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In the pictures you see a part of a fort and a gate. Both are in St. Augustine, Florida--the oldest continuously-occupied European settlement in the continental United States. Both the fort (Castillo de San Marcos) and the city gate are made of coquina, a unique sedimentary rock composed mainly of shells. These constructions, as well as houses and other buildings in the old town, have stood for over three hundred years. They were built by the Spanish in 1565, more than fifty years after Ponce de Leon discovered the area in his search for the Fountain of Youth.

Castillo de San Marcos is a square fort with diamond-shaped bastions at the corners. For many years it was the northernmost point in the Spanish holdings in the New World. It served as part of Spain's defenses along the route of her ships taking treasure from her colonies back to Spain. For the most part, the Spanish kept the moat dry and during sieges used it as a pen for domestic animals. Or if the fort was attacked by land, the moat could be quickly filled by opening flood gates and allowing in sea water from Matanzas Inlet.

The city gates stood outside the fort at the entrance to the town that was built nearby. Historians say that St. Augustine is perhaps the earliest example of community planning within the continental United States. Its streets are laid out in a pleasing grid, it has a large central plaza, and there are open spaces, patios, and gardens among all the houses.

The city and the fort were occupied by the Spanish for 235 years, after which it was given to Great Britain in exchange for La Habana, Cuba, in the Peace of Paris in 1763. At the end of the American Revolution , Florida was returned to Spain, only to be ceded back to the U.S. in 1821.

I especially enjoyed St. Augustine on this visit because it was warm and sunny here. Northern Florida had been cold and rainy the few days prior to my visit, and I was most happy to stroll the streets in the warm, strong sunshine.

I visited the Kennedy Space Center, near Cape Canaveral Air Station, and spent a whole day at the complex of buildings at the Visitor Center. I saw a multi-media show on robots as they are used in the space program, walked through a historic exhibit of many of our older rockets (which you see in the picture), watched two IMAX movies about space, walked through a mock-up of the shuttle Discovery, and learned many exciting things about our space program. As I was coming through the gate that morning, a lady holding a clipboard came up to me and asked if I'd be interested in participating in a panel discussion for about an hour in the afternoon. She was looking for eight people to sit and give feedback on some different TV and magazine ads and billboards. I thought that would be an interesting thing to do, so I agreed. Then she told me that I'd receive $50 in merchandise from the Visitor Center, and I was really interested!

I was very busy all day looking at all the exhibits, and then at 3:30 I went to the building where I was to meet with the group. We had free pop, snacks, and cookies while we looked at the proposed ads, and then we gave feedback on whether they would attract us to visit the center or not. At the end of an hour and a half we were each given a $25 video about the shuttles and a $25 ball-point pen like the astronauts use in space. It writes in zero gravity! (I wonder how I can ever test that.) I had had a great first day at the Kennedy Space Center.

Please see the November 28, 2000 entry in Flat Teddy's Journal.

Here is the most powerful rocket that NASA ever built. It had to be strong enough to get the space capsule out of earth orbit and on the way to the moon. It was called the Saturn rocket, and there were several built for all of the Apollo missions. NASA made an extra one or two in case something happened on any of the launches. But there were never any problems, and this one is now on display in the Apollo/Saturn Center at the Kennedy Space Center. It stretches the length of the building, held up on very thick, strong, metal posts. It is as long as a football field!

In this same building there is a moon buggy on display. And a lunar lander hanging from the ceiling. I sat at a table right under the lunar lander when I ate my lunch that day.

In the Apollo/Saturn Center there was a show about the first lunar landing, when Neil Armstrong first stepped down on the moon. Remember visiting his hometown back in Indiana near the beginning of this trip? Many people around the world watched that event on television that day in July, 1969. I watched my baby boy as he lay on a blanket in front of the TV chewing on an ear of corn that day. He would be told many times as he grew up that he saw the first lunar landing. Now that baby is all grown up and is adding this report to the website for me. He's probably embarrassed that I mentioned the story. I'm putting it in anyway, Kirk!

Go to the links to learn about the Apollo missions and what each one accomplished. It was an era of tremendous achievement for our country--one we should all be proud of.

You are seeing in the picture just one end of a huge and very clean room in which parts of the International Space Station are being assembled so that they can be taken up in the shuttle to be joined with the parts that are already up there. The space station is already so big that we can see it from earth without binoculars or a telescope. When it is completed in 2006, it will be the third-brightest object in the night sky.

