Manatees in Hot Water

February 21, 2012

Today’s highlight was a visit to the Tampa Electric Company’s Manatee Viewing Center—a canal where water taken from Tampa Bay to cool electricity generators is discharged (“clean and warm,” as their brochure says) back into the Bay.  Although dumping scalding water into the ecosystem sounds like a bad thing, the manatees and lots of fish really love the warm water, as we observed while strolling the boardwalks that line the discharge canal.  (Thermometers along the boardwalk indicated that the canal temperature was ninety degrees, while the water in the estuary outside the canal was below seventy degrees.)

Looking down from the raised boardwalk, we could see lots of manatees lolling in the clear water beneath us.  Not one was free of scars from close encounters with boats.

A volunteer on the boardwalk had a cart full of manatee bones, and was giving a talk, but when we approached and heard him say, “When we was born, God gave us two sets of teeth. . .” we decided to just skip his presentation.

We had a fresh caught fish lunch overlooking the Apollo Beach Marina, then explored a little nature trail and beach nearby, at the inlet to the Tampa Electric Company  discharge canal (lots of people catching fish here and a few wading out to be among the passing manatees).  We enjoyed the antics of the pelicans that were hanging around hopefully watching the fishing folk.

Back at Little Harbor, we donned our bathing suits and headed to a shady corner of the pool deck to read until the sun got so low that we felt a bit chilly. 

 We feel as though we are really excelling at this exercise in relaxation.

Beachy Biking

February 20, 2012

Yesterday was cool, windy and rainy, so all we did was chow down at our resort’s big Sunday brunch buffet, then spend the afternoon reading and napping.  Dinner was left-overs from our Cuban Restaurant dinner the night before.  No question—we nailed our goal of relaxation.

 So, today we had to get moving.  We donned our bike shorts and headed for the Pinellas Trail, which runs for 47 miles from Tarpon Springs to St. Petersburg.  Still in relaxation and rehab mode, we only did a tiny piece of the trail in Dunedin, then took a spur that ran along a lengthy causeway and across a bridge over the Intracoastal Waterway to get to Honeymoon Island, site of the largest undeveloped beach and dune system left on Florida’s Gulf Coast. 

Like so much of Florida, Honeymoon Island had humble origins until an enterprising developer re-imaged it as a tourist magnet.  It was originally called Hog Island--home to a bunch of wild pigs, plus some domestic pigs that a local hotelier raised and fed with the left-overs from his hotel dining room.  Then New York millionaire Clinton M. Washburn purchased it in the 1930s, renamed it Honeymoon Island, and built fifty wooden huts thatched with palm fronds along the beach.  In 1940 he initiated a contest, offering two weeks free accommodations to 200 lucky newlyweds (married less than two weeks) who submitted three references along with an essay on why they deserved to honeymoon in a hut there.  LIFE magazine and newsreels picked up the story, and the place really took off. The honeymoon abruptly ended with the bombing of Pearl Harbor.

 Fortunately, later developers did not get too far in their big plans for exploiting the island, and today most of it is a State Park.  Now the big honeymooners here are ospreys – the island has the densest population of nesting ospreys in the world.  As we rode our bicycles along the Osprey Nature Trail there was always at least one osprey nest in view above us, and the whistling cries of the ospreys were incessant.  We think they were proclaiming nest ownership and seeking honeymoon mates.  We also saw a nesting great horned owl and a couple young eagles in a nest along the trail.

There are four miles of sugar sand beaches to explore in the park.  I could have spent hours picking over the shells being left by the receding tide, but we didn’t have lights on our bicycles, and we had to make our way back to the car before dusk.

We ended our wonderful day with dinner at Columbia, one of our Florida favorite restaurants.  Serving Cuban Spanish specialties for over 100 years, the restaurant is still owned by descendents of the founding family, with sixth generation family members working there.  We had tapas and sangria overlooking Clearwater Bay as the sun set on a perfect day in Paradise. 

The Art of Nature and the Nature of Art

February 18, 2012

Titusville to Tampa Bay

Yesterday’s Bluebird of Happiness was the perfect harbinger of this morning spent watching birds in Merritt Island National Wildlife Refuge wetlands.  Tens of thousands of ducks dabbling and diving; egrets and herons in their elegant breeding plumage with colorful Maybelline eyes; delicate avocets wading in the shallows while an alligator skulks ominously nearby; ospreys preparing their nests—we can’t get enough of the beauty and drama in these ponds.

