Love for Little Brother

Looks like Sebastian has accepted his new brother Logan

Logan Blanton

Grandson Logan Heng Blanton arrived on February 25 around 7:30 a.m. at Shady Grove Hospital in Rockville, Maryland. He spent a few days in the IC unit dealing with a bit of jaundice, but he's home now and he's thriving.




Mom Malina and Dad Eric love little son #2 ...



And Grandma is over the moon ...




Meanwhile, older brother Sebastian is being distracted from the new reality of sharing Mom and Dad with the new interloper ...




Knocking the blocks down is the best part and always deserves a round of applause ...



Actually, Sebastian has accepted Logan very nicely and even gives his brother a little kiss on the head when prompted.

Ringling Estate - Sarasota, Florida

Back in the late 1800s, five young brothers watched as a circus was being unloaded from a steamboat onto the docks at McGregor, Iowa. Duly impressed, the brothers Ringling started their own backyard circus at their home in Baraboo, Wisconsin. By 1882, they were performing professionally, dancing and singing in a vaudeville-type act. Yes, this photo is of five different individuals. :) Two more brothers later joined the family business.

By 1884, the Ringlings were hiring other acts and hitting the road. Their show evolved into the Ringling Brothers Circus, one of the largest circuses at the beginning of the 20th Century. In 1906, they purchased their chief competitor, the Barnam and Bailey Circus, running the two shows in separate parts of the country. The circuses were combined in 1919 as the "Ringling Brothers Barnam & Bailey Circus" that we know today.

I thought it was interesting that the business of running the circus was divided up among the brothers. Alfred publicized the circus, Gus arranged advertising, placing posters of animals and bright colors several days before the circus came, Al picked the acts, Charles produced the show, Otto was the treasurer, and John supervised transportation. The Ringlings always split the money they earned equally.

Two of the brothers, John and Charles, were apparently taken with southwest Florida, and in the early 1900s purchased 67,000 acres of land on Sarasota Bay as an investment. John and his wife Mable built their dream home right on the Bay. The opulent mansion, a Mediterranean Revival 56-room palace, was named Cá d'Zan (meaning "House of John" in the old Venetian dialect). John and Mable moved in just before Christmas in 1926.

Today you can visit John and Mable's home as well as the spectacular John and Mable Ringling Museum of Art, the Historic Asolo Theatre, the Ringling Circus Museum, and the incredible grounds, including Mable Ringling's Rose Garden. This is all contained on 66 acres and is well worth a day out of your travels if you are ever in Sarasota.

Cá d'Zan ...











Zalophus, John Ringling’s 125-foot yacht, would dock here ...



Mable's Rose Garden ...



The John and Mable Ringling Museum of Art. According to Wikipedia, the Ringling Museum, opened in 1927, is "designated as the official state art museum for Florida. The institution offers twenty-one galleries of European paintings as well as Cypriot antiquities and Asian, American, and contemporary art. The museum's art collection currently consists of more than 10,000 objects that include a variety of paintings, sculpture, drawings, prints, photographs, and decorative arts from ancient through contemporary periods and from around the world. The most celebrated items in the museum are 16th, 17th, and 18th century European paintings, including a world-renowned collection of Peter Paul Rubens paintings. Other artists represented include Marrioto di Cione, Cranach the Elder, Frans Hals, H. C. Van Vliet, Wright of Derby, Gainesborough, and Boudin."

It's an impressively beautiful place and houses works of art obtained by the Ringlings on their travels to Europe. Many of the pieces date from the 1500s. ...







Circus Museum ...




Along with intricately-carved horse-drawn circus trailers, human-launching cannons, and tiny clown cars, the museum houses the world's largest miniature circus, created over fifty years by Howard C. Tibbals. The scale is 3/4-inch to 1-foot. It's an amazing thing to behold ...







The Ringling enclave is so vast that it takes hours to give it it's due. In this regard, we were glad we had the RV with us. After several hours touring the house and circus museum, we went out to the RV and had ourselves a nice lunch. Then we sacked out for naps. In an hour or so, we were rested and good for another run. The afternoon was given over to the art museum.

Where are Tracey and Joe??

One thing I've learned on this trip is that it's much harder to keep up with a blog when you're traveling with another person. I guess it makes sense that when you're seeing and enjoying and talking about things together, it's difficult to then pull out a computer and do something that starts to feel like an assignment. Not that I don't enjoy posting - I really do. But it's definitely a thief of time. During the solo journeys I've made, blogging became a natural part of the experience, a way that I could "talk to myself" about what was going on. And also a way to feel that others were with me on the trip.

I follow a number of RV blogs and I've noticed -- and I don't want to over-generalize here -- that some of the blogs by solo travelers tend to be the most interesting. This is not surprising as the readers of a solo traveler become the blogger's "traveling companion." In addition, the solo traveler is many times experiencing an inner journey that reveals itself on the page, whereas the traveling team is having a shared experience. They provide their own feedback. As mentioned, I've been both a solo and a team blogger now. Would I want to go back to solo blogging in order to perhaps have a more interesting blog? No way, Jose. Been there and, just speaking for myself, this is better.

