After the Inkslinger meeting, Sandra and I headed out to Ozona, north of Dunedin, for dinner. We had hoped togo to a new location we had found for bar-b-q. However, ‘The Ozona Pig’, as it is called, is closed Sundays. So, we crossed the street to ‘Molly Goodhead Raw Bar and Seafood’. The restaurant has been around for quite a long time and is a favorite of people who live in the area and Snowbirds. Inkslinger and terrific artist John Stevens joined us.

The drawing is of a piece of driftwood that is used as a sign to point the way to drift to the restrooms.

We headed to the Belleview Biltmore south of Clearwater for the monthly Suncoast Inkslingers meeting. This is a drawing of member Dan Smith. I gave him too much beard.

Good news came Friday that the efforts to save the building, of which we were a part, were successful and the building has been bought to be saved and preserved!

I was in Sarasota for a project and did this sketch of a portion of a side entrance to Sarasota High School on U.S. 41 south of Downtown Sarasota. This is a wonderful architectural treasure and it’s wonderful that this building has not only been saved but also being used. I’m sorry the sketch doesn’t do even the area I drew justice. I’ve just got to draw better!

Our last stop was at Dunn’s Creek State Park with a nifty trail that winds around some wet spots and full of good ol’ Florida vegetation. The drawing is from there.

Now for a rant involving two other parks we visited:

We did go to parks I didn’t care for. One was a Civil War site in northern Duval County. The Milton Encampment was the middle stop for confederates to stop in between Jacksonville and Olustee. It should be a fascinating park. Instead some landscape architect went nuts and given free reign to ignore the history and just make a pretty place and spend lots and lots and lots of taxpayer dollars.

Can you imagine a historic site where symmetry is the rule??? Or a ton of cash poured into creating a log bridge out of concrete that has concrete logs molded to look like logs and then a slab of concrete put on top to hide the logs? And that the bridge is thought to look like this but not even sure if the bridge was even in the area??? There is a farmhouse being reconstructed with two giant banners as large as the house surrounding it to let everyone know it’s being renovated. Two? Did they need two? I’d question one. With a seven foot tall fence surrounding the structure you’d get the ides that the place is being worked on.  That there are no roadway signs to this financial sinkhole. I could go on. All of this in a very rural and well hidden area. Clearly Duval County had truckloads of cash to burn. The Dade Battlefield should be the historic park that others strive for. It’s easy, accurate and considerably cheaper than the mess of the Milton Encampment. Let history speak for itself.

The other park is in St. Johns County and was deplorable for it’s asphalt roadways slicing all over the park along with the asphalt trail that has an incline that a person in a wheelchair would be smart enough not to traverse. The human use of this park is reduced by all of this to only a third of the “park space”. Three oversized retention ponds leads one to believe a developer traded land so they wouldn’t have to have the retention area in their project. Such projects are directly across the street from the park. Sad also to see sod being laid out in the retention ditches. In a month mowing will begin in the rention areas that tax payers will have to cover. Why are we mowing so-called rention areas???? Why were chunks of forest torn out for the ponds??? Why did this happen at all when the park is full of very deep sinkholes that the park is keeping the public out of???? Ugh! This is an aspect of the Growth Management laws that needs to be revised.

Heading south along State Road 13 at the 6-Mile Bridge is a very good seafood spot, The Outback Crab Shack. Serving for over 30 years the place has expanded over the years and seems to be yuppifying for the new subdivisions plaguing the land north of the restaurant. The drawing above is of Sandra’s very-full plate of crab legs. I got a – get this – a shrimp cheeseburger with bacon. It’s just what you would imagine. The food is a bit pricey, but very good and you get plenty.

As we were leaving Jacksonville looking for botanical wonders for Sandra to record for her newst book we came across this park very near the Southernmost edge of Duval County. It’s a terrific historic park with a small village of structures from the 1800s. The farm house above is from 1876. There are cracker homes, logging machinery and a dock that leads far out into the St. Johns River. This would be a great place to create some outdoor art. The park is off State Road 13.

We left from Bok Tower to find Slocum Gardens in Winter Haven. All we found were two worn signs and a parking lot. Apparently the hurricanes did away with this landmark that had been in Polk County since 1938.

We next went to Bartow. First stop: My hero, Jacob Summerlin’s grave. Anytime I’m in Bartow I stop by. This was Sandra’s first visit. Next stop was to find a park Sandra had heard of but didn’t know where it was. Where else to get answers but at the local ice cream shop??? The proprietors of The Cool Shoppe Ice Cream Cafe, indeed, did point us to two parks. Unfortunately neither met Sandra’s criteria.

We finished in Hollis Garden on Lake Mirror in Downtown Lakeland. You can learn more here about this garden. This is a very British park with individual areas of specific flowering plants. The drawing above is of one of those flowers that Sandra called a yellow pansy.
 

We were on a day long trek during this Saturday through Polk County researching Sandra’s current book she’s working on about Florida’s botanical wonders. Our first stop was Bok Tower Sanctuary. I’ll let you learn more about this National Historic site for your self by visiting here.

The park has changed a bit since I was last there a few years ago. The hurricanes did some tree trimming throughout the park. If you didn’t have that ability to compare, you would have no idea that hurricanes pummeled the area.

Many people know of Bok Towerand it’s being on the highest point withing the Florida peninsula and that there is an abundant array of flowering plants to walk amongst. What many do not know is that the park also maintain’s natural Florida areas. We took a walk on a natural trail. Two of the drawings are from that hike.

The other drawing is of a decorative fence door along the pond that makes it way to surround the tower.

We were on the trail of the botanical wonders of Florida as Sandra continues to work on her latest book. We found ourselves at Ravine Gardens, which is near Palatka. Built by the W.P.A. in the ’30s, the place was dug out to create the ravine and tons of flowering plants were planted all around the giant ravine. Few are native and the exotics are everywhere.

The structures built by the W.P.A. are great as always and it is always fascinating to see another accomplishment by this odd concoction of the U.S. Government. There’s a lot of good hiking around here. Both above the ravine and inside.

The sketch is of a fallen tree with a sizable hole in it. Inside the hole was the collection of rainwater mixed with the sap of the tree. I would’ve tried it, if I had had some ice cream and a blender. Here, also, is a photo of me drawing.

I was out in Mt. Dora earlier and then headed over to DeLand fora book signing- More about that in the next post. This is a sketch of a wonderful looking house tucked behind the main commercial structures through the main thoroughfare of downtown DeLand.

Another dinner at Linda’s La Cantina on E. Colonial Drive in Orlando! Yipee! These are my favorite steaks, hands down. Besides it’s over 50 year reputation of great food, the place further dedicated itself in Orlando history by recently redecorating itself with old Orlando photos and some terrific paintings of the old Orlando Air Force Base, where I was born.

Sandra had been at a writers conference near Orlando’s Lake Lucerne. I met her and one of her best friends, co-writer and Sunrise resident, Kathy Wolf, at the restaurant. This was Kathy’s first visit and you should have seen her face after her first bite of steak!

The drawing is of a small lamp and table at the restaurant.