Art

Tuesday 15 March 2011

How many creatures can you find in this part of Disney's Tree of Life on Discovery Island in the Wild Kingdom?

We drove to Dallas, Texas, to see the Dallas World Aquarium. But the line to get in wound around two sides of the block it was on because school was out in Dallas. Parents had brought their first to fourth grade children. When we saw that we changed our minds and headed for the Dallas Art Museum. But BJ hadn't eaten and suddenly decided that was higher priority. So we dashed in one door of the Art Museum, hurried to the café which charged $24 per meal, and ran out the far side of the museum. What I saw was some large colorful modern art paintings in peeks, and a lot of fancily dressed people looking down their noses at us shabby tourists in a hurry. We finally found a Subway sandwich shop after about six blocks of walking around before BJ completely melted down. So we hopped in the car and started driving. We are sleeping tonight in Wichita Falls, Texas.

On the road today after Dallas we passed a church with aluminum sides on a hill. Between the church and the freeway was a large, dark-colored wooden cross standing on the ground. Between the cross and the freeway was the dark metal silhouette of a cowboy, hat in hand, on one knee, head bowing humbly toward the cross and holding the reins of his silhouette horse standing behind him. I liked it a lot better and it gave me more insights than any of the art I peeked at in the fancy museum. Sometimes there is no accounting for tastes in art.

Rain, rain . . .

Monday 14 March 2011
We woke near Mobile, Alabama. It took three tries to finally discover the way to the hotel we wanted last night. That was a frustrating experience. We travelled most of the day and made it to near Shreveport, Louisiana. Between Jackson and Vicksburg, Mississippi we had to drive through the most intense rain I have ever had to drive in. We slowed down about 20 m.p.h. and still the rain was so heavy for awhile with the wipers going as fast as possible we could barely see out the window.

The image today is from Ft. Pickens. Yesterday we passed the border of the time zone but today find the time in the new Central time zone is the same as in time in the old Eastern time zone. Then we heard the switch to daylight savings was yesterday. Very confusing!

FL Caverns & Ft. Pickens

Sunday 13 March 2011Florida Caverns is a smaller cavern (round trip ¾ mile). It has the flowstone, stalactites, stalagmites, bacon and other formations. I would guess there are about ten major rooms and connecting passages. The guide showed us a sharks tooth, a nautilus shell, and a sand dollar in the ceiling of the cavern.

But the highlight of the day was Fort Pickens. It was a struggle to find it. There are two barrier islands and Ft. Pickens is on the outer island at the extreme west end.The island it is on has been partially converted into a casino resort somewhat like Ft. Lauderdale. But turning the rest of the island into a National Seashore preserved the white sugar sand beaches and keeps the highrise hotels at a distance. Fort Pickens was a lot different than I remembered from visiting it in about 1966. One bastion of five was accidently destroyed in 1899. The walls were stuffed with gunpowder and set to blow up if an enemy ever took the walls. A fire in 1899 blew up that powder. But it is an old brick pre-Civil War fort that continued in use to about World War I. A reinforced concrete battery was built on the parade grounds of the old fort in about 1904. I was surprised to learn an inverted arch system was used to disperse the weight of the fort on the white sand. The park service did almost nothing to interpret the new batteries for WWI.

Mission San Luis

Saturday 12 March 2011
Mission San Luis was the main Spanish Franciscan Mission of West Florida near present-day Tallahassee. Founded in 1654 it was mainly a mission to the Apalachee Indians, the strongest tribe in this area. In 1704 the British from South Carolina attacked and the village was burned by its own residents to prevent it falling into British hands. The inhabitants scattered. Some of the Indians went west to live with the French in Mobile. Some scattered into the forest. The Spanish also split up. Some went back to St. Augustine and got yellow fever there and died. Others went to Mexico City or Havana. They had lots of contact with Spanish colonies in Mexico. The Apalachee Indians built a meeting house that was a log cone covered with thatch. The one built here was the largest individual Indian building in the American Southeast. The picture above shows the rebuilt size. In the tree shadow you can just barely make out the door, normal size to give a perspective of how big this thing is. The Spanish eventually built a stockade. Since both societies had commons this worked very well with Indian meeting house, stockade, and mission church all built around the commons.

I noted that the story of the real first Thanksgiving as told by the people of Florida does not involve Massachusetts but rather St. Augustine, Florida. In the year 1565, the grateful Spanish and their Indian friends of New Spain held a thanksgiving feast together 56 years before those Johnny-come-latelies, the Pilgrims of New England.

