The Space and Treasure Coast

As I have mentioned, Kennedy Space Center is in the northern part of Brevard County, Florida, where I live.

What many people outside of this area do not know is that the southern end of this county, and Indian River County to the south of us, and on down to around Fort Pierce, Florida, make up what is known as the 'Treasure Coast.'

In 1715, a Spanish fleet, known as the Plate Fleet, heavily laden with unbelievable amounts of gold, silver, and jewels, wrecked off our coasts during a hurricane. This fleet had left Cuba, and was so loaded down because it had been several years since any fleets had gone back to Spain. It was a massive disaster for the men involved, and for Spain.

Artifacts of all types, gold, silver, jewels, etc., are still being recovered to this day. In fact, in 2003, a diver found a hand carved jewel box with a gold and emerald cross necklaces and matching ring inside. This was in 12 feet of water just off the beach of the southern part of Sebastian Inlet State Park, one of our favorite beaches to go to here.

There are two museums in the area dedicated to the shipwrecks and the recovered artifacts. One is run by the State of Florida, called the McLarty Treasure Museum, which sits on the original site of the camp the Spanish set up to run recovery operations from. (I know. I shouldn't end a sentence with a preposition. Whose blog is this anyway?)

The other museum in the area is in Sebastian, Florida, on the mainland, on US1. It is the Mel Fisher Treasure Museum. Before Mel Fisher achieved fame by finding the Atocha off of the Floridas Keys, he worked for years in this area working on bringing up items from some of the wrecks in the Plate Fleet. This small museum is one of the places we always take any visitors we have. You cannot walk out of this place without your head spinning from all the gold and gems they have on display.

Earlier, I mentioned a jewelry box with items found in May, 2003. Here is a picture I took of them in the Mel Fisher museum about a week after they were found. They had already been cleaned and put on display.


Anyway, this is a very interesting part of the history of this area, but kinda gets lost in the large shadows cast by Orlando and the whole industro-Disney complex and the Space Center.

But this is the kind of stuff I love, and if you like history, these museums, especially the Mel Fisher one, are both well worth your trip from Orlando. If you're only mildly interested in such things, don't bother. (They now have a small museum in Kissimmee, FL, near all the Orlando stuff you would be down here for anyway.)

You can read more about these museums and the Plate Fleet at these sites:
McLarty Museum (Page set up by treasure hunter Mike Maguire)
1715 Plate Fleet (A link to a good synopsis of the fleet's story by John DeBry)
Mel Fisher's story. An amazing man and life.

America's Very First National Wildlife Refuge

Pelican Island National Wildlife Refuge
I live in Brevard County, Florida. Kennedy Space Center is at the northern end of this seventy-something mile long county. Palm Bay (where I live) is very close to the southern end, on the mainland of Florida. Stretching the whole length of this county is a series of barrier islands. Around here we call this series of islands 'beachside.'

When my wife and I go for a drive (my daughters no longer like to go) we go across the Melbourne Causeway to the beachside and tend to drive south on our section of the infamous A1A.

A couple of years ago we went south as usual and entered Indian River County just south of Brevard County. It's where Vero Beach, Florida is.

We were just driving and talking and enjoying the day, when on the right side of A1A we noticed a small sign about a 'Pelican Island.' On a whim we turned right down a gravel road. The road was like a washboard at the time so we had to go slow. On the left of this gravel road, we soon saw what looked like a park. We turned in. It was nice and landscaped and had restrooms, but nothing about Pelican Island. We headed further down the gravel road until we finally saw a sign for parking for Pelican Island National Wildlife Refuge.

We turned into the parking area which, like the one a couple of miles back was almost new and very nice. We were the ONLY people there. We parked and got out of the car and headed down the paved pathway to a small covered area that contained boards with glassed in posters and information about the place.

It turns out that Pelican Island National Wildlife Refuge was established in 1903 by Teddy Roosevelt as the nation's first ever National Wildlife Refuge. We were like, hey, that's really cool. We had lived near here for 6 years at the time and had never heard of it. Never read about it or anything.

Pelican Island is a small island, I can't remember exaclty, maybe about an acre or so in the Indian River Lagoon which is what the local portion of the Intracostal Waterway is called. The whole refuge though, is about 5400 acres. We were out on the beachside, but on the Intracostal Waterway side of this barrier island. From the park you walk up a meandering pathway that becomes a wooden walkway above the increasingly wet edge of the island.

You don't actually get to set foot on Pelican Island. This park is adjacent to it and the walkway from the park leads you up higher and higher until you end up at a covered viewing platform maybe forty feet off the ground. Looking out into the Indian River Lagoon you can view Pelican Island and all the birds that call it home. Depending on when you go, it might be white with birds. And at this viewing platform they have installed several of those mounted binocular thingies so you can get a good close-up view of the island and all the birds. It's really, really cool and the whole park is really well done.

