Florida Road Trip 2018

Moving on today to Independence, MO, and our eighth and last presidential site. So far we have visited sites for Hoover, Lincoln, Jackson, Carter (2), FDR, Clinton, and now Truman. Thrown in for good measure were MLK and B.B. King. Lots of interesting history on this trip! Truman's library was quite nice. He became president after FDR died in 1945, just before the end of WWII. He went through a lot with the end of the war, the bombing of Japan, the Berlin airlift, and the beginning of the Cold War, and much more. He and Bess are buried here in the courtyard.

We arrived in Little Rock late Saturday afternoon and checked into the downtown Hampton Inn. After getting settled we walked a few blocks to have dinner at the Copper Grill. A lot of people were in town to participate in the Little Rock marathon on Sunday. The next morning we drove to the Little Rock High School National Historic Site. This is where the first desegregation of Little Rock schools took place in 1957. Nine black kids were the first and became known as the Little Rock Nine. These were very brave kids, who had to put up with a lot of abuse at the hands of most of the white kids and their parents. The National Guard was called in at first to help control the mobs. This wasn't effective, however, and President Johnson finally sent the army in to make sure the kids could attend their classes. What an ordeal! After a nice lunch at a local place called The Root, we visited the Clinton Presidential Museum and Library. It's kind of hard to believe that he was inaugurated...

After lunch yesterday, we continued across Alabama and on to Jackson, MS. Today we drove to Indianola, MS, which the great bluesman, B. B. King, called home. There is an excellent museum of BB's life there, which we enjoyed immensely. It starts, of course, with his humble beginnings as a share cropper's son. Both his parents were gone before he was a teenager and he had to fend for himself, although he had some wonderful people helping him along the way. It is a very interesting story and well worth a visit if you are in the Mississippi Delta area. After lunch in Indianola we continued our drive to Little Rock where we will spend two nights. We plan to visit the Clinton Presidential Library and the Little Rock High School Historical Site.

We left Marco Island about 9 am on March 1 to start heading home. We decided to do a couple long days to start and then slow down for some sightseeing later. Our first day was 7+ hours to Tallahassee, FL. Day 2 was 7+ hours to Jackson, MS. This day was broken up with a nice two hour lunch in Pensacola, FL. Lyn's cousin, Penny Burke, and her husband, Geoff, drove up from Orange Beach, AL, to meet us at McGuire's Irish Pub. They are renting a condo in Orange Beach for two months. We hadn't seen them for about 16 years, so it was nice to catch up with how things have been going for them. If we go to Florida again, we will try to see them again. McGuire's Pub was interesting, as well. One dollar bills that customers have left thickly cover the walls and ceiling. We asked the waitress if they knew how many there are. She said the last time they made an estimate they figured that there were about two million!! Hope that place never burns down...

Yesterday we drove to Chokoloskee, which is an island just south of Everglades City. This really is the southern-most inhabited place before the Everglades. We had a two hour trip with Captain Dan, a master naturalist, and three other tourists. We had some great views of Ospreys on their nests as well as other birds and dolphins. The highlight of the trip was seeing a large flock of about a hundred white Pelicans resting on a beach. These are migratory and nest in northern MN, as well as Canada. I got some good pictures, but they're on my other camera and I can't access them until we get home. Today was a pickleball day (of course). Lyn has taken a couple lessons while we've been here and is enjoying it, too. Now we're starting to get a little organized for packing up tomorrow. We leave Thursday morning, but we hope to come back next year. After driving back to Marco, we headed right over to Sunset Grille, which was pretty packed inside and out. Luckily, we got the ...

For the last week or so we've just been enjoying being here. The temps are in the 80s every day and mostly sunny. We've been playing pickleball, walking on the beach, reading, and relaxing. Our friends, the Jensens and the Leslies drove down from Fort Myers to join us for lunch at the Sunset Grille. It was great to see them and catch up. We've also seen some burrowing owls, which are fairly common here and live here year-round. They are small (8-10") ground nesting owls that are active in the daytime. We went to a concert at Mackle Park on Sunday afternoon. Tonight we're going to a concert featuring Broadway show tunes. Just having fun! We also have started planning our trip back home. Only six more days to go...