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The
Broken Train |
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We got to Ft. Myers and
decided to ride the Seminole Gulf Railway. They advertised a
"River Rail Explorer" train that takes you
north through Fort Myers and across the
historic Caloosahatchee Trestle and Drawbridge to Bayshore, with views
only accessible by rail.
A special narration is
given during the trip with information on the history and the
environment of the area along your trip over the original Atlantic
Coastline Railroad route.
Well, we got there on
May 3, 2003, bright and early, so as to get first in line.
We were, indeed first
in line, but either the locomotive was getting new brakes or there was
a break in one of the bridges, we couldn't understand the person at
the ticket office.
Oh, well, at least they
offered to give us a discount ticket for the next day, but since we
were leaving early in the morning, that wouldn't do us much good.
They tried to get us a
ride, so you ken jest click on their website and see what we
missed. It looks reel cool, so we'll definitely try again the
next time we go there!
Seminole
Gulf Railway Website
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Page 8
(By Sparky)
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| Fort
Myers, Florida
Well, here we are,
in Ft. Myers, and today's date is Saturday, May 3, 2003, the
official start of Mosquito Season. We arrived around noon,
so maybe they bit up everybuddy they could find, and are now
taking their afternoon naps, cuz we haven't seen any yet.
We went to the beach and roamed
around there, and didn't see any folks getting bit up by
mosquitoes...yet. They sure have nice beaches around here,
and actually, so far all of Florida has lots of State Parks and
city beaches.
Sign at the beach entrance |
Beach entrance boardwalk |
Beach near
Ft. Myers |
Parking lot for beach |
We asked a feller what kinds of
fish live in the water around that part of Florida, and he told us
to go and look at the sign near the entrance. That sign
listed about a hundred different species of fish, so rather than
name them here, you ken jest go to a website that also shows some
reel cool pitchers of most of them:
List
& Pictures of Fish
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The
Teddy Bear Museum of Naples
After leaving that
beach we went to The Teddy Bear Museum of Naples.
Us guys was afraid
to go in there, cuz that's sorta like a zoo fer teddy bears.
We was afraid of several things. First, maybe somebuddy
might think we was some escaped stuffed animals, and they might
stick us up on the  shelves
with the teddy bears, and since none of us have any of our
receipts any longer, we can't prove that we were bought at the
various stores we came from.
After finding out that they had only
teddy bears in there, and no other kind of stuffed animals, we
decided that since a couple of our brothers are bears, it might
make us reel sad to see them fellers all locked up like
a bunch of prisoners. That's why none of us wanted to go in
there.
The old folks went in, though, and
they said it was reely cool.
You should click below and learn
more about that museum:
Teddy
Bear Museum
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| Naples,
Florida
By Sniffy with help from
Sparky
We got to Naples in
the late afternoon, and didn't see any mosquitoes yet, so we
decided to take a boat tour of the area. The one that we
decided to check out was at "Tin City," a sort of
tourist trap shopping center located near the south end of town.
The parking was
free, so Jim was already in a good mood about that, and the boat
tour was priced right, so off we went. That is to say off
went Sniffy, Ty and Lil Benny, and, of course, the old folks.
A lot of rich
people live around there, judging by all the nearly new reely big
houses. And, you ken get some Diesel gas there at the boat
fuel dock fer only $4.10.9 per gallon, or Commercial Diesel for
only $3.10.9 per gallon. If you're a rich person, you pay
the higher price, but if you're working for a living, you get the
cheaper price.
At one place they
were sucking sand out of the bottom of the boat river, cuz some of
those rich people's boats was getting stuck in the sand.
They were using a great big barge with a thing on it like a giant
vacuum cleaner, which is a lot like a "rug mower,"
except it works under water. The sand they sucked up was
pumped to a vacant lot at the end of the river, next to the Gulf
of Mexico, and it made another rich guy get a free front yard
beach. You ken see his new house under construction in the
background.
There are so many
bugs down there, that all those rich people have to build a
screened-in front yard, as you ken see in the pitcher below.
