Manasota Key

We just got back from a getaway to one of our favorite motels down on Manasota Key. We discovered The Pearl on a driving trip down the coast over fifteen years ago and have been back four or five times since.

Recently, when I've written these trip reports, they have been frenetically full of all the places we visited and things we have seen. Not this time. This trip was meant as a two-day reset.

This place we stay is a small affair, only a dozen rooms, nine with beautiful views of the ocean. The two front rooms are right on the beach to the point where storms have tried to wash them out to sea. It was under new ownership again, as it seems to be each time we return. The newest ones have put in new lights, new fixtures, new furniture, paint and tile. Now they have wifi and satellite TV though we barely turned it on. But still no phones in the rooms, which is nice.

This is the Florida coast much as it might have looked one hundred years ago. As you walk the shore, all you see is ocean, sand, sky and scrub, with the occasional stairs leading down to the beach. The houses are set back into the trees, with only a few roof peaks peeking above foliage, a few windows visible from directly out. And just a few fellow wanderers enjoying the autumn sun.

We spent our days walking the beach and reading in the shade of the deck. The days were warm, but not too warm, the nights cool but not too cool. The sand is a beautiful white you don't see as much on the Atlantic.

Mornings, we watched a fisherman cast into the surf and a scuba diver prepare his kayak for his outing as we drank our coffee and ate our bagels at the table in our room. The room had everything we needed, a fridge, a micro, a coffee maker, a toaster. We brought our regular breakfasts and lunches with us. For dinner, we ate rotisserie chicken and drank white wine from the Publix less than fifteen minutes away.

We hunted sharks' teeth by the water. When we started, I wondered if my eyes were still good enough to pick them out against the sand. When I was sixteen, I could spot the really tiny ones, an eighth of an inch or less. I handed Karen one just over that size after a little searching in the surf zone. I guess my eyes still work, at least in bright daylight. We picked up a handful of brightly colored shells and one piece of clear beach glass.

As we walked, Karen took pictures of the birds we saw along the shore. Regal blue herons, furtive night herons, spastic sanderlings, probing willets. We saw dolphin in groups of twos and threes hunting several times near shore.

In the evening, we watched the sunsets and looked for a green flash we didn't get to see. There were clouds and haze that lit up on the horizon. When the sun was gone, they shone a few minutes longer like frosted red and orange glass with a dying candle behind them.

As we walked the beach at night, crabs scurried back into the surf to get out of our way, sometimes right over our feet. The beach was dark at night. The moon was bright and full. The stars were only washed out by its brightness, the only light pollution from Venice and Sarasota far to the north. The shadows it cast spilled across the deck by the water. This would be a perfect place to watch a meteor shower, which we are considering when the Geminids come around in December. It's a turtle nesting area, so there aren't an abundance of artificial lights.

As we slept, we could hear the waves lapping on the shore. We could smell the sand and salt air. So peaceful.

On our way back, we explored downtown Venice which has come up a little bit since our last visit to include a few nice boutiques and sidewalk bistros. A tempting little diversion for a day.

After two very relaxing nights, we came home with gently tinking, clinking memories and pockets full of wonder, looking forward to the next time we return. This time, we don't intend to let it get to be so long between visits.

© 2010 Edward P. Morgan III

T Minus 3 and Counting

Last Friday we drove over to the Kennedy Space Center to watch the final launch of Space Shuttle Atlantis from the Visitors Center as it began STS-132. A friend of ours had scored two vehicle passes and eight individual tickets from NASA online, and kindly offered a car pass and two tickets to us.

Our day started early, meeting a pair of passengers at a Starbucks across the county at 7 a.m. The only way to begin an early morning road trip is with a tall cup of strong, fresh, hot 3 Region blend.

Our car pass listed an entry time of 11 a.m. for a 2:20 p.m. launch. Of course, there was conflicting information between the packet that came with the passes and two different NASA websites as to whether we would be allowed through the gate if we arrived early or late, as well as what items might or might not be allowed on the base. It turned out not to matter. After a pleasant ride over with little traffic (except briefly when the majority of people turned off the highway for the main gate where we diverted to a lesser used side gate thanks to the Google Maps traffic feature on the iPhone), and a wave through the impromptu security station whose guards looked annoyed and distracted when Karen rolled down her window, we arrived at the Visitors Center an hour early. Neither of our passengers had experienced a launch from there before.

