Carol writes: The unseasonably warm winter we had been having followed us up the Florida coast to Fort Myers. During our visit to the Henry Ford Museum in Detroit last summer, we learned about neighboring summer homes along the Caloosahatchee River in Fort Myers that belonged to Thomas Edison and Henry Ford. Old houses with connections to historical figures—now, that was right up our alley.
The Edison and Ford winter homes were side by side.
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| Edison winter home |
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| Ford winter home |
Self-made men with humble beginnings, Edison and
Ford were very good friends and worked in partnership during their years at
Fort Myers. Edison fully realized that
Ford’s invention of the automobile was going to have worldwide
implications.
Knowing that—
Edison, along with his partners Henry Ford and
Harvey Firestone (of Firestone Tire and Rubber fame), directed botanical research
into finding a natural source of rubber that could be grown in the United
States. The banyan (ficus) trees that Edison
planted while searching for a source of domestic rubber were still in existence,
as was the laboratory where he conducted
scientific research.
We saw some of Thomas Edison’s original groves of
bamboo on the grounds. Edison utilized
bamboo to produce flexible filaments which were then carbonized for use inside
his experimental light bulbs.
An old-time photo of Edison’s wife and daughter,
posing with two family friends inside a stand of bamboo, was priceless.
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This ghost of Thomas Edison was found wandering beside
a grove of creepy banyan trees that have dropped aerial roots into the ground from
their horizontal branches.
Viewing into the ground-floor rooms of Edison’s
Seminole Lodge was fascinating—
study with Edison-era chandelier
dining room
Many excellent old photos from the winter estate archives were on display in the museum.
Ford photo
Thomas Edison and wife Mina
MINNESOTA TWINS SPRING TRAINING
If it’s March in Florida, sounds of “Play ball!” can
be heard in Fort Myers, the home of spring training for the Minnesota Twins and
the Boston Red Sox.
For Twins fans, the setting for the training
complex
and nearby Hammond Stadium was in stark contrast to
a typical March day back home in the Twin Cities.
The smaller venue of spring training parks
meant there were no bad seats in our game between the Pirates and the
Twins. Kudos to Al for making our seats
even better by picking a section that was shaded for all nine innings…
LOVERS KEY STATE PARK
Having spent 25 years of our lives living in
Colorado, we are always on the lookout for an interesting hike. That’s a little more challenging in Florida,
but not at Lovers Key State Park where we found a hiking trail on a barrier
island called Black Island.
We found a nice wide trail through a variety of
island scenery surrounded by inner waterways.
Interesting plant and animal life complimented the
hike, like tropical gumbo-limbo trees with fancy red bark,
and a gopher tortoise coming out of its underground
burrow to check out the humans.
Misting from an offshore rain cell forced us back
to the car earlier than we expected, but we had completed the hike and so we
were content to head home.
SANIBEL ISLAND
Almost 13 years have passed since Hurricane
Charley ravaged Southwest Florida. At
that time, Al and I had been following this storm very closely because
predictions were that the storm would come ashore in the Tampa area. Such a storm path would have placed Al’s Mom
and Dad, who lived just north of Tampa, dangerously near the bullseye. I remember discussions of what we would
possibly need to do if they were hit hard.
At the last minute, this dangerous Cat 4 storm turned hard right and
made landfall further south at the northern end of Captiva Island.
To the south of Captiva, Sanibel Island was
likewise ravaged, especially its beloved tree canopy. As it turns out, Nature has a way of making
things better, even after an horrific event like a major hurricane. The exotic Australian pine
species was out-of-place in a hurricane-prone habitat and did not do well because of its shallow root system. In
subsequent years, a massive tree restoration project recreated the canopy with
thousands of trees all native to Sanibel.
The scenery on the approach to Sanibel was
breathtaking and showed no evidence of the hurricane from the previous decade.
Sanibel’s much-hyped annual Shell Festival was in
its first day, so we took a look around.
Ho-hum, just not all that exciting for us. To our eyes, the only items of interest were
a shell-covered Volkswagen beetle
and a booth of floral arrangements that had "flowers" made out of shells. Now that was
really cool!
Our main plan for the day was for a picnic lunch
in the “Ding” Darling National Wildlife Refuge,
named after conservationist J.N. Darling, who made
it his goal to preserve one of the country’s largest undeveloped mangrove
ecosystems on Sanibel Island.
The salt-loving roots of the mangrove trees
sought out the brackish coastal water…
the feathers of the white pelicans were
pristine…
and horseshoe crabs were in their element in
the shallow water along the shore.
There was plenty of interest to cause us to linger
for a couple of hours along the 4-mile drive through the preserve. Great job, Ding Darling…
We had been warned that the worst traffic leaving Sanibel Island would be from 2-6 p.m. Since
sunset was precisely at 6:30 p.m., we decided to have an early dinner on
Captiva Island and catch “sunset over the water”… as sunsets should be seen.
We headed to Bowman’s Beach on Sanibel Island and
found out for ourselves why its beaches have a reputation for some of the best
shelling in the world.
In some spots shells deposits were several
inches thick! Now I know where the
artists who created those magnificent flowers out of shells got their material…
All eyes faced west at sunset… and it was
spectacular… as only sunset over the ocean can be.