Down there, you
have to be rich to live there, cuz if you're not, you'll wind up
living in a trailer behind the boat fuel dock.
| Sparky's
Picture Album of Naples |
View from front of tour boat |
View from rear of tour boat |
View of parking lot for tour boat |
View of tour boat stowaways |
View of boat fuel dock |
View of sand dredge |
View of sand pile nearby |
View of screened-in yard |
To find out more
about our boat tour, and Tin City, click below:
Tin
City Information
Naples Pier
May 4, 2003, the
second day of Mosquito Season.
We went to check
out the pier anyway, and it was very clean and there were a lot of
folks up fishing, but we was jest looking and being careful not to
get caught by a fishhook. We didn't see any mosquitoes there
either.
Collier-Seminole
State Park
We got to the
Collier-Seminole State Park a little afternoon, and got out to
check out a "Walking Dredge," that was used in the early
days for road building through the Everglades Swamp.
I didn't climb on
the dredge, mostly cuz it looked reel dangerous, and it was also
pretty hot to be climbing on, cuz I almost burned my foot when I
checked it out.
THE MOSQUITOES
ATTACKED! The day after the official start of Mosquito
Season, they attacked the old folks as they were checking out that
walking dredge! So, if you want to see any more pitchers of
things in that park you need to jest click on one of the links
below. Jim got bit 3 times and Gloria got bit about 8 or 7
times, so we got out of there as fast as we could, before they
decided to bite up the tires on the van or something!
Collier-Seminole
State Park Information
Everglades
Walking Dredge Information
That was pretty much it for the
Everglades, we blasted off for M iami
and Key Largo. When we stopped fer lunch, we was eating at a
Wendy's and we saw this here old feller outside running out into
the traffic in the street in front of the restaurant, and he was
selling people in that traffic bottles of water, and he musta sold
about 25 bottles while we ate a burger with the old folks.
Return
to Top Return
to Travel Directory |
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COUNTDOWN
TO
GET READY...
IT BEGINS
MAY 3
And that's TODAY!!!
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| Teddy
Bear History |
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| In
1902, President Theodore Roosevelt was on a hunting trip in
Mississippi. As reported in the Washington Post,
the presidential hunting trip was not successful, so members
of the party trailed and lassoed a lean, black bear, then tied
it to a tree. But Roosevelt declined to shoot that
little bear, believing such an act to be beneath his dignity
both as a hunter and as a man, saying, "If I shot that
little fellow I wouldn't be able to look my boys in the face
again."
The following day, November 16,
Clifford Barryman, Washington Post editorial cartoonist,
immortalized the incident as part of a front-page cartoon
montage. Barryman pictured Roosevelt, his gun before him with
the butt resting on the ground and his back to the animal,
gesturing his refusal to take the trophy shot. Written across
the lower part of the cartoon were the words "Drawing the
Line in Mississippi," which coupled the hunting incident
to a political dispute.
The cartoon drew immediate
attention. In Brooklyn, NY, shopkeeper Morris Michtom
displayed 2 toy bears in the window of his stationery and novelty
store. The bears had been made by his wife, Rose, from plush
stuffed excelsior and finished with black shoe button eyes.
Michtom recognized the immediate popularity of the new toy,
requested and received permission from Roosevelt himself to
call them "Teddy's Bears."
The little stuffed bears were a
success. As demand for them increased, Michtom moved his
business to a loft, under the name of the Ideal Novelty and
Toy Corporation.
At the same time as it was born
in The United States, the Teddy Bear was also born in
Germany. The Steiff Company of Giengen produced its
first jointed stuffed bears during the same 1902-1903 period.
The company had made toys for a number of years and had
produced small wool-felt pincushion type animals of many varieties.
The animals were the creation of Margaret Steiff.
Steiff bears were first
introduced at the 1903 Leipzig Fair, where an American buyer
saw them and ordered several thousand for shipment to the US.
While other stories have been
told regarding the birth of this wonderful toy, the
simultaneous births in Brooklyn and Giengen are the best
substantiated. |
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