A Quick One

We forget to mention that this past Friday (between Maya’s days at work) we went to a mansion just down the street from us. It’s called Goodwood. It’s a former plantation - at one time the center of a 5,000 acre operation. Oddly enough, it seems that while it was a working plantation with slaves, cotton picking, sugar cane burning and the whole bit, operating it was not a source of income for the majority of the owners. Most where already wealthy when they acquired the farm, I guess they would have to be to buy hundreds of acres. They just lived in the house while the work went on around them. It was first established in the early 1800s. There were a lot of improvements made in the 1920s and 1930s by a very rich widow who had parties all the time. She put in a roller-skating rink and (allegedly) the first swimming pool in Florida in an attempt to amuse her nieces and nephews. Maya loves seeing old houses and she quite enjoyed the various bedrooms (each dedicated to one particular former owner) and the various “amenities” of past times. Overall it’s pretty great to live in the twenty-first century and not the nineteenth. Matt liked the vast collection of paintings on the walls. No big-name masterpieces, but more than one piece he wouldn’t mind having a print of.

Mounds 2.0

In part to make up for not seeing indian mounds on Monday, on Tuesday we went to Lake Jackson Mounds Archeological State Park. We saw two mounds, although the brochure says there are six on the site. There are stairways built into the sides of the mounds so that one can get on top and have a look around. There are also fairly good interpretive signs. We spent a while on top of the big mound just enjoying the sun and the wind. There is also an interpretive trail that we didn’t go on because of Maya’s foot. Maybe that’s where the other mounds are.

It’s hard to say what is so interesting about big piles of dirt. Part of it is the fact that it’s a kind of construction that is just not part of modern American culture. Very few people erect acre-sized earth mounds anymore. We erect skyscrapers, indoor football stadiums and airports so large that a pyramid could fit in the terminal yes, but not piles of dirt. Just to see something not produced by one’s own culture in interesting. Also, these mounds are old. These mounds are so old, when they were being built most of our ancestors were fighting Mongols and dieing of the Black Death. That’s old.

Today we also took a little trip up north to a small town called Havana which is supposed to have a neat little cluster antique, gift, art, and furniture stores. In fact the stores are there, but they are open Wednesday-Sunday and closed on Mondays and Tuesdays. That never, ever occurred to us. Something else we’ll have to go try again.

In other news, we’ll be back in Louisville this coming weekend for the Trimpe-Christ wedding. We look forward to seeing friends and family in town!

History Lesson… or Bust

After surviving working 48+ hours over five days Maya was ready to do some stuff that was neither working nor sleeping. On Monday we went to three little history-related places that Matt picked out. There was high potential…

We went to the place where Hernando de Soto camped in the winter of 1539-1540. The site is the only place where physical evidence of his expedition has been uncovered. Broken bottles, the jaw bone of the non-native pig, a crossbow quarrel, and bits of chainmail were all found at the site. However, none of that is still on site. There is a building there that houses the offices some of the offices of the Florida State Bureau of Archaeological Research and there is an informational display and mannequin in the foyer. There is also a historical marker at the edge of a parking lot. The Bureau people told us they are working to improve the site and to get some of the artifacts back on display there. It turns out that most of the site is actually now under an office park-type complex next door. Maybe we expected too much.

The second stop was a Civil War battlefield. Away southeast of Tallahassee is a smaller city called St. Marks. At the tail end of the war in March, 1865 a Union force landed at the mouth of the St. Marks River and marched up the river toward the town. There were some railroads and shipping stuff there they planned to destroy. Some Confederate volunteers (mostly just the very young and the very old by that point) mounted a resistance force. There is a place where the St. Marks River “sinks” underground for a few yards and then “rises” again. This is some natural effect of rivers running in areas near caves and sinkholes. These few yards of land make a natural bridge over the river. The Union force tried to cross and the Confederate force aimed their cannons at the bottleneck and kept them from crossing. The Battle of Natural Bridge kept the Union from taking St. Marks and protected Florida’s capital beyond. This is strictly a small-scale battle, less than 1500 people were involved on both sides and only 24 people were killed, mostly on the Union side.

We didn’t know anything about the battle or the site until we got there. Knowing what we know now that we’ve read the signage, it seems like an interesting battlefield to see. The thing is, there isn’t much at the site to see. There is a huge monument erected in the 1920s, a pair of signs (one each for the Union and the Confederacy), some picnic tables, and a parking lot. The local folks do a reenactment of the battle every year so we really expected more there to do the reenactment around. No, just the stars and bars-draped monument, the smallish signs, and some people fishing on the “sink” side of the bridge. The whole place is for sale, so maybe someone will develop it as a more history-friendly place. That or it’ll be a new sub-division called Battlebridge Estates.