The sky had cleared on the way over from intermittent fair-weather clouds that still might have scrubbed the launch to a near perfect and piercing azure. The sun was strong enough, the air dry enough that NASA employees were warning everyone to keep hydrated. The kind of perfect weather where not having enough water could sneak up on you quickly. Still, it wasn't as hot and humid as mid-May in Florida can get, which misled both Karen and I into being slightly complacent with our sunscreen. Fortunately, we both remembered hats and shade for our necks.

With a rough count we calculated about 3500 or so cars in the parking lot, plus buses. That translates to maybe 10k people, including those who would board the charters to view the launch from the VIP area. Neither Karen and I are much for crowds much these days, so we spent most of our day reading by a little trafficked side building in the complex. While the rest of our friends stood in various lines for 3-D IMAX movies and the Shuttle Simulator, I was enjoying spending time outside watching the green and the water with the wildlife that actually owns most of the property, alligators, turtles, hawks, turkeys, Sandhill cranes, as I read an introduction to game theory. To each their own, right?

The crowd was young, on average younger than Karen or I, mainly younger parents with their children. The people we encountered seemed to accept the crowded conditions and were in no real hurry to get anywhere. While most of the cars in the lot bore Florida plates, accents from English to German to Georgian and North Carolinian filtered through the crowd. The grounds were awash with folding chairs, blankets, soft-sided coolers, strollers, backpacks, camera bags, phones and tripods, like the flotsam and jetsam from an unseen cruise ship that might have sunk off Port Canaveral. There was a carnival atmosphere with excited children playing, barely more contained adults watching, distorted announcements coming over the loudspeakers, the scent of sunscreen mingling with the aroma of hardwood smoke, popcorn and pulled pork sandwiches, and nearly everyone clutching either brightly colored soda cups or brighter shuttle-shaped water bottles in their hands. Kind of like a county fair without the barkers, games or rides. Or maybe a laid back, outdoor summer concert, more Lilith Fair than Ozzfest.

Everyone cheered when the big screens showed the astronauts coming out of the prep area and loading into the van with that would take them to the pad, accompanied by a couple police cars and a cute little black, machine gun turreted APC. Yeah, they take that part of security pretty seriously.

As launch time approached, all the exhibits evacuated. People had staked out viewing locations early, the rise by the shuttle simulator near the entrance, the knoll and the small set of bleachers next to the jumbo-tron toward the back, the platform of the Astronaut Memorial between the two. Connecting these was a pretty much forgotten walkway by a small lake that no one claimed positions on until less than an hour before, I think many were uncertain whether the Astronaut Memorial (that looks like an old-style, flat-faced radar installation) would block their view. Once again, we had the technology, scientists and engineers to solve this problem. Bring up a very slow, overloaded Google Maps app on the iPhone, study the road patterns, remember the satellite view from the night before, drop a pin at the consensus location of Pad 39A and voila, we could see exactly where the shuttle should clear the trees, well to the correct side of the memorial. Of course, had the 3G network loaded much slower, I was ready to geek out and do some basic trigonometry to calculate the tangent of the viewing angle based on the right triangle defined by the Visitors Center, the landing facility and the launch pad that one of our number remembered with a rough idea of distances. We are geeks: we have the tools, we have the talent.

Honestly, I think we had one of the best spots at the Visitors Center. There was no one in front of us to have to peer around, and a long, clear run-up to the trees across the road from the decorative lake. But it wasn't a main thoroughfare, so I think a lot of people overlooked it as an option when they tagged their turf with chairs and blankets. The one drawback was there were no loudspeakers nearby, so we couldn't hear any of the status updates or the countdown to know whether we were on schedule for an on-time launch. By then, 3G updates had slowed to a crawl, with Internet coverage nearly completely shut down. We didn't much care. We knew the crowd would let us know if the launch had been scrubbed.

They also served as a countdown clock, providing a chanted warning as they counted off the final seconds en masse. At "ONE" we all scanned the tree line together.

Karen was the first to spot the trees catching fire as Atlantis lifted off, just slightly short of due NE, very close to where we projected it would be. Everyone stood silently watching as it ascended on a pillar of fire that faded into smoke and vapor, both the orange flame and the bright white contrail contrasted nicely against the cerulean sky, until its trajectory was almost completely obscured by the cloud it had created.