It's a low key, laid back kind of place, conducive to walking on the pathways and just almost forces you to look at the beauty of this wetland area. Yeah, it's not majestic like a mountain vista or anything but the smells, sounds, and rough landscape has a beauty all its own.

And it seemed to me at the time that this wondrous place deserved a much bigger sign on the road, but I noticed they had an official roadside sign on A1A last time we went. But still, you have to go to the park to find out it's history and even the new sign is low key and simply states 'Pelican Island National Wildlife Refuge.'

Definitely one of our best finds in all the excursions we've taken in the years we have lived here. A very pleasant accidental find.

I had some great digital photos I had taken here, but I lost them in a computer crash before I had backed them up. (frown) I got the above photos from the internet.

You can read more about this amazing place HERE.

Wuh-Hooo! Lovely Wife found our pics of Pelican Island!
Click on 'em

Butterfly at Juan Ponce De Leon Park

Yeah. Butterfly. Got a problem with that? I didn't think so.

In yesterday's post, I mentioned my wife and I taking a nice Sunday drive this past Sunday. We went to the beach for a while (see the pic I posted yesterday too) and before we left, we sat for a little longer on a park bench above the beach near our car. Just to prolong the ocean experience, you understand.


We were mostly just soaking up the sun and the beauty of the day and the water when right in front of us a generic yellow butterfly lifted off from the grass he had been on. We hadn't noticed him sitting there. Like I mentioned, I haven't been out much for several months except to go to work and back. So seeing the butterfly made my heart leap. I know it's really corny.

I have always thought butterflies were cool. The way they fly so jumpy and all over the place. It has made me smile since I was a kid, just because the jerky way they fly and eventually go in the general direction they are going for. But boy does it take a lot of effort. Kinda like my life, you know?

Yellow Butterfly lifts off and starts to struggle to the south directly into the wind. He's really jukin' and jivin' all over the place but slowly, slowly makes his way south. I watch him for a while and then stop watching while talking with my wife.

A minute or two later, I'm looking out at the Atlantic while we talk and...

Zzzoooom. Yellow Butterfly streaks back across 'our' patch of the oceanside park from south to north, this time with the wind, but still in that schitzoid manner, only ten times as fast as he was going upwind. It was like it had changed his mind and started north but had no idea the wind would blow him like that.

I immediately said "WWhaaaa! Help Me!" for him as he went streaking by.

Well. It was funny at the time, and got a laugh out of my wife. And it was a good sign for me that I could think of something funny that fast, too. That my outlook and mind are getting more engaged in the world. Sometimes it's such a small thing that lifts your spirit.

Yellow Butterfly was seriously bookin' it though.


Juan Ponce De Leon Landing Park
The park on the ocean south of Melbourne Beach, Florida that I mentioned above is named after Ponce De Leon of 'Fountain of Youth' fame.

They have some informational boards set up at the park in which they quote articles by scholars on Ponce De Leon. These articles state that over the years some scholars have come to determine from the writings of Ponce De Leon and some of his men, that he actually first landed in Florida at the site where this park was established.

Although Brevard county has nice beaches, we're not exaclty a hot-bed of tourism (a good thing in my opinion) so the county jumped at the chance to honor ol' Juan and claim a little glory for the county by association. Kennedy Space Center is a big tourist draw, but KSC and Cocoa Beach are like forty or fifty miles north of this park. (Brevard county is seventy miles long)

But it's one of my wife and I's favorite places to go sit at the ocean.

And that's cool about Ponce De Leon maybe having landed here. If it's true.

It's our version of 'George Washington slept here'.

A Sunday Drive

Sunday Drive
This past weekend my wife and I threw caution (and ten bucks or so for gas) to the wind and took a Sunday afternoon drive.

I mentioned in earlier posts that I suffer from depression. And suffer from having a royally screwed up back. Well, this winter has been tough on both, despite my living in Florida, and winters are very mild here. Heck, I didn't even pull any April Fool's jokes on anyone. Not. One.

So, the problem is, that drives are one of our favorite things to do. We live only fifteen to twenty minutes from the Atlantic and it's so easy to go sit on the beach for a while. For years and years I longed to live within easy driving distance to the beach. In fact my work is much closer than my home, so I can go to the beach, sit and eat for about twenty minutes and still be back at work in the allotted forty five minutes. I've done this many, many times. A great mental lift I must say, and the whole time there I'm truly appreciating being so fortunate.

But depression hit pretty hard over the past few months, and with my back problems, well, it was just easier not to go. While we were out on our overdue drive, and it was Chamber of Commerce weather too, we tried to remember the last time we had gone. Our best estimate was sometime in early October of 2005.