The third stop of the day was the tallest indian mound in the state (46 ft). To get there from where we were we drove a long way down a 1 ½ lane road between a tree farm and a completely dilapidated forest the looked like it could turn into a swamp at any moment. The road turned into gravel and then into dirt. Maya said it looked like a lost-to-humanity type road that would be in a Stephen King novel. In the end, GoogleMaps served us well and we came out of the wilderness where we expected to and made it to Letchworth-Love Mounds. Unfortunately, they were closed for repairs! Well, the road into the park was closed for repairs. So, we don’t know anything about these mounds. We didn’t expect the park to be much more than a wide spot to stop and look at the mound. They might be great! Either way, we’ll have to find out some other time. Next time we’ll take the not-dirt road way around. A total bust!

Traversing Limestone

Our most recent excursion was on Monday. We went to Florida Caverns State Park. As with most parks, there is a lot of land for camping, hiking, and horse-back riding as well as designated river space for canoeing. We didn’t do any of that though, we just went on the 45-minute cave tour. The park is about an hour away so it was a long way to go for not much to do but Maya really wanted to get out and do something. We’ll likely go back for canoeing sometime. Sadly, it was not the most impressive cave ever, but as Maya said, “I’ve seen a lot of caves.” Our tour group was just us and two other couples so it was a nice, intimate trip through the cave. When we came out, the next group waiting to go in had several young, loud, chattery children. Not that children aren’t great, but they do tend to put a damper on adult appreciation of things. Also, our camera works great! All these shots are taken without flash, just using the “ambient” light of the lamps in the cave.

The cave was first developed for visitors in the 1930s as part of the work of the Civilian Conservation Corps. They were the first to plumb its depths and hack out the path through it. They did it all with oil lamps, pick axes, and 5-gallon buckets for $1 a day. That got Matt thinking (after remembering garden design aesthetics – see last post) about the design of caves. Most caves tours take people on relatively flat paths through the rooms with tight but not unreasonably small doorways between. They also have “squeezes” and places where one must stoop, or duck walk for 20 feet. When a cave is first found the whole thing is that way. There is no path through, the whole floor is covered in stalactites. What aesthetics or whims drive the design of where the floor is hacked away to allow people to walk upright and where it is left low? Why leave any “squeezes” at all? I wonder if these underground aesthetics have changed over time.

Employee Relations

Apparently, Maya was somewhat misled about the nature of this job. Having 4-5 patients at a time really means having 6. Working “every third weekend, if ever” actually means “every weekend.” Also “we’re hiring more nurses’ aides and should have them by the time you start” seems to really mean there is only one aide for the whole 44 bed unit. All this plus being off peek form after seven weeks not working has made for a real rough time for Maya. She’s really feeling overwhelmed. We did this whole traveling thing so that she could get away from a job she didn’t particularly like and work under better conditions for a while. She likes the work if the job isn’t too stressful. So far, this has not been what she hoped for. This is Maya’s schedule for the next few weeks. Green means go to work!

In happier news we’ve really been seeing a lot of stuff. Of the fifteen things on our “see this” list we’ve already done 6. On Sunday we went to the Maclay Gardens State Park. The park is quite large with camping and trails and such but we went to just the gardens themselves. There are some huge live oak trees. One we saw had branches that curved out and down so much that they touched the ground. Spanish moss grows on everything here. Really. Everything. We saw some hanging from the bumper of a truck in front of us the other day. We learned at the visitor center that it’s not actually a moss but a type of air plant and a relative of the pineapple! There were also some stuffed birds so you would know the types that you could spot in the park. One type is the common grackle. So for those of you interested, here’s what an actual grackle looks like. Gra-kul, gra-kul, gra-KUUULLL.

The garden isn’t so much manicured flower beds and trimmed bushes with brick paths between, although there is some of that. It’s more about interesting plants all planted in close proximity to each other with many ways to walk through and among them all. There are definite worn paths through some areas but nothing says you have to go any particular way. Humorously, one of the only signs in the gardens was this one:

Matt was transported back to undergraduate days when he took History of the European Enlightenment and talked about garden design and how it changed from the precise order along the lines of Versailles to a preference for a less ordered, more natural look. Voltaire said that gardening itself was what counted, not the garden as an object. Matt can’t seem to locate a great site on the subject to link to but those interested should be able to find some information out there on the changing aesthetic of gardens. All the best to you and yours!

Spring Break!