The capsule right in the front of the picture is part of the Italian lab that is being assembled. Behind it you can see a very small figure in light blue. She's working with a team to assemble the U.S. lab, called Destiny. These labs are schedule for shuttle flights sometime in the next year or so. They will be "shuttled" up to the space station, where they will be attached to what's already up there as the space station grows to its planned size.

I am standing in a visitors' gallery that is separated from the assembly room by a strong window. It's important to keep the air and all the objects in the assembly room clean so that no contamination goes up to the lab with any of the components.

I was very lucky on my visit to the Kennedy Space Center that a shuttle was being launched while I was there. It was a night launch, and I watched it from about five miles (8 kilometers) away at my campground with a hundred or so other people down at the water's edge. The sky lit up so brightly when the rocket fired up. The crowd cheered. For many seconds we could see the rocket slowly lifting and then more rapidly gaining height as the trail of light streamed out of it, but we heard no sound. There were only the oohs and ahhs of the people near me. Then the roar reached us. It was wonderfully strong and loud. I felt so proud of this whole program and its many successes. I watched for many, many minutes until the shuttle and its trail were out of sight.

I can tell you that one of the mission objectives of STS-97 is to deliver the first set of U.S.-provided solar arrays and batteries. There are several other objectives which you can read about when you go to the NASA link about this shuttle flight. Do you realize that the number 97 on this flight means that there have been 97 shuttle flights in the whole program, so far? I was amazed to learn there have been so many, and I'm certainly going to pay more attention to this fascinating project in space from now on.

Lake Okeechobee in the center of Florida is the second largest fresh-water lake in the continental United States. It covers 750 square miles (194,249 hectares) and is totally surrounded by a levee that protects the surrounding land from flooding if the lake would overflow. It is only 24 feet (7.3 meters) deep, but in many places it's so shallow that you can see birds wading as much as a mile (1.6 kilometers) from shore. There are several canals that connect to the lake through locks so that small boats can travel all the way across the middle of Florida if they want. The Intracoastal Waterway along the Atlantic shore of the U.S. connects to the Gulf Intracoastal Waterway that goes up and down the Gulf coast of Florida, so if people want to, they can use this Okeechobee connection to go from one of the waterways to the other.

The part of the lake that you are seeing in the picture is near the town of Okeechobee at the northern end of the lake. I walked up onto the levee to take this picture near one of the locks. Then I drove about halfway around the lake, but all I saw for the whole drive was the levee between the highway and the lake.

The countryside in all of this part of Florida is very flat. Highways go straight for miles and miles. North of Lake Okeechobee I had passed by many orange groves, packing plants, and juice processing plants. The tangy smell of the oranges as I drove by the plants was so inviting! Then as I drove southeast from the lake I saw field after field of sugar cane, dotted with the occasional sugar processing plant belching smoke into the atmosphere. The air pollution caused by the processing plants almost made me want to stop eating sugar--almost.

In the first picture you see several dolphins working with trainers at Dolphins Plus in Key Largo, Florida. The closest two dolphins are Kimbit and Bob, two adolescent males, and they are about to do some behaviors ("tricks") they've learned. Their partners for the half hour session are two fifth-grade boys from New York. The trainer is kneeling between the two boys, and the other boy sitting back a ways is filming a video for the school. In the same pool but at the next station back are two other dolphins, both full-grown females named Sarah and Samantha. Sarah is the mother of a 30-day old baby female dolphin who was as yet unnamed when I was there. She was about to get her name, the owner said. You can see Samantha's head sticking up out of the water. The trainer is rubbing Sarah's side where she's floating at the top of the water between Samantha and the platform. The baby is underwater and out of sight. In the background of the picture, in the next pool over, is another trainer working with Fonzie. He's the one who posed so beautifully for the second picture.

I took these pictures after swimming in the nearest pool for a half hour alone with the five dolphins: Bob, Kimbit, Samantha, Sarah, and the baby. I had a trainer with me to give me ideas on what to do so that the dolphins would want to swim by me or play. I wore a mask and snorkel so I could keep my head in the water the whole time and watch what the dolphins were doing underwater. I was instructed to move myself through the water using only my feet (which had fins on them). I was to keep my hands together right under my body so I didn't attempt to use them to swim. If I had done that and my hands had gone out to my sides, I could have injured an eye on a dolphin as they swam up close beside me.