Dick will have endless hours of photo processing fun with the hundreds of pictures he took today.  Here are a few samples. 

The afternoon posed a fine counterpoint to the serenity and natural beauty of our morning, when we happened upon this contemporary art installation beside Route 4.  Entitled Airstream Ranch, it is the controversial work of local RV business owner Frank Bates, who was clearly inspired by a stop he made at Cadillac Ranch in Texas during a cross-country tour in his private helicopter.

We saw the upended Airstreams on the other side of the divided highway, got off at the next exit, turned around to get a better roadside look, noticed there was someone on the other side of the highway fence photographing them up close, and then decided to try to find our way to them via the back roads. 

We did find the trailers, but they were on private property behind a locked gate, and as we drove around trying to see if there was another way in, we met a neighbor who was investigating the activity in the trailer compound and keeping his eye on us.  He gave us the lowdown on how unhappy the neighbors are about the trailers (which they do not recognize as art) and about the riff raff (like us?) that the trailers attract to their neighborhood.  He told us that when he sees strangers (like us?) driving around, he puts his .38 in his pocket (he has a concealed carry permit, he assured us), and comes out to investigate.  (At this point I was trying to unobtrusively check his pocket for a telltale bulge, while Dick just kept having a very pleasant conversation with him about a hunting trip he recently had in Georgia where he bagged his limit.) 

Meanwhile, poor Frank Bates has had a heck of a time defending his artwork.  Back in 2008 the Hillsborough County Code enforcement Board hauled him in for a violation, and he made an ardent defense of his artistic creation, complete with endorsements from the president of the Ringling College of Art and Design, the dean of the University of South Florida College of Visual and Performing Arts, and even the director of the Arts Council of Hillsborough County. He also presented a petition signed by 4,000 supporters, and letters of endorsement from experts in the field of roadside attractions.  The Board voted against Frank Bates, 6-0, and ordered him to dismantle his installation.

He appealed, and two years later a three judge panel of the County Appellate Court overturned the Code Enforcement Board’s ruling.  “They said it wasn’t junk, and it wasn’t a sign, and it wasn’t illegal storage of RVs,” Frank said. “But nobody wants to commit that it’s art!”  This lack of art appreciation really irks him. After all, the Museum of Modern Art in New York has an Airstream in its permanent collection, and as an RV Dealer he ought to know, the curvilinear design of the Airstream is an American classic. 

We may not be experts in art or in RVs, but we are real connoisseurs of roadside attractions.  We can say with authority that Airstream Ranch was worth our little detour.  It is a lot less trashy looking than Cadillac Ranch in Texas (which we visited in 2004, without spray paint),

 it is more impressive in scale than Volkswagen Ranch in Texas (also visited in 2004),

but it falls short of the comic/cosmic grandeur of Carhenge in Nebraska (visited 2009).

Are We Relaxed Yet?

February 17, 2012

Savannah to Titusville

This is the first day of our self-imposed forced relaxation vacation.  So far, our universe has conspired against relaxation, with a day that included (1) Dick making an early morning run to the tile store before we left to pick up the tile that will be installed in our bathroom as soon as we return home, (2) Gayl actually attempting to use the vacuum cleaner and a dust rag with vigor while he was gone, (3) conducting way too many cell phone conversations while driving to keep all our home purchase, repair, renovation and sale projects moving forward while we are gone, and (4)navigating through misty rain for most of the afternoon.

 

We did have a moment of comic relief on I-95 when passing a truck towing an oversize load trailer with this cargo aboard.

We gave ourselves the gift of a few hours of life in the slow lane cruising the coast along Route A1A, and our rewards included some noteworthy roadside attractions, along with a few stops to enjoy views of nearly deserted chilly beaches shrouded in mist. 

Just north of St. Augustine we stopped to look at Castle Otttis (not a typo).  Rusty Ickes and Ottis Sadler were inspired by ancient Irish castles when they built this edifice on a heavily vegetated plot of land along A1A.  When its turrets rose above the tree tops, neighbors noticed, and the lack of a building permit became a problem.  With a little finagling, Rusty and Ottis got a permit for a garage.  Does this look like a garage to you?