Yeah! Our first guests are here. Matt’s sister Sarah and her boyfriend Brandon (whom Matt has known since middle school!) are visiting this week. It’s spring break for University of Louisville but we’re 2 hours from Panama City and 1.5 hours from any beach at all. So it’s not that kind of spring break. We’re nerds. We’re going to museums! Maya worked on Tuesday so the rest of us kind of bummed around. Wednesday we really did a lot though. We went to Wakulla Springs State Park and took a river boat tour on the Wakulla River. It’s nine miles of crystal clear water packed with all kinds of birds and alligators. We saw seven or eight alligators. We would have seen about a dozen but the people in front of us kept standing up and blocking our view. Crazy people! We paid to see too. Also, there were manatees in the water. Real wild manatees, just hanging out in their natural environment. We said, “What’s up manatee?” It was so neat to see them. The pale blob in the picture doesn’t really convey the coolness of seeing them alive and flapping their little flippers like good 1000-pound little manatees. The clear water of the spring means that several movies have been filmed at the springs. A couple of the Johnny Weissmuller Tarzan films and The Creature from the Black Lagoon were filmed there.

We also went to the Mary Brogan Museum of Art and Science which was pretty fun. They have the typical kind of discover-for-yourself science stuff but also there was a guy in the lobby playing bluegrass and the top floor had an exhibit of art by Enrique Chavarría. He’s a Mexican surrealist. You can see some of his paintings here. We also saw an IMAX film at the Challenger Learning Center. It was called Dinosaurs: Giants of Patagonia. It was narrated by Donald Sutherland, so it was awesome. Also, it had giant dinosaurs which is also why it was awesome.

Today we saw several bat-mobiles at the Tallahassee Antique Car Museum and Florida panthers in the mini zoo at the Tallahassee Museum. In addition to the awesome car collection the car museum had the most random collection of stuff. There were piles of teddy bears, lots and lots of knifes, arrow heads, old cash registers, old motor boat engines, and old jute boxes. Plus an apparently authentic 19th Century vampire-hunting kit. Matt decided he wants a ’71 Chevy Nova Super Sport. And a bat-mobile. The Tallahassee Museum has several native-to-Florida species in their mini zoo including red fox, alligator, turkeys, and black bear. They also have all the buildings from some 1800s farm that they’ve moved to the site. There are the various barns and animal pens plus a smoke house, an out house, a hen house and the main house. It’s a nice re-creation.It’s been great to hang out with friend and family. It’s like we are all on a big vacation together. Of course, they’ll be leaving soon and we’ll be staying. Maya works this weekend and maybe every weekend for a while. We’ll see what happens.

Mission San Luis

This past Sunday we went to our first real tourist destination. We went to the Mission San Luis. It’s a Spanish-built mission from the 1600s but it was also the home of a sizable community of converted natives. The Apalachee nation moved their capital to the mission and a blended culture developed. They played ball on Fridays and went to Mass on Sundays. The really neat thing about the place is that they have all the major buildings reconstructed so in addition to the artifacts in the visitor center you can walk through the friary, the church and the Apalachee meeting hall. They have them all set up like they were in use with beds and vow-of-poverty-style mattresses, simulated bread products, old knives, and cooking pots with actual ash on them. It’s really neat to be there in those spaces that feel really old but be able to fully interact with them because they aren’t actually old and valuable. The place has re-enactors too. We were there on the weekend so there weren’t very many re-enactors there but there were little stations set up all around where people could cook, weave, smith, shoot cannon, and thatch roofs. This might be a place to go back and look at again. Also, there are picnic tables everywhere so we might just go picnic. Our picnic blanket is one of the few things not absolutely essential that made it with us.

One Week Down, 12 to Go

Big highlights from the first week: Maya went to a lot of hours of orientation and took a lot of tests that prove she does indeed know how to do her job. Matt finished a (very) rough draft of his first short story written as an adult and hopefully (someday) for money. We watched the first 14 episodes of season 4 of Buffy: The Vampire Slayer. Asher claimed as his own several of Maya’s shoes, some power cables, the couch, our grocery list, and Matt’s make-shift desk. Also, Matt discovered that Super Metroid is a really cool game. He’s serious behind on the really cool games and he’s real excited about this one. If you see Ridley, tell him Matt’s coming…


Today (Saturday) we went to a little market thing downtown on the weekend. There were all kinds of organically prepared shirts and candles. There was an owl and an eagle from the Florida Wildlife Society. Maya signed up with Pampered Chef. There was also one guy selling vegetables from whom we bought a red pepper and three tomatoes. Hopefully, there will be more produce people as the weather turns a little more toward green, growing things.

Maya had also heard rumors of a flea market. So we went in search of it. The directions were to go on the main road around the capital (called Capital Circle) toward the airport and you’ll find it. So we did and we did. It’s a bit on the seedy side of town but we followed the “More Deals This Way” signs and got a few things. Matt bought some X-Men comics. Specifically, he found the one where Magneto rips out Wolverine’s adamantium (X-Men - second series #25). Ouch!


We also found a microwave. We left ours at home. Again, we were expecting to rent one while were here (see last post on that not-a-good-idea). This one was just $20 dollars and actually works. Some of the buttons are a bit touchy (like START, for one) but it was only $20. Besides, the auto buttons for popcorn and hot water are self-starting so we can just hit those when we want to use it. Melted butter=1/2 hot water, bowl of soup=2 popcorns. No problem!