Jupiter Springs

Friday 11 March 2011
We hunted for the Blowing Rocks near Jupiter Florida. Instead we found windswept rocks by a channel and a nice beach. Then we drove a long way to the Ocala National Forest and found a beautiful swimming hole that just happened to be called Jupiter Springs. The CCC built a water mill to help keep the swimming hole level the same. Water bubbles up out of a spring here and forms a gorgeous pool. BJ went swimming in the 70 degree water but I thought it was a tad too chilly for me so I only went in up to my ankles. BJ found a picture of this place in her guide book and has wanted to visit it ever since.

Little Cuba, Miami Beach, Ft. Lauderdale

Thursday 10 March 2011
We visited a little Cuban eatery in Miami called Palacio de los Jugos. Then we drove through Coral Gables a bit more up-scale with "Mediterranean" style housing. Then we drove to Miami Beach in a downpour. I was floored by the opulent high rise hotels next to the beach. I have never seen so much wealth concentrated in one space, not even on Waikiki in Hawaii. It was much more highrise than Hawaii and cram packed in together. BJ was a little freaked out by the combination of being in a highrise canyon crowded with people and the flooding driving through about four inches of rain on the road. So we left and went to Ft. Lauderdale. There we walked on the beach at a state park that kept the highrise hotels at a distance, see the beach picture. It was much more calm and relaxing. Finally we drove to a KOA near the Lion Country Safari.

Southernmost

Wednesday 9 March 2011
We returned to Key West and did a walkabout. We visited the "Southernmost Point" monument. It really isn't southernmost but the laid back Key West attitude is that details like that are not important. And we walked Duval Street a little. It has lots of shops. I was happy to see a few tourists with ashes smeared on their foreheads (good Catholics). BJ snorkeled John Pennekamp Coral Reef State Park and saw several fish. We sleep in Homestead, Florida on the mainland tonight, which took a direct hit from hurricane Andrew.

Key West vs. Sugarloaf Key

Tuesday 8 March 2011
You learn so much when you travel. The Greeks taught that you were not really educated until you toured the world. I learned that Key West is beautiful but way crowded with tourists and traffic, at least on Fat Tuesday otherwise known as Mardi Gras. I've spotted the same kind of thing at Sun Valley in Idaho, and certain villages in Maine. It is a sort of pattern that wealthy easterners like to descend on quiet little towns and make them tourist destinations with too many beautiful people crowding the shops, the tours, and the streets in a crowded pedestrian/auto traffic jam. A lot of good looking girls and guys are showing off their gorgeous bodies in nothing but bikinis and bathing suits in Key West. There are also a few old guys like me who go without shirts and thus commit crimes against humanity. During his most productive period Earnest Hemingway lived here. That connects him with both Key West and Sun Valley Idaho. Maybe that is why the wealthy easterners like to crowd together in search of Hemingway in places like this. BJ always gets on edge in crowded places like this. I love to people watch, especially how the beautiful people live.

BJ has always wanted a conch shell horn. In a tourist shop at the far end of Key West she bought one. This is particularly appropriate because the name for people living on the Florida Keys is conchs. And in 1982 they seceded from the United States, created the Conch Republic, declared war on the United States, broke a loaf of hard Cuban bread over a cooperative U.S. Naval officer' head, surrendered a few minutes later, and applied to the United Nations for a billion dollars to help rebuild their devastated nation. This was all because the U.S. border patrol put up a road block near the only bridge to the keys and searched everyone coming off the keys. This backed up traffic for miles and for weeks and got the mayor irritated. He said if the United States wouldn't treat conchs as equals they wanted out. Having a conch from the Conch Republic is way cool. She picked one the size, shape and color she preferred.

Somehow I'm not interested in collecting those kinds of "things." I figure I only have a few more years left in this mortal coil, and since I can only take the things I have learned, and the relationships I have formed, it is only the memories and my family that are precious to me. But BJ wanted to see some old shops at the marina and so did I. It makes me happy when she is happy. I showed her a bumper sticker that said, "We don't skinny dip, we chunky dunk," and BJ giggled about that one most of the way back to our camp.