Get this. We love the beach. Our home is a twenty minute drive from being parked on the Atlantic ocean. And we hadn't seen the beach or ocean in FIVE MONTHS.

Bummer. The Doctor has me on new medicine for my depression, and discovered some other problems that are probably contributing to it and referred me to a specialist in that area, but still. Five Months!

The day and the water were so beautiful that it was worth the wait. I just hate it though, because the wait was totally unnecessary.

Here's a photo that I took that day. (click on it)



Permanent Record
The other day, we were watching some TV and my wife got up and went to the kitchen to check on something that was cooking. We traded some innocent banter back and forth. I can't even remember what we said now. But she slammed me and my daughters were all, Ooooh. Like my wife got the better of me.


So I said (in mock anger), "That was un-called for. That, young lady, is going on your permanent record." My wife was all "Oh no! I'm sorry!"

My younger daughter asked me. "Is there really such a thing as a permanent record?" So, we explained to her no, not really. You leave a trail of paperwork about you with things from your school days and at your various jobs, but that there was not an official 'permanent record' kept anywhere. (Unless of course one habitually runs afoul of the law.)

She had heard the reference once or twice, but didn't really understand what it was all about. She's never been threatened with it.

My wife and I, on the other hand grew up in maybe the last generation in which all kids were kept in check through fear of negative marks on our 'permanent record'. In our case this was mostly done by teachers over the years.

Thing is, I distinctly remember mentally taking a step back when threatened with this. I have always been fairly naïve, but I was especially so when young. So, the ol' Permanent Record threat was absolutely as good as threatening to tell my parents, if not more so.

I hadn't thought of that in years but it just came out when my wife outsmarted me. Good times. Good times.

Thanks Hillary

When I was growing up in Loozie-ana, I heard every kind of conspiracy theory and crackpot story I think was out there. The guv'ment's gonna take our guns, etc., etc., etc. The only thing is, most of these stories and theories were from the far right end of the political spectrum. Excepting of course your basic UFO stuff which seems to attract converts from all across the political spectrum.

At any rate, the far right of America seemed to be king of the hill on conspiracy stuff.


Then came Hilary Clinton. Her little blast against 'this vast right wing conspiracy' during an interview with she and Bill during the 90's really turned the tide. Now you can go to liberal leaning web sites and blogs and hear the same kind of craziness that used to be held against right wingers; only now coming from the left. She opened the flood gates and now liberals have just as many, if not more, morons out with their theories on everything. The 'stolen' presidential election in 2000. (Yeah. Uh-huh.) Hanging chads. (Some people are too stupid to be allowed to vote.) Ohio in the 2004 presidential election. I could go on and on.

But it seems it was good ol' Hillary that turned the tide and now the left MORE than balances out the conspiracy knuckleheads on the far right.

And while in times past even being a little to the right of center on politics had you lumped in the same category as the bozos, this is thankfully no longer true.

Thanks Hillary, you've helped the voting public see that the far left is even freakier than the far right.


Rant
I spoke in an earlier post about people using the word pandemic now instead of epidemic. But today I want to talk about the word 'healthful'.


Back in the good ol' days, when people weren't in the habit of jumping on every newly popular word and promptly stomping it into the dust, I could buy a salad and have a 'healthy' meal. To lose weight or to improve one's health, one tried to eat only 'healthy' foods.

But I haven't heard anything about 'healthy' food in a long, long time.

Everyone now uses 'healthful' in place of 'healthy'. Now one is cautioned to only eat the most 'healthful' foods. This carrot is a 'healthful' addition to your diet, and so forth and so on. And I literally haven't heard a health or exercise type on any TV show or radio use 'healthy' in quite a while. They ALL say 'healthful'.

Sounds pretentious to me. I don't like it. So I make sure to use only the word 'healthy' in conversations. (Example: I am learning to eat healthy foods and hope not to get sick in an epidemic.)

Man. Am I special, or what?

I'm just sayin'…

Wuh-Hoo!

Wuh-Hoo! as my daughter would say. Congrats to the University of Florida basketball team for winning the national championship.

YAY! College basketball is over!

NBA season will be over soon, too! YAY!

(I hate basketball. Yeah, I know that's lame, but I do. At least LSU didn't win it all.)

Julery
The other day on television I saw/heard a woman hosting a nationally televised program, and she mentioned julery a couple of times. That's how she pronounced jewelry.

It made me think of Dubya and how his missteps in public speaking are perceived as a lack of intelligence. I actually like that about him. I'm no great public speaker and someone in the public eye who is not slick and glossy with their look and speaking manner is someone I can relate to. Makes him/them seem more like a real person to me.

On so many blogs every speech screw up the President makes is pointed out with glee, and seems to be used as justification for some people's belief that he is dumb.