Shopping Tallahassee

Don’t let the first post fool you. It’s been a very nice week. We’ve settled in nicely. There wasn’t much to unpack and we were all set up in just a few days. We went shopping just about every day that first weekend and got a lot of the food-stuff and home-stuff we needed but hadn’t had room to bring. We bought sheets and groceries on Friday night. Food here is so expensive! Relative to what we’ve been paying it is anyway. A can of beans at Kroger is 47-52 cents. The same beans at Publix (the major chain in these parts) are 88 cents! Almost everything is that way. Garlic is about the only thing we have found that is actually cheaper. We buy a lot of garlic so that’s a good thing. Also, no one sells kale. It’s Asher’s favorite and we’ve been to three groceries and no one has just kale in a bunch. He’s going to have to learn to eat romaine.



We also thought we would we would rent a TV/DVD player combo for the time were we here and save ourselves the trouble of bringing those items along with us. So we went to the local Rent-A-Center to get one. It’s a total scam! It was $124 a month to rent a reasonable-sized TV (19” wide-screen LCD with built-in DVD player). We saw the $17.99 a week price and assumed THAT was the monthly price. What a scam! We had seen a comparable product on sale for $250 in Louisville before we left. It would be cheaper to just buy the TV we wanted out right. So we did. We got a discount floor model from Best Buy (it didn’t come with a remote so we don’t really have full control of it, but that’s another story). Even after only three months here we’ll still come out ahead. Silly Rent-A-Center! Plus now we’re ready for the all-digital TV signal future.



Despite the cool new TV we got out of the experience, the best part of the day was that when we drove into the Best Buy parking lot right in front of us was a World Market! Maya screamed, Matt though we’d run over a dog. World Market is just about our favorite store and we had looked on-line for one in the area before we moved and came up with nothing so to unexpectedly find one was great. We went in and looked over the whole place just to make sure it was really a World Market. It is. Same font on the price tags, same dishes for sale, same imported trinkets we know and love. Great!

Welcome to Sunny Florida

Hello and welcome to the travels and travails of Maya and Matt!
We will be keeping this web log so that all our friends and family can keep up with us in the coming months as we travel around the country. I don't know how often this will actually get updated but the goal is for a couple a posts a week about the sights we are seeing and the things we're up to. So here's post number one:

We left Louisville on 28 February. Our car was literally packed to the top. We had tried to pare down to just what we really needed. But it’s really hard to put all the clothes, books and kitchen appliances you need for a year plus a computer and a rabbit cage into one car load. We spent a couple of hours that morning trying to get it all in. I kept saying we would find a way to bring it all and Maya kept bringing more boxes and baskets and bag out of the house and saying there was no way. Maya was so right. As it was we left 5 boxes behind. Fortunately we have people coming to visit soon! We rolled out at 12:26 with an odometer reading of 126371.

The trip itself went alright, for the first ten hours. Maya was cramped up with a backpack under her legs with Asher in his carrier on her lap so she was never really comfortable. I had plenty of space but I got really loopy by the 12th or 13th hour of driving. I felt like I had to stop RIGHT NOW, but I knew I couldn’t so I just kept driving. We thought that Asher would have a really hard time with the trip because he doesn’t even like to travel by car even around town. Actually, he seemed to fare the best of all three of us. Since it wasn’t start-stop driving and there weren’t any corners to turn he settled right down in the bottom of his carrier and just rode along as if he did it every day. Maya had a cup of water that she offered him every time he popped his head out. He drank when he needed to and didn’t when he didn’t. We stopped every few hours to let him get out and stretch his legs (and ours). He got a walk in Tennessee, and two in Alabama.

We got to the hotel at 02:07 on the 29th and went almost immediately to sleep. It was not the best hotel ever. I cannot recommend the La Quinta Inn Tallahassee North. A plaque in the lobby said it won some kind of community environmental award in the 1980s but that must have been in its better days. We put Asher in the bathroom with his litter box, fresh greens and water. Again, he seems to have gotten the best deal. The bed was really lumpy. We slept through breakfast the next morning too!It was only as we left the hotel to go to our apartment to move in that we realized we had no idea where that was in relation to where were. We tried to use the little map in the corner of the Florida map he had but that wasn’t really a great help. After driving around in the general area without noticing our apartment complex we stopped and bought a Tallahassee map. That did help and soon we were in the office getting our keys. We parked in our numbered parking space at 12:27 with an odometer reading of 127031. On the plus side of moving in just one Rav4 is that there isn’t much to move in once you get there. We had everything in the apartment in about 40 minutes. The internet hook-up guy came later that day and so it was just like home. Only without a chinchilla, or a microwave, or a TV, or any sheets, or our furniture, or our decorations on the walls, or our family close by, or…