Edison - Ford Winter Estate

Friday - We spent the morning touring the Edison & Ford Winter Estates. This is a banyan tree planted as an experiment in the search for locally grown latex sources. Two thousand plants were tried to see which ones prospered in North America. Rubbers produced from petroleum soon took over the market. 

The model T Ford came with all of the tools needed to maintain and repair the car. It sounds like Ural adopted the same model though the model T came with a much larger toolbox.

The estate had the winter homes/cottages for both Thomas Edison and Henry Ford. The Edison’s would spend the winter and the Fords only about three weeks. 

Edison did have a lab set up to study the plants. Very different from his other labs. But there is still a surprising number of machine tools. He did set up a DC generator to provide power but later connected to the AC system set up by the city. 

Fort Myers, FL - TT

Tuesday - Yesterday was a travel day into Fort Myers to an Encore park. More “into” the city than I prefer. We are here partly to visit friends from Fairbanks that have moved here. Temperatures are more moderate than even Orlando probably because we are near the gulf. 

Wednesday - We visited with several friends from Alaska today. One couple from Eagle River and the other from Fort Wayne, IN. We had delicious moose chili.

Thursday - Friends, Steve & Cheryl, took us out on their pontoon boat today. It was a long ride through the waterways to get to the gulf.

We saw some dolphins on the way out and stopped on Sanibel Island for lunch. 

It was a beautiful day to be out on the water. The temperature was a perfect 72°F with a light breeze. I didn’t know that a pontoon boat was usable in the ocean. 

Wauchula, FL - HH

Sunday - We left TTO around 10:30am and headed south. After filling up with diesel once we got out of the Orlando area, we continued to our Harvest Host stop south of Wauchula, FL. I guess we could've stopped at the Peace River TT, but that was one of the worst ones we've been to. Another option is the SKP park just a short drive away. 

Charlotte's Web is the Harvest Host stop and is a bar with a food truck. The po' boy sandwich I had here was wonderful. The parking area is a small field next to the building that they use for event parking. No events are going on while we are here, so it has been pretty quiet. 

Monday - The temperature this morning has been wonderful. I'm sitting outside getting ready for a test session, and it is 76°F. We will need to run the generator this afternoon to charge up the batteries, and we'll run the A/C at the same time. I think it's supposed to be 83°F this afternoon.

Our next reservation doesn't start until tomorrow at an Encore park in Fort Myers. It looks like a nice place. We'll be there for a couple of weeks before heading back to TX.

I'm using the outdoor area of the bar for the test session. I am running the generator as the battery SoC is down to 31%. We do seem to run through quite a bit of power at 430aH over the last 12 hours. We are charging at 70 amps so that is still around 6 hours. The solar contribution is minimal compared to how much power we use. I won't bother to charge the batteries up all the way as we only need enough for another night.

I had the blackened grouper sandwich from the food truck along with the fried pickles. I don’t think I’ve had grouper before and it was pretty tasty. I’m not sure whether the grouper or the shrimp sandwich is better. I’d rather not be forced to pick. 

Four Corners, FL - TT

Tuesday - The calendar says that it’s St Patrick’s Day. I had made the traditional corned beef and cabbage dinner a couple of weeks ago. Not in the sous vide but in the Instant Pot. It didn’t turn out anywhere near as tasty. 

The low temperature this morning was 47°F. Quite a change from the past week. The forecast is calling for 44°F tonight. Things should start warming up again after this cold front passes through. 

I took advantage of the cooler temperatures to take a walk. I had an Amazon package come in to a locker about 1¼ mile away. I ordered a gadget that disables the auto start/stop function on the Jeep. There is a button that disables it but you have to press it every time you start the engine. This gadget just automates that. For the last couple of years, I had it disabled by unplugging the hood switch. Now, the hood switch is in place again so the alarm function is working again.

Wednesday - Today’s field trip was to Bok Tower. It is around 40 miles south on Hwy 27. That’s over an hour of Florida driving time without toll roads. Bok Tower is a nature preserve with a bell tower with 60 bells. A keyboard is mechanically linked to the clappers allowing someone to play the bells. 

Today was the opening day of the International Carillon Festival. Carillonist is the term for the musicians playing the bells. 

At 1pm, they started to play but it wasn’t a recognizable tune (to me). There is a very short YouTube video of it playing at the end of this post. I must admit that I was disappointed in the sound. Maybe the performer was playing a complex piece and it was lost on me. 

We also went on a house tour but the house was built by a someone named Bach and not the Bok that built the tower and surrounding garden. This tree was “behind” the house but actually in front of the main entrance. We entered through the pantry and kitchen.