “Cards Read” - sort of a Coney Island side show type of feel. On the other side of the street, land owned by the Spiritualist Camp, there is a whole different vibe. They take their spiritualist leaning seriously. I did have a consultation/reading with one of the certified mediums – Rev. Patty. I won't go into detail, but it was very much worth my time and money. No future prognostication, just a good therapy session.

Miko chased a squirrel up a tree.
She never noticed that there was another squirrel on the opposite side of the tree.

Way Down Upon The Swanee River

 Way down upon the Swanee River,

Far, far away.

That's where my heart is yearning ever, 

Home where the old folks stay.

It has been extremely hard to get reservations in state parks. There was a cancellation at the Stephen Foster Folk Culture Center State Park and I was able to snap up two days in the park. I was particularly excited because this state park was all about Folk Culture, hence the name. They had a small village where they had artisans working. There was a museum and also a carillon bell tower. I was all set to get my culture on.

Since I was there for only one full day, as soon as I got set up, I ran over to the museum to check it out. All the doors were locked. The museum and the artisan village have all been closed since last year because of Covid. I asked about the bell tower and why I hadn't heard any bells yet. I was told that the bells had been refurbished and something went wrong with the process. The bells sounded horrible and people begged the park to turn them off. I was a little disappointed but there were still some trails to walk along the Suwannee River. I did have a little bit of trouble though. Once you start singing the Stephen Foster song Suwannee River, it gets in your head and you can't get it out. There is nothing worse than an ear worm. By the way, Stephen Foster was from Pittsburgh and never saw the Suwannee River.  He also evidently didn't know how to spell.   

The bell tower

Water was so high that the flood marker was totally under water

My site - lots and lots of room

Jacksonville Florida is rather a surprising city. It has the most people for a Florida city and it is the largest city by area in the contiguous United States. I think of Jacksonville as a city of bridges connecting all the little islands that jut into the salt marshes and the ocean. It seemed like almost every bridge I crossed, I had to go up, up, up and then it is back down, down, down. This is because Jacksonville is also a big time harbor and these bridges need to accommodate ocean going monster ships. I found, especially when I was pulling my fifth wheel that it was extremely nerve racking.

Again I lucked out and was able to stay in a county park.  The Kathryn Abbey Hanna Park is a city park that has several hundred campsites.  The roads were extremely narrow and there were many low hanging branches.  It was tough getting in there, but get in there I did.  The great thing about this park is that on one side of the park is a lake with a rookery and on the other side of the park is the Atlantic Ocean.  There was also lots of lush vegetation to wander thru.

The Rookery.  There were three islands filled with birds.

A dog friendly beach

It's been a while since I've gotten any Junior Ranger badges. Today I will rectify this.

Fort Caroline – So, Fort Caroline was one of the first European settlements in North America. It was settled mostly by French Huguenots seeking religious freedom and perhaps who were also looking for gold and silver. It started out sort of like a stealth village since this was originally Spanish territory. It was another Mayflower story, where the local Native tribes (in this case the Timucuans) kept the settlers from starving. The Timucuans helped out until the French started doing their traditional European conquer the heathens thing. The French left the fort to attack the Spanish, got blown off course by a hurricane. While they were gone, the Spanish attacked the fort, massacring most of the settlers. Then the Spanish found the shipwrecked French, and did them in. Three years later, the French got revenge when they attacked the fort and killed everybody there. We humans are such wonderful beings, aren't we? Current day – nobody knows where the actual fort was so they built a replica fort that might look like it did originally and called it a National Memorial. Badge #1 achieved.

The replica fort was pretty lame, but I thought the door to the fort was sort of cool.

Kingsley Plantation – Google told me that it would take me 40 minutes to get there and I couldn't figure it out since it was only 8 miles away. Well, the road was narrow and pockmarked dirt where you really went maybe 5 mph. The plantation was interesting, even though you could not tour the plantation house. This was the first plantation that I have visited where the story was about the enslaved people. Other plantations that I've been to all emphasized the white owners and how nice and lovely life on the plantation was for everybody. This plantation was very much more about the enslaved.

Zephaniah Kingsley, the patriarch, was an interesting fellow. Although he was a slavetrader and slave owner, he did not think the enslaved were lesser beings. In fact, he bought a thirteen year old slave girl, Anna, in 1806. He married her and had children with her. He was also a polygamist, adding three more sister wives into the mix. All of these women were black. He freed them, educated the children to a high degree. Anna basically ran the plantation herself and also owned slaves herself. I had a hard time wrapping my head around that particular fact. Once the Kingsley plantation became part of Florida, with all of their laws pertaining to subjugated peoples, Kingsley up and took his family to Haiti where the laws were much more favorable to mixed race families.

The road to the Plantation

The main house

And I Thought I Was Obsessive

 

We all know my love of waterfalls. I think, in addition to all my other quests, that I should see the largest waterfall in each state. It doesn't have to be the tallest or the widest, but perhaps the ones that have the most volume coming over the top. Oh, who am I kidding – I'll go see the tallest and the widest also. I must admit, I like the wider ones better than the taller ones.

All that said, I visited Florida's tallest waterfall, located near Chipley. Chipley is located about midpoint in the Florida panhandle. The waterfall is the big draw in the Falling Waters (aptly named) State Park. I found the state park itself rather lacking. I did most of the hiking trails in probably about an hour. The waterfall itself flew over the top, fell 73 feet into a sinkhole and disappeared. Nobody knows where the water goes after it hits the sinkhole. As I do some introspection into why I like waterfalls, part of it is seeing it hit a pool of water. I guess I like the splat. There was none with this waterfall. Oh well, it was still a waterfall.

See it just disappears

The top

Just cause they are cute. 
It must have been raining or something because Miko has on her thundershirt.

I joined an organization called Harvest Hosts(HH). Harvest Hosts negotiates with various organizations to allow Rvers to camp overnight without a charge. Most of these places are wineries, breweries and farms. It hasn't worked out very well for me, because you can only spend one night at each of these establishments and I'm finding that I now like to stay a little longer than one night. I used HH once in Nebraska at the Golden Spike Tower and I used it again in Tallahassee at the Tallahassee Auto Museum where I parked in a large field with no hookups which was fine. Across the street, within walking distance was a Farm to Table restaurant. I walked over and picked up some takeout which was so much better than anything I can cook.

It may not look all that appetizing but it sure was good. 
Shrimp, crab balls and andouille sausage all over cheese grits

The Tallahassee Auto Museum was pretty impressive. The guy who opened it is a collector. I don't mean a collector like a stamp collection collector but a COLLECTOR. Let's just say that he had many varied interests. The museum is 100,000 square feet, two floors and when it was constructed, it had Florida's largest solar array mounted on the roof.  

Shiny

There was row after row

Supposedly Wyatt Earp's gun is in here

Pianos

Outboard motors

Cash registers, fans and typewriters

Batmobiles that were actually used in the Batman movies

Miko looks impressed, doesn't she.  This was a dog-friendly establishment.

There were also collections of knives, farm tractors, baseball and golf items, baby bottles.  The list goes on and on.