Several seconds later, the audio caught up with the visuals. It started with a low rumble like distant thunder that quickly crescendoed into a speaker rattling bass like you might hear from a teenager's overloaded car subwoofer resonating within your chest. By then, the tiny sparkle from the shuttle's exhaust was playing hide and seek between its own billowing, serpentine contrail. Karen's snapping camera shutter provided an impromptu metronome for us to judge the time since liftoff. Only when she got home did she realize she had captured a perfect shot of the solid-rocket booster separation during one of those brief glimpses.

Soon, people started drifting away, much like segments of Atlantis's vapor trail. This was the first time I'd seen a contrail disperse unevenly, along distinct transition layers. Near the ground, it held together in a puffy mass. A larger section above it dispersed as though someone had smeared it across an artist's canvas to create an impression of fog. Farther up, another piece seemed to reconstitute and hold together as though time moved differently up there. The uppermost section scattered into haze. Together, they gave us a very striking indication of the atmospheric conditions at various altitudes.

We quickly packed up our stuff and headed home, succeeding in escaping before the bulk of the traffic. Unlike us, most people were content to make a day of it, spending the rest of the afternoon wandering through exhibits while they waited for the traffic to Orlando to unknot. Here, we got tricked by our technology, opting for a more southerly route that looked clear on the iPhone when we started for it, only to update to just as locked solid once we had committed. (You said "clear." I said "looks clear." Well, how's it look now? (shrug) Looks clear). But we made up that time when traffic stopped dead in Tampa and we found a detour the bypassed the 15-20 minute backup. That felt like redemption (at least for me). Though I got the sense that others in our car were feeling a bit more competitive with the other vehicle in our party.

By the time we got home, we'd logged almost thirteen hours, nearly eight of them on the road. A long day and a lot of driving by our standards. But completely worthwhile for a great launch in superb company.

This makes the fourth shuttle launch I've watched from the KSC property, including two from different causeway locations in high school (one day launch, one night), a night launch from the VIP viewing area ten years ago and this one. That doesn't include the ones Karen and I watched from FIT or just standing outside our front door. A good variety to remember NASA's shuttle program by as it winds down. Here's hoping this isn't the last manned launch we get to see from over there in our lifetimes.

© 2010 Edward P. Morgan III

Myakka River State Park

To cap off Karen's extended holiday break this year (after missing Thanksgiving), we took a two night diversion down to Myakka River State Park, about an hour and a half south. After enjoying stays in the more modern cabin accommodations at Saint Joseph Peninsula State Park, we've been wanting to see what the cabins here were like. We stumbled across two open nights on short notice.

Each of the five cabins in Myakka was built in the 1930's by the Civilian Conservation Corps, one of FDR's most successful and enduring recovery programs from the Great Depression. The cabins are small, rustic, palm log construction that have been added on to at least once and modernized to include a fully-electric kitchen, an indoor bathroom and a window unit air conditioner. Kind of like camping with hot water and a microwave. Our cabin had a fussy fireplace, perhaps meant to cook in originally, where the firebox and opening were just a fraction too large for the length of the chimney.

We arrived around 2:30 the first day but were able to get into the cabin early without a problem. Normally, check-in is at 4. We wandered around a bit, finding a trail by the river that we followed for a while before the light started to fade and we headed back. We watched a spectacular sunset over Big Myakka Lake from the frigid birdwalk that evening before heading back to warm up and make dinner, then settled in for the night.

The days were cool by Florida standards, the nights cold. Highs were in the 50's, lows somewhere near freezing. We brought enough wood for the fireplace, though it was a bit less seasoned than we'd been led to believe. As I mentioned, the fireplace was fussy. Even before we lit a fire, the room had a smoky scent to it. We learned why when we inadvertently set off the smoke detector that first night. The trick, we learned, was to keep the fire small, very far back and have the screen in place to provide just that tiny bit of extra draw. Otherwise, smoke tended to just roll out under the mantle. Personally, I think a stonemason could close in the sides and drop the opening about eight inches to fix that problem, but given the budget for parks in this state, that is unlikely to happen any year soon. So, mostly, it was fire for effect.