A sign above their mailbox proclaims “Castle Otttis was created as an original landscape sculpture in remembrance of Jesus Christ.”   The castle has its own website (castleotttis.com), where we learned that Rusty and Ottis built the castle themselves, “without the aid of laborers, helpers, elevation drawings, or models.”   Did Jesus have a hand in it?  "The building seemed to exert its own insistent will" during construction, they claim.

We passed right through St. Augustine without a stop for the Fountain of Youth or the World’s Largest Cross (been there, done that), and were soon at our next stop, the Bluebird of Happiness at Vilano Beach.  He’s a 1940s statue originally painted orange and used to promote oranges, now repainted and reincarnated as a community mascot.  We will take him as a good omen for the happiness that awaits us during our week of mandatory relaxation.

A Very Steinbeck Day

January 10, 2012

Our vacation reading has been focused Steinbeck—we both have downloaded a collection of Steinbeck novels on our Kindles, and have read a lot of Steinbeck, including Cannery Row and  Tortilla Flat, both set in Monterey, as part of our vacation enhancement program.

Before leaving town this morning we drove by the Steinbeck family cottage in Monterey, where John vacationed when he was growing up, and where he and his first wife Carol lived after they were married in 1930.  (It is now a private home, with no sign of its literary history, and no visible house number, probably to discourage fans like us from poking around .)  Steinbeck’s father gave him a $25 a month allowance and the young couple struggled to make ends meet.   They had to sell their two pet mallards to buy writing paper for John’s manuscript of To a God Unknown.  This cottage is also the infamous site where his dog Toby chewed up his nearly finished manuscript for Of Mice and Men.

Artichoke field

Our next destination was Salinas, where Steinbeck grew up, but before we got there, we made an unexpected detour into Castroville, after passing miles and miles of beautiful artichoke fields, then reading the town sign declaring Castroville to be “Artichoke Center of the World.”  Castroville supplies 75% of the artichokes we eat, and it celebrates its artichoke abundance every year with an artichoke festival.  Marilyn Monroe was their first Artichoke Queen in 1947.

The town also has the world’s largest artichoke—a 20 foot whopper in front of the Giant Artichoke Restaurant.

Salinas is the town where John Steinbeck was born and lived until he was 17 and went off to college.  His house is owned by a Guild of civic-minded local women who raised over $80,000 in 49 days to buy and renovate the house back in the 1970s.  They now operate a luncheon restaurant and gift shop in the house, with Guild member volunteers helping their professional chef in the kitchen, waiting on tables, working in the gift shop, and acting as docents.  Profits are used for maintenance of the house, with any extra money going to local charities and scholarships.

We had lunch there and learned many stories between bites.  John was born in the front parlor in 1902.  He wrote his first short stories and the novels The Red Pony and Tortilla Flat in the front room upstairs.  He lost the manuscript to The Red Pony, and rewrote the book.  (What bad luck—this is now two books we have learned that he had to rewrite.)  When his parents moved out of this house many years later, the lost Red Pony manuscript was discovered wedged behind a desk.  Our docent claimed that when that manuscript was compared with the rewrite there were only seven words different!

Lunch at The Steinbeck House was a most unique dining experience.  And, we hasten to add that the food was really good—the goal of the Guild is to showcase produce grown in the Salinas Valley, and they do it very well.

Speaking of Salinas Valley produce, shortly after we left Salinas, we passed thorough Gilroy, “Garlic Capital of the World.”  We smelled it before we saw the sign—they don’t grow the most garlic in Gilroy, but garlic is heavy in the air, thanks to Gilroy Foods, the largest garlic processing plant in the world.  At Gilroy’s annual garlic festival you can try garlic ice cream.  Unfortunately, Gilroy does not have the world’s largest garlic statue—we pulled out our I-Pad to search for one, but came up empty.  They are missing a real tourist draw there.

We weren’t done yet—our final attraction of the day, and of our trip, was the Winchester Mystery House.  It was a particularly fitting way to end our travels, as the house combines the over the top elegance that we enjoy in homes like the Hearst Castle with the wackiness of a bizarre larger than life roadside attraction.

The roughly 160 room house was built by Sarah Winchester, widow of Winchester Rifle heir William Wirt Winchester, but it was designed by spirits, or so they say. 

A little background:  Sarah married Winchester in 1862, their infant daughter died in 1866, and Mrs. Winchester fell into an unending deep depression, and then when her husband died of tuberculosis fifteen years later she went off the deep end.

