More Fun Times with my Dad

In addition to taking my dad on a cruise, we tried to have a new experience for him each day.  Some of the other activities we did were:

Re-Live George's Childhood

 Everyone who comes to Florida knows that George's favorite thing to do is to re-live his childhood memories by taking others to see where he grew up and all the stories he has about those years.  Yes, I, myself, have been to these places at least 50 times with him, but I still enjoy seeing how much joy he gets out of sharing the experiences over and over!
This just happens to be the mailbox his dad made that still stands in front of their house he lived in from when he was about 5th grade until he was married.  He really wants to make a deal with the man who bought the house to get that mailbox back as a remembrance of his dad.

And here is the place George called home for all those years.  The little "island" with the palm tree and rocks around it has been added since, but that is the original house.  Behind it was a boat slip that the neighbor had a boat dock, but George's family never had a boat.  He did have a friend that used it to pick him up sometimes to take him to school.  It was a favorite place to fish, if you could watch out for the alligators which sunned themselves on the bank at times!  That scares me to death now thinking of my kids fishing there with the gators so close! 

Re-Visiting Gainesville

We had to take my dad back to show him where we lived in Gainesville.  We loved our six years there and probably never would have left except for George getting the job over in Green Cove Springs.   He has loved his job here and has been working for the school district for 19 years, so it was a good move!

Our home which we designed and built in Gainesville.  Cameron, Kent, and Craig, also, lived here with us and went to school at the Middle School and Buchholz High School.  They have wonderful memories of their days in Gainesville.  All three were on the basketball team for Buchholz, as well as many other activities.

We really loved this home as well as the neighborhood.

We drove around our beautiful chapel there.  I remember the year I taught seminary there at 6:00 a.m. in the morning and arrived when it was still dark.  After teaching my seminary class, I left from there to go to Newberry where I taught business classes at Newberry High School.  It became a pretty long day, but I wouldn't give up that year for anything when I got to teach Craig and the students his age.

We then drove to another little house that we built in Gainesville where first Kent and Natalie, Ethan and Ella, then Craig and Cassie and Riley lived, and finally another dental school couple named the Luffs lived with their three children.  This turned out to be the house to live in while attending Dental School.  It was on 1 2/3 acre of ground and we all put so much work and sweat in clearing the land for this home.  The back was just continually requiring raking and cleaning up from all the trees, but it was always a fun family project.  We sold it about a year ago.

Going to Gainesville wouldn't be complete without going by Lake Alice to see if you could spy any gators.  Notice the sign:  "Unlawful to feed alligators."  We didn't get out to walk around there like we usually do, but we didn't spy any gators on the banks or in the water today.

 Across the street from Lake Alice are the bat houses.  This was always a favorite past time to get here near dusk and watch hundreds of bats fly from beneath that roof over your head to go out to feed.  A few years ago, the original bat house became so heavy with bats as well as all the bat guano (droppings) that it crashed to the ground.  The University of Florida built two houses instead of one and hoped the bats would return.  Fortunately, they did.  One bat can eat between 600 and 1,000 mosquitoes and other insect pests in just one hour, and in a place that has so many insects, bats are so necessary to keep the population of those insects down.

For his Eagle Scout Project, Craig and his Scout Troop built 12 small bat houses that were put in trees and on light posts at Lake Wahburg.  The University of Florida installed them for Craig, and they were thrilled that he had done this project to help keep the insect population down at Lake Wahburg.

We then took a drive through the huge campus of UF.  We had to drive by the College of Dentistry which is actually attached to the Medical School where Kent and Craig spent so many years.

Being an attorney, my dad wanted to drive by the Law School.  This, also, reminded me of the year I worked for an attorney in Gainesville who both he and his wife had graduated from here.  There's not many upper graduate fields that UF doesn't have!

Dad wanted to see the Mormon Institute Building which is in a prime location right near the main administration buildings.  They put in this brand new building a few years ago complete with parking since parking is such a premium on campus.  This building is a place for religion classes for those who are 18 and above, as well as housing the Singles Ward for church meetings for the area.

 Of course, you have to take a trip to "The Swamp" where all the home games for UF are held.  My dad enjoyed seeing the statues of the three Heisman Trophy winners from UF:  Tim Tebow, Steve Spurrier, and Danny Wuerffel.

Always colorful Steve Spurrier.  We loved him as our coach and miss him! 