Both nights, we ducked out onto the back porch to look at the stars, which were bright and clear to the horizon, something I haven't seen inland in this state for almost 30 years. In the clearing behind the cabin, we had a beautiful view of Orion, Taurus and the Pleiades. Betelgeuse was a noticeable orange-red, as was Aldebaran in Taurus. Sirius was an almost arc-welding intense blue as it rose. Mars, also on the horizon, was just as fiery. Karen spotted a green meteor that first night, which had us both thinking this would be an ideal spot to reserve for any of a number of meteor showers throughout the year. There was a nearly clear horizon to horizon viewing spot just up the road by the river, with a pull off just perfect for some chairs.

Even with the fireplace going and the heat on full, we could only get the temperature inside the cabin up to 55. Not a problem as we'd brought sweaters, hats, gloves and other warm clothing. Luckily, we also brought warm bedding, too. The cabin came with sheets, towels and light, light, light blankets. Each morning, the temperature inside the big room was 40 degrees at dawn, 37 in the bathroom. The second morning, we could hear the frost/ice from the trees melting and dripping onto the roof. The second night, we could hear owls calling to one another in the nearby woods. Until the moon rose around midnight, the inside of the cabin was as black as a cave.

We spent the second day hiking around the park. First, we did the canopy walk and nature trail, both of which we'd visited on our previous day trip. The canopy walk and tower were chilly as it was still in the 40's and windy, but a pretty view out over the river, lakes and prairie. The adjoining nature trail has a secluded boardwalk, conveniently in the sun that morning, where we could sit, watch the marsh and warm up. Later, we hiked a loop out of several of the numerous hiking trails which mostly run through the open prairie beyond the oak and palm hammocks closer to the river.

For our geologist friends, there is a great rock near the entrance with a memorial plaque for the park's dedication. The park was donated to the state by a rancher's family in the 1920's, which is pretty amazing since the pasture land by the river is considered to be some of the best in the country east of the Mississippi River. But the woman whose children donated it was known as an innovator and a maverick. The rock itself is about eight feet tall, just as wide and a mixture of limestone and quartzite with some interesting nodules, inclusions and fossils. No idea if it is local, but I suspect it is. I had to pull Karen and her camera away. Another geology note, the sand in the park, Myakka fine grained sand, is the official sand of the state of Florida. The visitor's center has a wide core going down just over six feet, which breaks down the layers that are amazingly similar to the ones in our backyard. Though their sand is definitely much finer.

For wildlife, we spotted deer, black and tan wild boar, osprey, red-shouldered hawks, kingfishers, wild turkeys, wood storks, flocks of swallows, Carolina wrens and blue-gray gnatcatchers, plus the usual herons and egrets. We had two memorable encounters, both on the last day as we made a final circuit through the park. The first was with a red-shouldered hawk sitting on a branch by the road. Karen has an uncanny ability to be able to spot a bird of prey from a moving vehicle whether at 15 or 50 mph. When we first pulled over, the hawk was still in the shade, but sat watching us as Karen snapped pictures until he was in a narrow beam of sun that had moved through the trees. We must have stood fifteen to twenty feet away for fifteen minutes as he posed.

Our second encounter involved playing tag with two pair of crows on a path by the Clay Gulch stream in the north of the park. Some time ago, we had heard a story on NPR about the different calls crows make, from warnings to friendly invitations. While we were out hiking the prairie the day before, we'd run across a murder in an isolated tree who called all manner of raspy warnings as we approached. Several members retreated to the nearby tree line before we passed and the lookouts called back an all clear, while occasionally squawking encouragement for us to keep going at our backs. That day, I heard the more friendly calls up on the trail and went to check it out. I found two pair of crows sitting in a tree overlooking the river. I know they saw us, but they continued with their friendly calls as first one then the rest moved past our position in the direction from which we had come, like they were playing tag. They played this game for fifteen minutes, one moving past us, the others following as we trailed behind until they settled in a tree astride the path where they could look down at us with curiosity. Not once did they issue a warning cry, just their friendly, playful calls. We sat for 5 minutes examining each other before they retreated up the trail laughing. That encounter made our trip.

Definitely a getaway we would repeat. The nice thing is these cabins are so much closer than the eight hour trek to St. Joe's. They are a bit more rustic, though less isolated at the same time. There are a number of other places we want to check out nearby, including the Gamble Plantation, the Mary Selby Botanical Gardens and the Ringling Museum. Who knows, we might even do the airboat or tram tour (where we spotted a group of Amish tourists?!), or rent a kayak one day. As the brochure says, this is the Real Florida, the one I still love, not the Disneyfied version you find along the I4 corridor.

© 2010 Edward P. Morgan III