How else could you explain what happened next?  She was living in New Haven Connecticut, and went to a spiritualist in Boston for some guidance.  The spiritualist told her that the Winchester family was haunted by the spirits of people killed by Winchester rifles, which explained the deaths of her child and husband.  The way Sarah could appease the spirits and buy herself eternal life was to move west and build a big house for the spirits.  As long as she continued construction, she would be safe.

So that is what Sarah did—she moved to California, built a massive house, and kept building and rebuilding and remodeling it day and night for 38 years.  She was only 4’ 10” tall, which explains why the ceilings are claustrophobically low for a house of this size.  The rest of the design details can only be explained this way--every evening she would summon the spirits at midnight, and the next morning she would give her construction supervisor new instructions for what to add or rip away. 

Neither she nor the spirits had any architectural training, which explains why there are doors and stairs that lead to nowhere, a chimney that stops just inches short of the roof, windows that open into walls, and mazelike hallways throughout.  Maybe she was nuts, or maybe she was just bored and found perpetual home remodeling to be an amusing way to spend what in today’s dollars would be $22,000 a day—her income from her Winchester stock. 

Damage from the earthquake of 1906 trapped a terrified Mrs. Winchester in her room and shook up some other part of the house.  She took that as a warning from the spirits that she had spent too much money on the front of the house (which was beautifully finished with many Tiffany glass windows, intricately patterned parquet floors, massive chandeliers, and lots of other ostentatious ornamentation).  So, she closed off the entire front portion of the house—thirty lavishly furnished rooms—and no one ever entered them again until she died sixteen years later. 

Actually, no one but construction workers, servants, and a favorite niece entered the house at all. Mrs. Winchester was a recluse who did not entertain, even though she had a grand ballroom and a dining room table large enough to seat at least twenty people.  Teddy Roosevelt once tried to visit, but it was after the earthquake, so when he approached the impressive front doors (beveled and stained glass made by Tiffany in France for a sum that could buy three normal houses), a servant told him he had to go around to the service door.  He refused and left.  No one ever walked through those Tiffany doors except the carpenters and Mrs. Winchester—the earthquake happened shortly after they were installed.

Now a private corporation owns the place and gives regular tours and ghost tours, and of course there are people who claim to have communed with the spirits there.  We didn’t see evidence of any otherworldly phenomena (no surprise), but Dick was very disturbed by the evidence of lack of maintenance on the place—quite a contrast with the meticulously maintained Hearst Mansion (which, by the way, was also unfinished after 28 years of constant building and renovation).

We don’t know how we could have squeezed any more exciting adventures into a couple weeks in California.  We are officially ready to go home and rest up from our vacation!

Cannery Row

January 9, 2011

“Cannery Row in Monterey in California is a poem, a stink, a grating noise, a quality of light, a tone, a habit, nostalgia, a dream.”

John Steinbeck

 We spent most of a day along Cannery Row, searching for remnants of the place John Steinbeck wrote about in his novel. 


Precious little of it remains.  The canneries closed down when the sardines disappeared, and now the row is filled with souvenir shops and restaurants, which would be appalling to Steinbeck.  No more stink or grating noise, but the nostalgia and the dream still linger on.

I think John Steinbeck would find this photo op to be a particularly inappropriate way to capture the spirit of the canneries, though we find it to be irresistable in its irreverance.

The Monterey Bay Aquarium is the gem of the Row.  It immortalizes the cannery it replaced, while making its case for only eating sustainable seafood.  It has a little section devoted to Steinbeck and his friend the marine biologist Doc Ricketts.  But mostly, it has big beautiful displays of marine life in California’s coastal waters. 

We found much to fascinate us, but realize that it is not so fascinating in the re-telling.  We will say merely that we spent more time than you would believe (1) watching thousands of sardines swim together in a shining ever changing stream of silver, and (2) enjoying the antics of three sea otters at play in a tank where we could see them both above and below the water surface.   We also took pictures of some of the most photogenic of the sea creatures—jelly fish and sea nettles, and sea horses. 

Watching jellies and sea nettles pulsate to slowly to move through the water is hypnotic--and the best way to watch them is through glass, since close encounters are painful.

This sea dragon is so lacy that it looks like floating kelp.  