Bob and Kimbit both came up and charged me a time or two and tried to "fake me out" just a little, like teenage boys might do in pretending to be tough and establish who was the boss. The trainer laughed when I flinched, because she said that would just encourage them to continue. They love it when they can get the trainers to flinch. They only did that a time or two to me that day. More frequently, they swam up beside me and slowed down to my speed, waiting to catch my eye. When I looked them in the eye, that was the signal to race! I was encouraged to start kicking as hard as I could and go as fast as I could, and the "boys" would race me for about two seconds, after which they would zoom out ahead of me. Oh, we had fun playing!

Sarah and Samantha and the baby would cruise slowly past me--or after awhile pass right under me. They were so close I could have reached out and touched them, but that would not have been appropriate behavior on my part. I just wanted them to be comfortable with me, and they seemed to be. Sarah seemed so proud of her baby, and I felt good that she trusted me enough to bring her up right close to me. The baby sucked milk from her mother a few times during the half hour, just for a few seconds each time.

When my ears were under the water I could hear the dolphins' sonar--the clicks and beeps they make to figure out their distance from objects. The little high-pitched clicks and beeps were from the baby, the trainer said.

I kept getting a little water in my mask, and I figured out it was leaking because I couldn't stop smiling.

There is a canal running alongside the dolphin's enclosures that opens right to the sea. Once when a hurricane was approaching the area, the dolphins were let loose into the canal to swim out to sea where they'd be safer during the hurricane than in the enclosures. After the storm they all came back on their own, happy to be home again where they are safe from predators, fed well, and have lots of human friends. It's a very happy place.

If you go to the Dolphins Plus website, you can learn lots more and also find out what the baby's name is.

Welcome to Key West, Florida, at the southern end of U.S. Highway 1, which I have followed off and on all down the east coast from Maine. The cement marker you see in the first picture is the southernmost point in the continental United States (so that would exclude Hawaii, of course, which is further south in latitude than this spot). The tree beside the marker has a sign designating it the southernmost Christmas tree. The words on the marker say that it is 90 miles to Cuba from that point. I looked and looked out across The Straits of Florida to the south, but Cuba was just too far away to see. The pelican in the second picture strives to be the southernmost pelican in the U.S., as it is nearly always there--either up on the cement wall watching the bay for fish or down on the sidewalk eyeing tourists for someone to give him a snack. The sadness is that some people don't know that it is actually harmful for wild animals to eat human food, and occasionally they give him something.

Along the streets near this marker are several businesses that advertise they are the southernmost motel, southernmost swimwear shop, southernmost hair and nail salon, and southernmost bed and breakfast, to name a few. The idea does get a little overused in Key West, but it's all part of the fun. And FUN is the key word for Key West!

This house in Key West is called the Audubon House because John James Audubon stayed in it in 1832 when he came to the Florida Keys to paint pictures of the wildlife here. The owner of the house was Captain John Geiger, who made his living as a harbor pilot and his fortune as a "wrecker." Many fortunes were made in Key West in the 1800's by wreckers--people who sailed to the site of sunken ships to recover the gold bars, jewelry, coins, and other valuable items that had gone down in them a few hundred years earlier. There were many shipwrecks among the coral reefs of the Florida Keys. Geiger owned this impressive house, and this is where Audubon stayed while he did his valuable work of cataloging the many species of wildlife abundant in these Florida Keys. Audubon also did some of his work in the area of the Everglades, across Florida Bay from the Keys, and he observed there that a flock of white herons taking off into flight obscured the light of the sun for several minutes, there were so many birds!

Ernest Hemingway bought this house in Key West in 1931 and lived in it with his second wife and their two sons, who spent the first part of their childhood here. While living here, "Papa" Hemingway wrote most of his greatest works: Death in the Afternoon, Green Hills of Africa, To Have and Have Not, The Snows of Kilimanjaro, and For Whom the Bell Tolls, among others.

The south side of the house and some of the gardens that Hemingway planted are seen in the first picture. The second picture shows the stairway and door to the upstairs study of a building in back of the house, where Hemingway did his writing.

