Lakeland - Spring Training

Prince, Miguel, Rafael

Justin

We moved to Lakeland, FL the beginning of March so we would be close to Tigers spring training.  We are in a nice campground full of nice snow birds.  We've never been in a campground with such a high percentage of really friendly people.  We've attended four Tiger games and had a great time at each.  It's great to see the team, including prospects, up close.  Joker Marchant stadium has been refurbished and is a beautiful facility.

We drove over to Tarpon Springs last weekend, near the Gulf Coast.  This area was an important sponge diving area in the early 1900's when Greek divers came to this area.  The industry has diminished, but they've kept the sponge dock area "historic" (touristy, if you ask me).  The highlight of the trip was the food!  We had a great Gyro and Greek salad for lunch. There was supposed to be a place where Manatees hang out but we couldn't find it.  Oh well.

We'll be flying to Phoenix for a visit this weekend and will attend a Diamondbacks game and a Mariners game while there so we'll attend both Grapefruit League and Cactus League games in one spring.  Can't imagine that is done a lot.

I thought I would post a revised map of our travels as this will be the last post before we head north on April 8. The blue line was 2010 and the green line is 2011 and gold is 2012.

South Bay

Campground mascot

One of the great things about our journey is we sometimes (often) experience/witness things that we just had no idea happened but is a way of life for people of the region.  Our most recent example is the growth and harvesting of sugar cane.  As luck (?) would have it, it was harvesting time when we were parked in South Bay on the south side of Lake Okeechobee.  We drove through miles and miles of sugar cane fields to get to our campground and that was interesting, but it got more interesting.  After getting settled in our site we were sitting out enjoying a beautiful day and could see a fire off in the distance.  We thought, wow, some poor farm is on fire.  Upon further review of the horizon all around, there were a lot of those plumes of smoke. And then, we noticed the ash drifting down. I learned from our neighbor (a many-year visitor of the park) that they set the sugar cane fields on fire just before cutting in order to burn the dead leaves off for more compact and efficient harvest and hauling.  Interesting, but I must say that after being there for 2 weeks the ash makes a real mess of things. The wind/breeze can gift you with ash from fires miles away, not just close ones.  But, it was a learning experience to see how they set up the fields, burned, and harvested.  We loved the park but were glad to leave the ash hole.

Campground from the dike

Here are a couple of links if you are interested in learning about sugar production including the harvesting of the cane, or just google "sugar cane harvest" for photos and more links.
http://www.sucrose.com/lcane.html

http://www.ehow.com/how_5531572_harvest-sugar-cane.html

Our campground near South Bay was right next to the dike that goes all the way around Lake Okeechobee.  There is a walking/biking path all along the top of the dike.  Some of these photos are taken from that path.  The gator lives in the pond in the campground along with a smaller one.  They just lay/swim around and provide photo ops for the campers - not to mention lots of jokes about people keeping an eye on their dogs and cats.

Cane field burn plume

Path on dike - smoke plume in distance

Lake O isn't so open down on this end.
It is more like the start of the Evergades
system (which it is)

Sugar cane from dike

Everglades and Key West

Gator nap

Grassy waters

We had a great visit to Everglades National Park and the Keys.  We drove the car down from South Bay first to the Everglades.  We drove through the park and stopped at each designated view point.  It was very interesting to learn about the 9 different ecosystems, the Grassy Waters, hammocks, etc.  We saw lots of alligators and a wide variety of birds.  A main learning point about the Everglades is that it is NOT a swamp.  There is no stagnant water.  The water is actually flowing as a long, very wide (8 miles at points), shallow (only a few inches deep in most places), slow river.  Because it is so shallow, grass and trees grow freely in the water making it look like a prairie of grass as you view it at a distance.

Hammock

Roseate Spoonbill

After staying over night in Florida City we were up early and driving down the keys to Key West.  I thought we would spend more time on bridges.  Although there are 42 bridges to cross, most are fairly short as you hop from "key" to "key".  What is a key versus an island?  Good question, there doesn't seem to be a good, consistent answer to that so I just think of them as one in the same at this point.

Overseas Highway (US 1)

 

View along Overseas Highw

When we arrived in Key West it was cloudy and 20 degrees below normal with a bonus strong wind blowing out of the north.  The best thing to do then is hop on the Old Town Trolley and see the sights that way.  This plan worked great as later on it cleared up so the sun warmed it up and the wind dropped a little.  Once we started the walking part of our day we visited Sloppy Joe's (where Hemmingway hung out) for a beer and listened to a great pianist performing live, then on to the beginning/end of US 1 for a picture (we'll get to the other end in Maine later this year), the Southernmost point in the US, a beer at the Green Parrot Bar to enjoy live Jazz as we rested, walked along the water front, around old buildings, etc. - our usual M.O. (walking is the best way to see things).  We had a great seafood dinner at Hogfish Bar and Grill (out of the way place where the locals go) and stayed overnight.  The next day (Monday, I took a vacation day) was the drive "home" all the way back to South Bay.

Here are some more Everglades pictures.

Pelican

Quick update

We left Alabama and the fairly consistent stormy weather and headed to central Florida.  We started by spending a week at Disney's Fort Wilderness campground.  I took a week vacation and we had a great time in the parks.  We then moved a few miles north to near Clermont so we are still within sticking distance of Orlando activities.  No other fun stuff to report at this time.  In a couple weeks we'll be visiting the Keys and Everglades so I'll give an update on our adventures there.

