February 13-16, 2015

Friday, February 13^th

 

First thing this morning, we worked on solving Sudoku puzzles. This activity is supposed to be good for our brains, but I haven’t seen any improvement in the past five years. Hopefully I am holding my own.

 

 

 

 

Cordell, Jim and Barbara spent some time trying to solve puzzles that will give the GPS coordinates we need to find some geocaches. We are not having a lot of success.

 

 

We went to Six Mile Cypress Slough—the same preserve we visited with Janelle when she was here. In 1976 a group of Lee County students studying the role of forested wetland in Florida's ecology became alarmed at how fast these environmental treasures were disappearing to private interests. The students, known simply as "the Monday Group", launched a daring campaign to save it for future generations.

 

 

 It was good to see trees with green leaves on them.

 

 

The only alligators we saw today were sunning on a dock in the middle of Gator Lake.

 

 

We spent most of the afternoon walking around the preserve.
 

 

 

After dinner, we all had tired feet!

 

 

 

 

Saturday, February 14^th

 

Valentine’s Day!! Cordell and Jim got a deer in the headlights look when we asked them what time they were going to go shopping at the Jareds jewelry store.
 

 It has been chilly here for a few days. It seems like every time it gets truly cold at home in Maryland, we have below average temperatures here. I feel like asking the State of Florida to give me a rebate for the days when the temperature is below average!
 

 

We spent mostly a restful day hanging around the condo. However, we did take an afternoon walk around the neighborhood.

 

 

 

 

 

We elected to prepare our dinner at home tonight rather than to eat out on what might be a busy time at the restaurants. We had tickets to a play at a local theater and we managed to stay awake through the entire 2 ½ hours of the production.

 

 

Sunday, February 15^th

 

We took Jim and Barb with us to Hope Lutheran Church this morning. It was warm enough today that the coffee hour was held outside.

 

 

Later, we headed out to the Naples area to look for a puzzle geocache that Jim had solved. He and Barb became geocache members last year when they visited us in Fort Myers. They have not done any caching since then so we are giving them a refresher course. All of us are having a lot of fun and seeing some beautiful areas.

 

 

 

 

Monday, February 16^th

 

Since we had a beautiful forecast for today’s weather, we decided to make a 1 ½ hour drive to Lake Placid, voted America’s Most Interesting Town by Reader’s Digest.

This Town of Murals has painted their history and culture all over the town.

 

 

 

 

Many of the murals have smaller pictures hidden in them and we had to look really hard to find some of them. There were a few we didn’t find.
 

I especially liked two faces that we found in a mural depicting the turpentine industry.

 

Lake Placid is also known as the Caladium Capital of the World where 95% of the world’s caladiums grow. They host an annual Festival each fall. The first bulbs were planted here more than half a century ago. There are more than 1,500 acres cultivated and not only are bulbs shipped nationwide, but they are also sent overseas to places such as South Africa, Turkey, Spain, Pakistan, and all over Europe.

 

 

Lake Placid was once the best bear-hunting territory in the country. When settlers moved into the area with their cattle and pigs, the pioneers became bear hunters and great numbers of these animals were killed. The Lost Bear Cub mural symbolizes Florida’s lost habitats. Just as the sow bear demonstrates reclaiming her wandering cub, we must actively demonstrate our dedication to preserving what is left of the native habitats for future generations.

 

 

 

There is a beautiful garden in the space between two buildings that have murals painted on their entire sides.

 

 

Even the downspouts and doors blend into the painting.

 

 

A mural showing the red wolves is painted in such a way that the eyes of the wolf follow you from one end of the mural to the other. These beautiful animals were declared extinct in the wild in 1980 when the last ones were placed in captivity. Thanks to breeding programs in 22 facilities in the U.S., there are now approximately 250 red wolves in captivity and in the wild in our country.
 

 

 

 

 

Toby’s Clown Museum and School mural depicts the school that was formed by Keith Stokes in order to teach the art of Clown Medicine. His practice of entertaining patients in hospitals became so popular that he could not keep up with the demand. The school rapidly grew and by 2012, over 2,000 clowns, ages 8 to 96, had graduated.

 

 

There is a very large mural, Cracker Trail Cattle Drive, which covers the entire side of a grocery store. Several different brands on the cattle all belong to the Highlands County cattlemen who rank high in the production of beef cattle in the eastern U.S. In the past, the cattle were often shipped to Cuba where the cattlemen received gold.

 

 

 

There is art just about everywhere you look in this town. They even have decorated their trash cans!

 

 

 

 

.

 

 After walking throughout this delightful town for six hours, all of our old feet were tired. We left without seeing seven of the forty six popular murals

 

 

We stopped in the town of LaBelle to visit a geocache at the site of what is believed to be one of the largest oak trees in Hendry County. It is approximately 19 feet in circumference and sits in the yard of a private dwelling.

 

 

I saw two orange trees growing in the wild across the street from the large oak tree. It appears that no one is caring for these trees.

 

 

We stopped at a cute cache placed at Cow Pies Country Store and Creamery. I was a bit concerned when I saw that the name of the cache was “Watch Out for the cow patty!”. But, it turned out to be a glass mason jar found in a cinderblock in the base of the store.

 

 

We prepared a late dinner at the condo and prayed that our friends and family in Maryland, who were beginning to get significant accumulations of snowfall, would stay safe and warm. We saw a photo on Facebook of Janelle and her friend who went outside at 11:00 p.m. to play in the snow