If you look closely, you can see a black cat on the edge of the roof behind the stair railing and a yellow cat a little further to the right. These are only two of the more than sixty cats that live on the grounds of this famous home today. All the cats are descended from Hemingway's original cats, of which there were more than fifty. Several of Hemingway's cats were six-toed, and so are many of these descendants. The effect of the cats today, as they move languidly about the house and the grounds, is to make the place a very peaceful and relaxing spot to be in for awhile. I sat on a bench in the garden after I'd toured the house, and a tabby came up to me to be petted and to keep me company. The tour guide came over to tell me that the cat's name was Susie-- Susan Hayward. Another of the house cats, Marilyn, created for herself a moment of fame when she wandered through a set for the recent James Bond movie that was filmed in Key West, part of it on the grounds of the Hemingway house. The camera was running, Marilyn became part of the scene, and the director decided to leave it in the movie. So Marilyn Monroe is famous, once again!

People who live in or visit in Key West have for years gathered in Mallory Square to celebrate the sunset every evening. The square is a huge plaza, fronted by one of the piers to which the cruise ships tie up.

Late in the afternoon that I was in Key West I walked to Mallory Square, joining about two hundred tourists and locals, and we watched the cruise ship passengers streaming back onto their boat after a day in port. Local performers found places around the square to play their Caribbean steel drums or do their magic tricks, or weave hats and mats out of palm fronds or walk on stilts or do magic tricks or sell their artwork. Needless to say, there was a great party atmosphere.

At last, the cruise ship pulled out into the harbor, and as you see it in this picture it's about to head for the open sea, leaving us our sunset. And gorgeous indeed the sunset was! It created a path of sparkling orange and gold across the ocean all the way from itself to us. I tried several photographs of it, but the camera didn't read the light right. The photos didn't turn out.

As the sun began sinking below the horizon the crowd watched more intently, turning their attention away from the street performers for a bit. At the moment the last of the sun sank below the sea, the crowd applauded and cheered. It's been done that way every night for a very, very long time. I told you Key West was a fun place! (The party in Mallory Square continued for a long time after I left to walk up Duval Street in the 6:00 p.m. darkness to catch my bus to the campground, grinning all the way "home" to Charlie Brown.)

Please see the December 12, 2000 entry in Flat Teddy's Journal.

When you look at these pictures of the boat and one of the canals we traveled through, you have to imagine how it would feel to be in 85 degrees Fahrenheit (29.4 degrees Celsius) temperatures and 90 percent humidity. In December! Also, you have to imagine swarms of mosquitoes, which didn't show up in the pictures. Then you have the full picture. I got on board that boat with a pilot, a naturalist, and about fifteen other passengers for a two-hour ride through a very small part of the huge Everglades National Park. We went first through the man-made canal you see, passing by thick tangles of mangrove trees in all three varieties--red, black, and white. Mangroves grow in saltwater. Just above the water line along both sides of the canal is hammock --land that's slightly above sea level. On the hammock were growing several varieties of hardwood trees, but the one the naturalist talked about the most was manchineel. It's poisonous, and if you touch the bark and then touch your eye you can become blind for a few days. It also has other effects, but that's the one I remember most vividly.

The canal took us to Coot Bay (a rather large lake that's mostly freshwater). We crossed that lake and traveled along another canal to the huge Whitewater Bay. It, too, is a freshwater lake, in which we saw an alligator swimming. On the way back along our route we saw ospreys flying overhead, returning to their nests with fish in their talons. One bald eagle flew by! That was very exciting! And back at the marina, we had one more fascinating sight to see: a crocodile swimming just across the water from where the boat docks. We all trooped over to the bank on the crocodile's side of the water and watched it floating on top of the water. Crocodiles prefer saltwater, so they're found mostly along the edges of the Everglades, near Florida Bay. Alligators are found in fresh water, and their habitat extends much further up into Florida. Alligators have a more rounded, U-shaped snout, and crocodiles have a narrower V-shaped snout.

Both of these highway signs in the Everglades caught my attention. I was really hoping I'd see a Florida panther, but then I read in some park literature that it is one of the endangered species. There are possibly only 30 left in the state of Florida and only 10 known to be in the Everglades. Panthers stay away from places where people might be. It was enough for me just to know that they are there and that they are being protected. The sign marking Rock Reef Pass at first made me laugh. Elevation: 3 feet (.9 meters). The passes over which we Coloradoans drive have elevations of nine to ten thousand feet (2,743 to 3,048 meters). Hikers cross passes even higher than that! Remember, a pass is a low spot on a ridge which affords an easier crossing. Rock Reef Pass is a low spot, but anywhere on the "high ridge" in the Everglades would permit easy crossing, as the highest point in the whole park is 8 feet (2.4 meters) above sea level. In both these pictures the background is terrain known as hardwood hammock, which is an ecosystem in the Everglades that develops on land that is between three and eight feet above sea level. In these large areas of raised ground, common trees and plants are slash pines, gumbo limbo trees, royal palms, strangler figs, cypresses, and ferns. Growing on the trees are such plants as orchids and air plants.