I saw an interview with Bono of U2 fame on television a while back on Ovation or some channel like that. He was talking about his political activities and how they affect the band. He mentioned the President, and the interviewer asked him since he had spent so much time with Bush, what people's biggest misconception about him (Bush) was.

Bono immediately said people's biggest misconception about him was in thinking he was not intelligent. Bono said that Bush is a VERY intelligent man.

That. From Bono. The world's living patron saint of liberalism.

Plus, even Bill Clinton and John F. Kennedy have been noted as having said 'nuculer' on occasion. Besides, like the story that came out last June says, Bush had better grades at Yale than Kerry, and everybody oohed and aahed about how supposedly intelligent Kerry is during the 2004 presidential race. Just because he sounds like Thurston Howell III from Gilligan's Island doesn't mean Kerry's smart. Unpolished public speaking doesn't mean that Bush is a dummy either.


My Favorite Time Of Year In Florida
This is a picture of some of the blossoms right now on our tangelo tree.


Yeah. I know that cherry blossoms are out for those who live near or have cherry trees. Dogwoods are doing their beautiful magic too.

But living in Florida, I get to see/smell the best of them all.

Orange Blossoms.

In all my life, I have never smelled anything that even comes close. Like a mixture of honeysuckle and gardenia. Absolutely wonderful.

We have a navel orange and a tangelo tree in our back yard, and sitting out on the back patio is mighty fine right now. Last year our trees had almost no blossoms and of course very little fruit because of hurricanes Jeanne and Frances hitting us in 2004, but this year both trees are white with blossoms. And the smell! There's just nothing else quite like it.

So, although the orange blossoms don't show up visually as pretty as cherry or dogwood, the smell is in a class by itself.

Thanks, God.

Andy Griffith and King Kong

Andy Griffith, Character Litmus?
This past weekend was one of my long weekends, as we get every other Friday off. I slept late on Friday and later when I was up I sat in my recliner to eat and turned on the TV.

Flipping around to see if anything good was on, I noticed The Andy Griffith Show was on, I can't remember which channel. I stopped long enough to see if it was one of my favorite episodes, and finding that it wasn't, I moved on. I ended up watching something I had recorded on our DVR.

But it reminded me of back when I lived in the Atlanta, Georgia area. Powder Springs actually.


I worked at Delta Airlines for 6+ years, the last 3 of which were at Hartsfield in Atlanta. I was a ramp rat, unloading and loading our planes. Transferring luggage to other flights and so forth. In an eight hour shift we typically worked five flights. I might be assigned with a few other guys to work gate A33 for the day, for example. Set up equipment. Flight comes in. We unload. If it was going to be a while before it left, we might take a short break before reloading the aircraft. Then reload and when the plane pushes back from the gate, set up the gate area again and go back to the break room.

We had a fair amount of break time most days, but we also worked like dogs when the plane was at our gate. But break time meant we watched lots of TV. And being in Georgia, and working with mostly people from the south, whenever The Andy Griffith Show was on any channel, we watched it.

I mean, who doesn't love Andy Griffith, right?

Wrong.

Whenever we had a new employee in our area, generally a transfer from another part of the country, the guys I worked with would watch the new guy/girl carefully whenever Andy Griffith came on. And one girl I remember, had just transferred from Seattle, WA to Atlanta. Everyone came in on break at approximately the same time and someone turned on Andy. The new girl jumped up in a frustrated huff and walked out of the TV room muttering about how she hated "this stupid show".

Nobody said a word about her, but most of the guys in there gave each other a squinty-eyed, knowing look that in effect said, "Doesn't like Andy Griffith, huh? Well, she can't be trusted and we're gonna have to watch out for her." This happened any number of times in my work at ATL, and it always made me laugh.

I mean, I like to watch people, and this was a truly unique thing I witnessed, so I got a kick out of the guys being this way. And they were serious too.

I worked with the girl, and she was a good worker, but few people there would have truly trusted her in any way that mattered.

I had just never thought of Andy Griffith being a point on which people judged another's character. Mainly because until this period of my life, I had no idea there was anyone in the world who could hate The Andy Griffith Show.



Self Portrait and Review of King Kong, The Movie
Netflix sent us King Kong and we received and watched it this past Friday.

I guess I would say that it was worth watching, but parts of it were just plain silly. I mean, it's not a good sign when the family and I are cracking jokes about the movie and making up clever lines for the characters WHILE THE MOVIE WAS IN PROGRESS.

Peter Jackson did a perfect job with the Lord Of The Rings movies. I can only guess that he intentionally put in silly stuff to make us laugh like we would as if we were watching a movie with decades old special effects.

At least I HOPE the silliness was intentional. But I like funny. This wasn't funny. It was silly. But overall, worth one watch at least.

But I sure am glad I didn't pay to see it at the Thee-ater.