Two years before we moved to Gainesville,  a serial killer named Danny Rolling had killed in the most terrible ways, five students in different areas near the campus which terrorized the entire city.  Thankfully, he was found after a huge manhunt in the woods where he had a makeshift camp.  More than sixteen years later, Danny Rolling was executed by injection for killing the  five college students.  This memorial has been on "the wall" since that time.  Although kids can write messages of happy birthdays, proposals, or just plain grafitti on the wall (it's actually almost a block long) which is changed almost daily by anyone wishing to do so, it is an unwritten law that this never be touched as a remembrance of these five students.  

My dad remembered this incident and wanted to drive by the wall.

George is always aware of wildlife and on our way home, he suddenly stopped the car and turned around to show us a diamond back rattle snake in the middle of the road.  I quickly snapped the shot.  He turned around one more time and by this time, someone had run over it.

Well, those were our experiences on our outing in Gainesville.  On our way home, we had to stop at our favorite barbecue spot in Starke--Sonnys--which my dad loves, too!

The Alligator Farm in St. Augustine

 The St. Augustine Alligator Farm was founded in 1893, as the sign says.  Since we hadn't seen a gator yet, I was going to make sure my dad saw one (or 800 which is what I've heard is the number they have here at the Alligator Farm) before he left to go back to Idaho.

Do you see what I mean?
One of the caretakers was feeding the big bull gators when we came in, but I wasn't able to be in the right position to take the picture of how the caretaker holds a nutria by the tail over the little fenced area.   Believe it or not, those huge gators jump 2/3s of their body length out of the water to get the food.  The nutria are large skinned river rats native to South America.   It is an amazing sight!

 
But, I did get a picture of some of them with their mouths open hoping to get the food.


I had put my dad in a wheel chair so that he wouldn't get so tired for how large the area we had to walk, plus it would be a good place for him to sit.  No, I didn't sit him this close to a live gator--real, but not alive!
Nor this one either!  

Some of the most fascinating exhibits are the areas where the albino alligators are which are definitely alive.  These come out of the bayous of Louisiana and are absolutely beautiful--if you can call a gator beautiful!  "They are said to bring good fortune to those who gaze upon them."

A fascinating exhibit of a crocodile that was hand-carved on the Pacific Island of Timor from a single Rain Tree.  It was seriously unbelievable in its detail!

I love to stroll along the board walk and look at the trees where all kinds of native birds roost and raise their young.  With alligators swimming beneath the oak branches keeping the tree-climbing predators away, the birds feel safe there and the walks are so close to where the birds are, you can see them on their nests.  We have come between April and July and seen the trees just covered with nests containing eggs or little birds.  My dad loved this area, too.

The birds in the trees with the gators swimming below.

In one building is one of the largest crocodilians ever on display named Gomek.  He is nearly 18 feet long and weighed almost 2,000 pounds!  When he died here in the Alligator Farm, they had him preserved for all to see.

In this same building is a beautiful collection of hand carved Papua New Guinea art.  Notice how the crocodile is carved into so many of their artifacts.

Just outside the building which contains Gomek is an underwater viewing window where you can see Maximo, the largest animal here at the Alligator Farm.  Maximo is 15 feet 3 inches long and weighs 1,250 pounds.

Maximo was hatched out of Australia.

We watched a little film about how they got him to St. Augustine from Australia--which wasn't easy because he was so large.

But after they got him here, they realized he was so unhappy, so they had to purchase the female crocodile who was his girlfriend from the Australians.  Then he was happy with his new home when she arrived.

We really enjoyed the animal show where we saw fascinating animals.  This is a very large lizard called a skink.

There are rare birds and animals along all the paths you can take.

Excellent day for an excellent time together at the Alligator Farm.  We loved it!

Eating at the Crab Shack


We have taken many of our family members to eat at the Outback Crab Shack--which is a place to get any kind of seafood you want and eat right there on the boat dock.  It's always an experience to go there!

We loved the sign along the boat dock for a church that meets here on Sundays--Boaters welcome.  No shoes, no shirt, no problem!

You always hope to see a gator here and usually we do, but after eating and then walking along the long boat dock, we only found . .

a shy manatee (you can only see its nose basically).  Manatees are mammals and have to surface to breathe air.  They eat plants and therefore are never very deep in the water, so boaters have to be careful when they are in the area not to hit them.

We kept watching her, hoping she would come out a little more, but she just kept chomping on the plants and enjoying herself, so we went on.  
Like I said, always an experience when you go to the Crab Shack!

Next up:  More Activities with my Dad