Montgomery - Pensacola

We haven't done much sightseeing since the last post due to disagreeable weather and a week of travel for the holidays.  We had a great week in Denver visiting, chilling and doing our annual Wii fest (we play a lot of Wii games).  We had to scramble on our return to Mobile (where we started from).  Our flight from Charlotte was cancelled due to fog so we ended up flying to Montgomery the next day and driving back to Mobile.  Since one of our "things" is to visit State capitals, we took advantage of the opportunity to take in the historic downtown and Capitol in Montgomery before driving down to Mobile to pick up our car at the airport.

AL State Capital

Baptist Church

The Capitol building doesn't look its 150 year age.  It was where the constitution of confederate states was written and adopted and it was the temporary capital until it was moved to Richmond, VA.

Across the street is the Baptist church where Martin Luther King Jr was pastor for a number of years.

On Saturday, January 7 we drove to Pensacola and visited the National Naval Aviation Museum.  It was amazing.  We thought it was much better than the Smithsonian Air and Space Museum (for the "air" part anyway).  They have 160 genuine (restored) military aircraft indoors to view giving a great history of aviation history.

First plane to cross the Atlantic

Captured German (left) and
Japanese planes

We've been to the beach a few of times but we always seem to get cloudy cool conditions so we just walk for a while and leave.  Hopefully we'll get better luck some time when we are near enough to go and hang for a while.

Florida panhandle

I last posted from the southeastern tip of Georgia just a few miles north of the Florida border.  We next took a rather long jaunt into the panhandle of Florida.  Twenty years ago we had visited the area from Panama City to Destin and loved the beaches and little towns so we found a campground within driving distance (not so expensive like the ones on the beach).  We found that the beaches still have that amazing fluffy white sand and are just as beautiful.  What has changed is the cities have grown out of control.  Back then Destin was a small, nice little town but it is now a major traffic laden city.  I guess that is to be expected but I can't help but feel it is too bad.

The campground search had landed us near DeFuniak Springs.  This turned out to be one of those lucky stumbles.  We had a nice campground pretty much to ourselves and DeFuniak Springs turned out to be one of those little historic gems that we love.  It has 250 buildings on the National Register of Historic places, many of which line a round lake in the middle of town.  We took the historic walking tour around the lake on one walk and walked around a couple other times at night to enjoy the Christmas decorations (the display in the park boasts 6 million lights).
http://www.defuniakspringsflorida.net/history.htm

http://www.defuniakspringsflorida.net/library.htm

http://www.defuniakspringsflorida.net/chautauqua_hall_of_brotherhood.htm

DeFuniak Springs Library

Chautauqua Building

Cottage on Lake DeFuniak

House on Lake DeFuniak

We have now ventured about 100 miles west of there in Alabama.  We are about half way betwen Pensacola and Mobile.  We'll be here a month with plans to visit things in Pensacola, Mobile and Gulf Coast after the holidays.

Golden Isles of Georgia

Old Glynn County courthouse

From Charleston we made the relatively short drive to the "Golden Isles" of Georgia for a couple of weeks.  The drive was nice and easy on Hwy 17 and then we got onto I-95 south.  Wow, the traffic on the Sunday after Thanksgiving was something else and we were glad we weren't going very far.  We got settled into our campground in time to drive into Brunswick to check out the historic district.  There wasn't much to it compared to other old towns but the old county courthouse was really cool.  Unfortunately I forgot my camera so I'm borrowing a little one off the web.

Cottage on Jekyll Island

The next weekend we visited Jekyll Island.  Our first stop was the Georgia Sea Turtle Center.  The coast from northern Florida up along Georgia and into South Carolina is a nesting area for sea turtles.  The Georgia Sea Turtle Center is a turtle hospital with a visitor center which was very informative.  We enjoyed visiting the patients and learning the stories of their rescues and hopes for release back into the wild.  (http://www.georgiaseaturtlecenter.org/)

Jekyll Island Club

Next we visited the historic district of the island.  In 1886 the entire island was purchased by the "Jekyll Island Club" which was comprised of a group of the wealthiest people in the country.  They built a "club house" and many built "cottages".  The buildings, as you can imagine, were extravagant.  It was a beautiful day to walk around the buildings and try to imagine how it was back then. (http://www.jekyllisland.com/About/HistoryofJekyllIsland/HistoricSites/HistoricLandmarkDistrict.aspx)

Driftwood beach

We left the historic district and drove out to "driftwood beach".  The beach is named for the piles of large driftwood logs on the beach. 

Fort Frederica

On Saturday we went to St. Simons Island following a driving tour provided in a brochure.  We did a quick drive down the Avenue of Oaks, checked out the beach, and went to Fort Frederica National Monument. The monument was at the site of a British fort and the second city founded in Georgia (after Savannah) in 1736.  There was very little left standing but there were a lot of building foundations and city streets were marked allowing the imagination to roam. (http://www.nps.gov/fofr/index.htm).  After the Fort we went down to the St. Simons Island Village to check it out and have some lunch.

This weekend we planned to go to Cumberland Island but the weather wasn't cooperative.  We didn't want to walk around in the rain and cold north wind for 4 hours.  Instead we visited historic St. Mary's, a small town on the coast.  There are a number of very old homes with history dating as far back as the war of 1812.  They are still working on getting the information out but we got enough to enjoy it.  We were lucky enough to walk around during a break in the rain.