In driving to mile marker 0 on Highway 1 you reach the west side of Key West. If you want to go farther west to the Dry Tortugas it will cost you a $160 ferry ride. On this drive we learned that there are only two or three smallish towns on this string of Florida Keys. They are all very low lying barrier islands (see image above). The weather is warm with a cooling sea breeze. I'm at the KOA on Sugarloaf Key. BJ is doing laundry, I'm typing this blog, and this evening we will probably go swimming in the Gulf of Mexico. The campground here is crowded with RVs for a KOA, but it is peaceful and relaxing with that wonderful sea breeze. Many of the shops in the Florida Keys are named "Southernmost" and sure enough, our KOA on Sugarloaf Key is called the "Southernmost KOA."

Rock Reef Pass elevation 3 feet

Monday 7 March 2011
The Everglades in March are not the soaking wetlands I expected. It is the dry season and there are certainly gator holes, ponds, and sloughs, but the majority of the park is covered by dried out saw grass about four feet high. BJ took lots of alligator, and water bird pictures at the Royal Palm Anhinga Trail. But the state bird of Florida should be the ubiquitous black vulture. BJ and I sat on a bench a few feet from two of these cheeky birds resting on the bank of a slough. It wasn't long before they started eyeing us in such a way that we decided we needed to "look alive."

The Everglades and all Florida are VERY flat. When the high point of the day was a pass all of three feet in elevation you might begin to picture how incredibly flat it really is. Most of Florida is a limestone table about one to four feet above sea level. But the stands of trees will fool you. Any place that can rise a few inches higher than the surrounding land becomes a tree colony. In one place it might be mostly tall pine trees. In another it might be bald cyprus, and in another it might be mahogany trees that dominate. During the rainy season the Everglades is covered by a sheet of slow moving water. Where the trees are clumped together soil builds up a few extra inches and a sort of island of trees is formed above the sheet of rainy season water. This island is called a hammock. The American Indians formerly lived on some of these hammocks and built their villages on some of them. There are hundreds of these elongated hammocks all pointing downstream from the very slow moving current. In some places they are separated by a few hundred yards, in other places by miles of saw grass plains that become a wetland water sheet in rainy season May to November.

We have come to camp at Flamingo about as far south as you can get on the mainland of Florida. It also happens to be the only place in the whole world where alligators and crocodiles live together. I haven't spotted any crocs yet. But from where I'm sitting I can see Florida Bay which separates the mainland from the Florida keys. Before today I thought the keys were a string of islands ending near Key West. I learned that any coastal island in Florida, including thousands on the Gulf Coast side of Florida are also called keys.

Lions and alligators and bears

Sunday 6 March 2011
Oh, my! We saw a stuffed Florida panther way bigger than any Utah cougar I've ever seen. Alligators were sunning on the bank of the Myakka River and BJ got some pictures. We saw a bear crossing sign on the highway which struck me as odd because we were in the middle of nearly endless orange groves. BTW, orange groves have a really nice fragrance. And the bees splattered on our windshield have very clear see-through guts.

We spent some time at the Myakka River State Park and visited the Canopy Walk Nature Trail. This was about a half mile trail through a mixed oak and palm, and palmetto forest. About 100 feet of the trail was on a raised suspension bridge at tree top level. At the end of the bridge was a tower about twice as high as the bridge, way over the canopy. We didn't see much in the way of critters but we saw forest as far as the eye could see (and one high voltage power line set). Somehow I had failed to realize there could be forest with about half the trees being palms or palmettos. The nature trail signs explained that in the summer this whole area is flooded. After climbing this tower both BJ and I agreed our leg muscles were sore, but would have been much worse if we hadn't been exercising them with long walks at amusement parks.

The Venice, Florida Ward where we started the day is friendly and I liked most of what I heard. The nice folks there had a testimony meeting that went about ten minutes too long, and then Sunday School went too long, and by the time we got to Priesthood Meeting after announcements there was only three minutes left for the lesson. The smart teacher summarized in three minutes and did a good job.

Tonight we sleep near Clewiston, Florida, and the evening breeze carries the scent of orange blossoms. Clewiston is south of Lake Okeechobee, the source of much of the Everglades water, so you could say we are in the Everglades except we are among too many people here. But tomorrow . . .

