Saturday, April 17, 2010

More of St. Augustine

The architecture in St. Augustine is beautiful.

St. Augustine Florida is the oldest town, established 1565. It also has the oldest house - The Gonzalas-Alvarez House.






The streets in this part of St. Augustine are all one-way because they are so small.



Lance calls the homes around here plantation style. They do look like mini-plantation mansions.

This is the Castillo de San Marcos which is now a National Monument. From their website: "America Begins Here - A monument not only of stone and mortar but of human determination and endurance, the Castillo de San Marcos symbolized the clash between cultures which ultimately resulted in our uniquely unified nation. Still resonant with the strugges of an earlier time, these original walls provide tangible evidence of America's gram by remarkable history."



Just down the road from where we were staying is some other old ruins.

Had dinner at "American Graffiti". Good food and fun with a trivia game.


This is the first lighthouse I have seen. Guess along with churches and barns I will take pictures of lighthouses too.

Oops! Look like someone took a wrong turn!

Tuesday, April 13, 2010

I AM HAVING A LOVE AFFAIR -- WITH A DOLPHIN

Sunny is his name and he lives up to it. He lives at Marineland Florida not ten minutes from Karyn Jacobs, a friend I have known since Kindergarden. Karyn and I went to Marineland and did their swim with the dolphins.


Peek-a-Boo

Hello, there.

Shall we talk?

A flock of pelicans welcomed us.

This is one of our trainers for the day.

This is Nellie. She is the oldest dolphin in captivity at 57 years old. Dolphins live twice as long in these conditions as compared to living in the wild. Wild dolphins average age is 25.
These are a couple of the younger dolphins at two years old.
It is amazing how high they can jump.

Here we are giving the signal to talk and Sunny chattered away. He jumped for us, waved his fin for us, waved his tail for us, let us kiss him, twirled around for us, splashed his tail for us, plus so much more. They are so fun to be around.

This is just before I gave Sunny a big smooch.

After our wonderful dolphin experience we joined Karyn and Jim Jacobs at JT's Seafood Shack for a great dinner. Here we are -- the travelers -- as they called us. Thank you both for making our visit to the St. Augustine area very memorable.

Friday, April 9, 2010

An Afternoon and Evening with Jim and Karyn Jacobs and Seeing Ed Asner as FDR

We made it a point to stop in the Palm Coast area to visit with Karyn Jacobs -- a classmate of Coralee's -- and her husband Jim. We had a delightful visit and a chance to share our motorhome and travels. Their adventure on their boat sounded like we were kindred spirits. They truly understand our enthusiasm with our adventures.

Then they took us to a local restaurant -- The Flagler Fish Company. Yum, the food was outstanding.



Here we all were eating Fried Green Tomatoes. Yum...they were good too. Our first time to try this southern delicacy.

After dinner they took us to see Ed Asner as FDR. It was a snapshot of the time when he first got polio to his passing. It was a lovely way to get a history lesson.

Thank you, Jim and Karyn, we loved our visit. On Monday Karyn and I are going to swim with the Dolphins at Marineland. I am very excited. Will share that adventure too!

The Hubble Telescope on IMAX

I could not finish our day about the World Golf Village without sharing about their IMAX presentation on the Hubble telescope. They have a number of films showing, yet I was sooooo glad we could see the Hubble one. The pictures were spectacular and the distances involved were mind boogling -- like in trillions of light years (a light year is 5,878,630,000,000 - about 6 trillion miles). An example is our own galaxy the Milky Way. They say that it has 400 billion stars and is 100,000 light years in diameter.


According the pictures the Hubble has taken they estimate there are hundreds of billions of galaxies in the universe.

Launced in 1990 by a space shuttle. According to the Hubble website http://www.hubblesite.org/ the Hubble has recorded over 700,000 images. According to these pictures they have estimated there are 125 billion galaxies in the universe. Here is a picture of Saturn.

And, the stars.

And, nebula (an interstellar cloud of dist, hydrogen gas, helium gas and plasma_

One thing that you can find in a nebula is the birthing of a star. Amazing.

Thursday, April 8, 2010

The World Golf Village - Hall of Fame

Even if you are not a golfer the World Golf Village and the Golf Hall of Fame are worth you time.


This year there is a special exhibit of Bob Hope memoribilia. As I learned in my tour that even non-pro golfers can be inducted into the Golf Hall of Fame. Bob Hope is one of them.

As we were looking at the Bob Hope exhibit Lance noticed the signature of Don Bies and exclaimed he knew him. He was a Pacific Northwest golfer.

Bob Hope had golfed with 11 presidents. Whoa!!!



The second floor of the Golf Hall of Fame is absolutely filled with history, famous golfers and much, much more.


The first golf course was at St. Andrews Scotland. The first golf balls were filled with feathers, yes, feathers. The guide told us that a bucket full of feathers were used to fill a golf ball. The next golf ball was the Gutta Percha which was a more solid ball and, according to Lance, it changed golf forever. (Feather ball on left, Gutta Percha on the right)

Here some old club. The first clubs were wood.

These are a few of the tools used to make the first golf clubs.

If you have ever seen the movie about Bobby Jones you will know Bobby Jones is the only golfer that did the Grand Slam - He won the Masters, the US Open, the British Open and the PGA golf tournaments AND it did it as an amateur. No pro has ever done it.


One of the most interesting displays was a picture of Jack Nicklaus. At first I thought it was a big jigsaw puzzle but actually it was thousands of very small pictures. Unbelievable!


Here are a few of the pictures.

Another non-pro inducted into the Golf Hall of Fame was President Eisenhower. He was a great golfer and contributed to the game of golf.

This is his golf cart on display here.

Wherever someone is inducted into the Golf Hall of Fame their plaque is added the wall. There are three walls filled with this plaques.


This is the FedEx club. It is not won from a golf tournament. It is won by points. The golfer with the most points wins $10 million dollars. This has been going on for three years. Tiger Woods has won two of three cups. I asked Lance why there were no exhibits for Tiger. He said he was not old enough. Amazing.


Anika Sorestam is always our favorite. In September, 2007 Lance won her "Share the Passion" sweepstakes and got to go to her school for four days and even golfed with her. She is a down-to-earth lady and Lance had a great time. She has been inducted to the Golf Hall of Fame.



Anika is known as Ms.59 since she has shot 59 in a golf tournament. Wow! This is the official scorecard for that game.


You cannot go to the World Golf Village and not go to the Trophy Tower. It is on the fifth floor. When you step out of the elevator and look up you will see 162 (I think) crystals that simulate a golf swing. Very cool.



This is where all the trophies are kept. The one below is the President's Cup.



U. S. Open Cup


Ryder Cup


World Cup

And, last but not least, the one now being played for -- The Master's Cup

This is my Hall of Fame Golfer....my honey, Lance!!!!