On the way back to Seven Gables we climbed down the rocks along the waterside path and searched the tide pools to find a few of the creatures we saw in the artificial tide pools at the aquarium. 

Our favorite tide pool treasure

We also watched harbor seals clumsily dragging themselves around the beach and gracefully swimming in the waves around a place they call Seal Beach.  We are finding that there are many Seal Beaches and Seal Rocks along the California coast.

I finished off the afternoon with a shopping binge in a great fabric store just a block up the street from Seven Gables.   It had an eclectic selection of fabrics I haven’t seen anywhere else, so I couldn’t resist—now I just have to figure out how to pack it in my already bulging suitcase.

Then it was time for wine and cheese back at the Inn, where we watched surfers riding the waves and dodging the rocks around Lover’s Point as we enjoyed a flight of four different Monterey wines paired with gourmet cheeses, including goat cheese layered with wild porcini mushrooms, and provolone with a balsamic sun dried tomato orange zest marinade.  (I think I can replicate that one at home.)

 

We wandered up the hill to a Mexicali Restaurant—because we couldn’t leave California without a Mexicali meal!  

 

Tomorrow is our last full day in California, and we can feel ourselves winding down, but not slowing down, because, as always, we keep finding more things we would like to see and do, so no matter how long we stay anywhere, it never seems to be long enough

California Coastal Living: Luxury Edition

January 8, 2012

After our big breakfast at the Sandpiper, we decide to wander down to the waterfront, since we got in too late last night to see it.  The aptly named Scenic Road traces the shoreline, and is quite a lively spot this morning, with dog walkers, joggers, cyclists, photographers, and other early morning strollers like us enjoying views of a seemingly endless white sand beach and dramatically designed ocean-front homes.  

Continuing our odyssey as spectators on the lives of the fabulously rich, we drive from Carmel to Monterey via the famous Pebble Beach 17-Mile Drive.  Pebble Beach is a gated community and resort, but for $10 anyone can get through the gate and drive around at will (although they hand you a map of the 17-Mile Drive at the gate, and have painted a red line down the center of the road along the drive to help keep visitors from “getting lost” in the exclusive neighborhood.)  

 The map has about 20 marked sights of interest along the route, and we stop for them all.  Here are our favorites.

It costs $495 for a round of golf at The Pebble Beach Golf Links (plus a cart fee if you are not a guest at the resort), and the cheapest hotel at the Lodge at Pebble Beach goes for $715 a night, but we walked around inside the Lodge, used the fancy rest rooms, and got this great view of the 18^th green for free.

The Lone Cypress is the most photographed tree in the world, and one of the few trees that is trademarked.  So, this picture is for our personal use only.

Seal Rock is covered with what we estimate to be nearly a thousand sea lions, and an abundance of birds floats and flies about all around the rock and the beach picnic area there.  We add two new birds to our life list at this stop (black oystercatcher and surf scoter). 

The beach at China Rock is full of Inukshuks.  While Dick photographs them, I make one.

We have lunch with a view at the Links at Spanish Bay.  The food is almost as good as the view.

Our first stop in Monterey is the Monarch Grove Butterfly Sanctuary, where 9,500 butterflies are now wintering over.  It is not so big a crowd as we saw back in Pismo Beach, but it is a warm and sunny day, and there are more butterflies fluttering about and spreading their wings, so the atmosphere here is a bit more colorful, light and festive.

We visit Point Pinos Light, the oldest continuing operating light on the West Coast (including Canada and Mexico), with 156 years of non-stop service.  An enthusiastic volunteer tells us many stories and shares a lot of information about the light.  Our favorite keeper is Emily Fish, a widow who served as keeper for 21 years, starting in 1893 at age 50.  She was popularly known as the socialite keeper, because she loved to entertain, but she also went through 30 assistants in her 21 years, because she set rigorous perforrnance standards that few could uphold. 

Despite all this activity, we manage to get to the historic Seven Gables Inn with time to spare before the afternoon wine and cheese reception begins.

Continuing our theme for the day, we are treating ourselves to luxury living—our waterfront room has a wall of windows looking out over Monterey Bay.

We see the full moon rising just after dusk., while enjoying our wine and cheese (four Monterey wines served, with a baked brie with apricots and a blue cheese ball, plus three cheese wedges, some vegetables and dip, and the inn’s signature fudge drops). 

Goodnight moon.