Dali Museum

Saturday 5 March 2011
Salvador Dali was for awhile the surrealist artist extraordinaire, or just a little eccentric. BJ and I both agreed the best painting of his in the museum in St. Petersburg, Florida, was Columbus and the New World. Actually, I thought most of his stuff was mildly boring. His life was crazy but he was good at self promotion. He liked to do things with his thin little moustache such as wax it into a figure 8 or straight up to the level of his pupils. We saw lots of melting watches. I was surprised to learn he turned away from modern art as to lacking in spirituality. His last works were more theological in tone. He also had a very interesting portrait of Abraham Lincoln that at first glance was a scantily clad young lady, but if you stood way back, squinted, and allowed for pixilization you could actually see Honest Abe's portrait. But we are now out of Orlando and meandering our way toward the Florida keys. We are camping in Venice, Florida tonight and it is hot.

Rango

Friday 4 March 2011
We returned to the Wild Kingdom in the morning and BJ took hundreds of pictures this time. She took some great rhinoceros and some good bird and tiger pictures. The only rides we went on were the ones we had to go on to take animal pictures.

In the evening we went to see the movie Rango and it was totally bizarre, much more so than Raising Arizona, and pretty clean as far as I could tell. I absolutely loved it. It was obviously making fun of lots of things in the movie industry. But they had "The Spirit of the West" which looked and sounded an awful lot like Clint Eastwood with a serape driving around a white golf cart in Rango's dream sequence. Ahhhh it is fun to be on vacation.

Our dinner was at Golden Coral.

A peck for Minnie

Thursday 3 March 2011
Waiting for the Epcot Center to open this morning Minnie Mouse came out to entertain the crowd and invited me to plant a peck on her cheek. I saw lots of fun things today but kissing Minnie was the most memorable. We saw Spaceship Earth, Ellen's Energy Adventure, The Seas with Nemo, Living with the Land (saw a really interesting "tomato tree" plant where the Japanese pulled tomato vines off the ground and held them in the shape of a tree which produces thousands of fruit for nine months), Mission Space, Test Track (longest ride in Disney history), Oh Canada, British street theater, Impressions de France, Moroccan belly dancing, Japanese beautiful store (BJ bought some bowls), American Fife and Drum, German chocolate store, Reflections of China, Maelstrom (Viking boat log flume ride), and Mexican boat ride with the three caballeros (Donald Duck and two other birds).

Good eats

Wednesday 2 March 2011
We took a "day off" to rest. We skipped a kingdom and just went to Downtown Disney today. This is mostly shops and restaurants. The Earl of Sandwich makes a good hot sandwich. (Image: BJ at Vicksburg)

Let the memories begin!

Tuesday 1 March 2011
Beginnings and endings are special in the Magic Kingdom. The last thing I saw above the exit out of the Magic Kingdom was the phrase "Let the memories begin!" Today we saw Stitch's Great Escape, Buzz Lightyear's Space Ranger Spin (I got a higher score than BJ both times we went), People Mover, Carousel of Progress, Monster's Inc Laugh Floor, Pirates of the Caribbean (no soundtrack), Jungle Cruise, it’s a small world, Peter Pan's Flight, Mickey's PhilharMagic, Snow White's Scary Adventures, and Mad Tea Party.

Symbols can be powerful. I was really impressed with it’s a small world and the change from color to all white. It was beautiful and memorable. I was also struck by the number of little girls with Minnie Mouse ears and polka-dot bow tie ribbons in their hair compared to the number of boys with Mickey Mouse ears. The ratio was about five Minnies for every two Mickeys. I wonder what that symbol means. I think girls are more free to express themselves these days. The boys are trained from early on to disguise or hide their loyalties and interests. Almost any boy from the first grade on has learned their thoughts are chauvinist and socially unacceptable, so most avoid displaying their feelings.

Some good jokes were heard today. On the jungle boat in Adventure Land the boat driver told us as we approached the charging hippo to cover our ears. We all obeyed and he pulled out his revolver and then yelled very loud at the hippo to leave his boat and tourists alone because he had a big gun. He also told us about his friend that went to the witch doctor. His friend had a piece of pineapple in his left ear, part of a banana in his right eye, and gooseberries up his nose. When this friend went to the witch doctor for help he was told he wasn't eating right. The old joke under the waterfall about the backside of water still causes a chuckle. The Carousel of Progress attendant also got us laughing by saying he was starting his favorite song, and then mumbling under his breath that he heard it in his sleep and every waking hour. (Image: "The Window" in the Chisos Basin at Big Bend Nat'l Park looking down into the desert. This is where BJ got stung.)

The tram driver taking us to the parking lot at the end of the day urged parents with strollers to completely fold them before stepping onto the tram, and even reminded the parents that their children would appreciate it if they removed their children before folding. When you are exhausted at the end of a day such things can strike you as hilarious.