Yesterday we went to De Soto National Memorial ( http://www.nps.gov/deso/index.htm ) to walk around a bit and get some more history. The Spanish explorer Hernando De Soto came to the west coast of La Florida in search of gold. Unfortunately after traveling as far north as present day Tennessee and as far west as Texas he never found any gold. Upon his death his men buried him in the Mississippi River. It seems that the Native Americans always told De Soto that the gold he was looking for was just a bit farther that way and the greedy Spaniards believed them. While we where there they had a demonstration of some of the weapons the explorers had with them including a cross bow and musket (look carefully at the picture of the cross bow and to the right you will see the bolt on it’s way to the target).
Next we headed to John & Mable Ringling Museum ( http://www.ringling.org/ ). Barbara really wanted to see the Ca’ d’Zan (translated as house of John, but the blueprints were all labeled “House for Mable Ringling) and so for $5 each we got our tickets for the 12:10 PM tour (of course we got into the grounds for free with one of our museum memberships) and we hopped on a tram fro the ride to the house. The house was started in 1924 and completed just before Christmas 1925. As you can see from the pictures it was full of very opulent furniture and decorating.
Today we just went to the Edison and Ford Winter Estates (http://www.efwefla.org/), it was cold (in the 30’s) and rainy. We decided to do the self guided tour of the grounds in the rain in stead of waiting for a guided tour. You could not go into any of the houses but the way they have it set up you can see into the rooms with out having to look through glass. The cold and the rain caused us to not stay long but we did see Edison’s House and Guest House and Ford’s House that he bought right next door to his good friend Thomas Edison. We then went back to the museum to sit and get warm. Tomorrow we head back to the trailer in Sebastian and hope the weather gets warmer soon.