I hope that explains to some extent why this blog hasn't been updated in a while. Yes, we're many miles and days from the Edison and Ford estates, the subject of the last post. After seeing those homes, we spent the night across the Caloosahatchee River at the Seminole Campground in North Fort Myers. I chuckle a little when I think about this place. When I found the listing for it in the Woodall's Campground Directory, it billed itself as being "a bit of old Florida." While I have no qualms about seeing what "old Florida" looked like, I thought this was probably a euphemism for "old and rundown." So that's what we expected. Imagine our surprise when we pulled into a beautiful, modern, well-kept jewel of a campground. I guess "old Florida" refers to the abundance of native oaks, cypress and pines that overhang and shade the grounds, creating park-like campsites. We enjoyed our day and night there.

A bit of "Old Florida" ...




Gordon and Esther run Quality Matters, a mobile RV repair company. They ply their trade in southwest Florida in the winters and in their home base of Lancaster County, Pennsylvania, in the summers. It was great to meet and talk with them ...

Edison-Ford Winter Estates - Fort Myers, Florida

So you’re toiling away in your New Jersey laboratory inventing light bulbs and phonographs and motion pictures, etc. All this productivity has left you with plenty of cash and you think, “Hey, I don’t have to spend the winters in cold weather anymore!”

Apparently that's just what Thomas Edison was thinking when he arrived in Fort Myers in 1885. He bought twenty acres, part of a former cattle ranch fronting on the wide Caloosahatchee River, and set about building his own tropical paradise, naming it Seminole Lodge. Edison and his family spent winters there for the rest of his life - over forty years. They built two rambling houses, various out buildings and laboratories, and transformed the barren ranch land with lush landscaping dotted with palm and banyan trees.

In 1915, Edison’s close friend and fellow innovator Henry Ford bought the property next door, and the Edisons and Fords shared their winters in this tropical retreat. In the late 1920s up to the time of his death in 1931, Edison spent much of his time in Fort Myers looking for new sources of rubber. Crude rubber had to be imported and was becoming increasingly expensive. At the behest of Ford and tire magnate Harvey Firestone, Edison investigated thousands of plants and trees seeking new sources of latex, the sap from which natural rubber is refined. At one point, Firestone presented Edison with a small banyan tree he'd brought back from India. The hope was that banyans would produce plentiful latex. Edison planted the tree at Seminole Lodge. Today it covers almost an acre and is the third largest known banyan in the world. It was the first banyan tree planted in the U.S.

We spent a morning strolling through the garden-like grounds and peering through windows and doors into the Edison houses and "The Mangoes," the Ford home.

One of the two Edison homes ...


The Ford home. Considering the wealth and eminence of these gentlemen, these winter "estates" seem fairly modest and comfortably homey ...


The Edison living room ...


Porches ...




Mrs. Edison's "Moonlight Garden" ...


Huge banyan tree given to Edison by Harvey Firestone ...


Walking among the vegetation was not without some danger ...

Up the West Coast

After leaving the Flamingo campground in the Everglades, we crossed south Florida on Highway 41 (the Tamiami Trail). This road through the Everglades and the Big Cypress Swamp runs parallel to a canal. The shore of the canal opposite the highway is apparently a favored resting spot for alligators. We saw dozens, probably hundreds, of these big leathery reptiles - five feet and longer - sunning themselves and probably waiting for lunch to pass by. As I kept the RV going in a straight line, Tracey gawked at the gators.

We spent the night at a campground near Naples and did some overdue laundry and made use of the swimming pool. Then we moved on up Florida's west coast to Sanibel Island. You get to Sanibel by crossing the San Carlos Bay over a high bridge and a causeway from Fort Myers. Once you're on the island, you realize right away that you've arrived at the essence of laid-back. Drive up Periwinkle Way, the main street, and restaurants and cafes call out with names like The Island Cow, Lazy Flamingo, The Bubble Room, Sweet Melissa's, and Red Fish Blue Fish. There's a casual, down-home, uncomplicated feel about the place.




Sanibel Island is probably best known for the J.N. "Ding" Darling National Wildlife Refuge. According to the US Fish and Wildlife Service website, the refuge is part of the largest undeveloped mangrove ecosystem in the United States. It is world famous for its spectacular migratory bird populations. We spent part of a morning driving through the refuge, stopping at various spots to observe the birds in their watery habitats.




We stayed at Periwinkle Park, a place even more down-home than the rest of Sanibel. Apparently the only RV park on the island, it's laced with gravel lanes and has it's own sanctuary of exotic birds and a duck pond. We really enjoyed our stay at Periwinkle Park and would gladly go back.

Sanibel is full of great bike trails and there's much to see. While riding on a path adjacent to Periwinkle Way one day, my rear tire went flat. As I considered my options, I looked up to see a sign that read "Billy's Bike Shop." The nice folks at Billy's had me back on the road with a new inner tube in about ten minutes.

If seashells are your thing, Sanibel is the place to be. With over 400 species of shells, Sanibel beaches are considered the best shelling beaches in North America. Because the island runs east to west rather than north/south, its beaches easily capture shells carried by the currents coming up the Florida coast.

Looking for shells ...


Sanibel Lighthouse ...