Florida

March 30 through April 2, 2000

Thursday (3/30) found us traveling from Savannah to St. Augustine, FL, and an interesting ride it was. First, the coastal areas of Georgia as well as the low country area of South Carolina have two notable features. One is that the land is very flat and swampy. The other is that the azaleas are gorgeous. In many cases, the bushes are six to eight feet high and, at this time of the year, covered with blossoms. Mobile Alabama is the Azalea City, but it doesn’t have any advantage over the low coastal areas in South Carolina and Georgia.

The trip from Savannah to St. Augustine was a very interesting ride. The first item of interest is that the weather front that caused some much damage in Fort Worth, TX earlier in the week came across our path. As a result, we had violent thunderstorms from the time we left Savannah until we got to Florida. We discovered an additional benefit of traveling off of the Interstate Freeways. The traffic was light enough so that we could drive the speed we felt comfortable with and still not get in anybody else’s way. Once we got into Florida, we encountered the fact that I-95 was closed near Jacksonville and a detour had to be taken.

Getting through the weather and the traffic, we got to St. Augustine and registered for a volkswalk. At the start, we walked down Magnolia Avenue – a street lined on both sides with live oaks hung with Spanish moss. It is purported to be “one of the ten most scenic streets in America.” Then we walked past “Old Senator” – a 600 year old live oak – called the oldest living resident of America’s oldest city. About the time that we had walked by the cathedral and to Flagler College, the skies started clouding up again and the thunder and lightening started getting closer and more frequent. Linda suggested that we abbreviate the walk and come back the next day to finish it. Although I didn’t think we were in for any more severe weather, I went along with her. We did the last part of the walk (skipping the middle part for the time being), got back to the car, and got into a motel room when the sky opened up.

While we were in the room, listening to the thunder and rain, we watched the news. On the news, we found out that there were tornadoes that crossed our path about 30 to 45 minutes after we passed through the area. The highway closure on I-95 was because there had been an incident on the freeway that ended with a police detective shooting a man menacing both traffic and the detective. In addition, there were severe weather warnings for the St. Augustine area, and there had been a fatal automobile accident a few hours earlier on part of the volkswalk route that we covered. Most of the trip has had very little excitement, but today makes up for it.

On Friday morning (3/31), the weather was pretty heavily overcast, but the TV weathermen were all claiming that it was going to burn off and be a pretty nice day. We went out near Flagler College where we had abbreviated our walk, and did the middle part of it. During this part of the walk, the Flagler name comes up repeatedly. The Memorial Presbyterian Church, built by Henry Flagler. The city hall, built as the Alcazar Hotel by Henry Flagler.

A couple of words about Flagler. He owned the Florida East Coast Railroad in the middle of the nineteenth century, and was the biggest promoter of Florida. He built the railroad out to Key West. Ten or twelve years ago, when Linda and I were at Palm Beach for a business meeting, we went through his mansion there. He built the Ponce de Leon Hotel in St. Augustine as a first class resort. It is these buildings that now form the heart of Flagler College. He built the Alcazar Hotel across the street from the Ponce de Leon resort to attract tourists who couldn’t afford the Ponce de Leon. He was the father of Florida tourism.

The Chicago publisher, Otto Lightner, later bought the Alcazar Hotel. Now much of the old hotel is used for municipal offices, with antique and other retail shops at the ground floor. One wing of the hotel, however, is the Lightner Museum. One of Lightner’s concerns was that Americans were throwing away their heritage. As a result, he had a very eclectic collection that is the foundation for this museum. Apparently, about 85% of what is now in the museum came from his collection. This includes such things as furniture from the French Empire and the English Regency periods. There is an Egyptian mummy, a stuffed crocodile, much American cut glass and American and European porcelain, and many other forms of fine art. It is a fun museum to go through.

We also did a quick tour of Castillo San Marcos. This is the fort that is at the original site of St. Augustine. It has been variously a Spanish, English, American, and Confederate fort over the nearly five centuries of its existence. The fort itself is made of locally quarried coquina stone. Coquina stone is a product of sea shells that have alternately been under the sea (in the inter-glacial periods) to accumulate and out of the sea (during the ice ages) so that the acids in the rain can turn the shells into calcium carbonate. It is an interesting stone, and, as it turns out, soft enough so that the cannon balls that hit it do not shatter the stone, but just embed in the stone. As a result, it is a hard fort in which to breach the walls.

After completing the volkswalk, touring the museum, and getting some lunch in St. Augustine, we headed out toward Cape Kennedy where we toured the visitor’s center. This was one of the sites that I have been most interested in seeing on this trip. I was somewhat disappointed by it. It looks like it might be a very good experience for children, but it was not what I was looking for. The one highlight of the center had me so excited that I forgot to get a picture of it. Back in my “rocket scientist” days – when I worked at Rocket Research Corp. – I helped do some of the analysis on the rocket engine that was used to land the Viking Lander on Mars in 1975. There was a mockup of that lander that showed the engines that I helped with. Other than that, it was not a particularly exciting stop.

On Saturday (4/1) we went down to Melbourne, Florida. Our goal here is to meet up with Linda’s cousin Don and his wife, Sherry. First, however, we had to stop at a mall to do a little shopping. One of the benefits of this trip is that I have lost about four inches around my waist. As a result, all of my pants are falling off, so I needed to get some new ones. (Linda’s clothes are getting a little loose, but not quite as much as mine.)

After shopping, we went to Don and Sherry’s for a very nice couple of days. Linda comes from a family that was not particularly close so we hardly know any of her cousins. We were introduced to Don and Sherry when they came to Portland on a road trip of their own about 10 years ago. When we got to their place Linda found out that Mary, Don’s sister and another of Linda’s cousins, also lived in the Melbourne area, and she and her husband, Wally, wanted to take us to dinner at the officer’s club at Patrick Air Force Base.

If possible, we also wanted to see the manatees. On the way to dinner, we stopped at Cooke Park where they are sometimes seen. There were several of them there at the time, and we watched one in particular as it kept allowing itself to be petted by some kids that were also there for the same reason. You can’t see much more than its snout in this picture, and the water was muddy enough so that we couldn’t see much of it either. But we could see enough to be able to tell that it is a very large animal. I found out later that it is illegal to touch them, but at the time I didn’t know that, so I pet it also. If you just put your hand down near the water, it comes up to be scratched. I guess that the two things that have led to the species being endangered are it slowness and its gregariousness.

From there we went to dinner and had another one of those evenings that is a large part of the reason for taking this trip. We got reacquainted with Don and Sherry, met Mary and Wally, and had a great time. Mary and Wally are some of the youngest octogenarians that we have ever met. After the rest of us left to go home and get some sleep, they stayed at the club to dance the night away.

Mary and Wally also invited us to go for a boat ride on Sunday (4/2) morning. Their boat, The Duchess IV is a 34 foot Pacemaker (I think that was the brand), and we spent another couple of delightful hours cruising down the Banana River and into the Indian River (part of the Intercoastal Waterway). At the confluence of the rivers, a property owner has built a dragon/guesthouse that is a landmark in the area.

I Called my aunt and uncle in Naples to let them know that we were thinking about them, but that we were not going to be able to make it that far south. After leaving Melbourne, we headed up toward Andersonville and Plains, GA.