In the first picture you see in the foreground a bird called the anhinga. It has its gray wings spread out to warm itself. It's a diving bird, and after several dives to find food on the bottom of Everglades lakes and ponds it sits in the sun to spread its wings awhile. At first, scientists thought the bird did this to dry its wings, but then they reasoned that the bird would only get its wings wet again on the next dive. It's now known that the anhingas warm themselves by this method. Across the pond from the anhinga are two alligators lying on the bank sunning themselves. As you can tell, they were only about twenty feet from me. I was on a path with many other tourists walking by, and not one person seemed to be nervous about alligators being so close. I did observe another alligator floating in a nearby pond, and after appearing to be so quiet that it seemed asleep, it suddenly dived down into the pond and came up with a fish in its jaws.

In the second picture you can see two snowy egrets. They, too, were fishing but not for such large prey as the alligator caught. It's most likely that the fish the alligator ate was a largemouth bass. The egrets were looking for something much smaller.

The path I was walking on was an old road into the Everglades. When engineers building the road dug up the land on either side of the road to borrow the dirt and make the road higher, the "borrow" pits filled in with water. Most of the Everglades region is wetlands, and of course the water in the area fills in every low spot.

I learned that Lake Okeechobee is a principal source of the water in the Everglades. Marjorie Stoneman Douglas, a very active conservationist as far back as the 1940's called the Everglades the "River of Grass." This "river" used to be fed plentifully by the abundant rainfall over the whole of south Florida. Lake Okeechobee would fill up from the rains and spill its waters over into the wide, flat lowlands, sending its water down the gentle slope of the Everglades to Florida Bay. But that rainfall is now trapped in the levee that surrounds Lake Okeechobee and is first channeled through myriads of canals to vast irrigated agricultural fields. The water that flows off those fields and goes on to the Everglades is so nutrient-enriched as to be nearly poisonous to the ecosystem. As a result, there is an excess of mercury found in every level of the food chain in the Everglades. A panther with mercury levels that would be toxic to humans was found dead in Everglades National Park. However, people continue to search for solutions, and progress is being made. President Clinton signed a bill just last week that brings some aid and attention to the problems in the Everglades.

As you look at these two pictures of cypress trees you have to know what a price I paid to get them. Foolishly, late in the afternoon I walked onto a half-mile-long (.8-kilometer-long) boardwalk that went out deep into a stand of baldcypresses, desiring that late-day light for the photography. The mosquitoes also love that time of day, and I became a walking smorgasbord for them! I didn't walk long. I began to run along the boardwalk so that not as many mosquitoes would have time to land on me. The biggest misery came each time I stopped to take a picture. Even though I did it very quickly, the mosquitoes found me and took hold immediately. I'd snap on the camera lens cap and take off running again, all the while swatting with my big purple cotton hat at the mosquitoes that had landed on me.

Anyway, so as not to waste all that effort, let me tell you a little about these pictures and this area. First, I stopped at Big Cypress National Preserve visitors’ center to see about walking a trail near there. The land set aside for Big Cypress is north of Everglades National Park. It preserves not only some of the remaining few baldcypress trees but also acres upon acres of dwarf pond cypresses--and the whole ecosystem of the wetlands that they thrive in. I discovered that all the trails out of the visitor center went through swamps and would involve walking through a lot of water, some of it more than knee-deep. That didn't sound appealing at all. The ranger behind the desk suggested I drive to Fakahatchee Strand State Preserve, which borders on the west of Big Cypress National Preserve, and walk the boardwalk there. From it I would see the same type of scenery I'd see if I'd walk through the swamp, only I'd see it more comfortably! Hence, I came to the boardwalk, and hurrying to use the last light of day I neglected to put on any mosquito repellent.

The first picture shows tall cypress trees growing up out of a swamp. The trees seem to be dead or dying, but in fact they are losing their leaves for the winter. Even though they are related to California redwood trees (which don't lost their needles seasonally) the cypress trees do shed their leaves every winter. In the 1930s and 1940s after the Tamiami Trail highway was opened across the Florida peninsula close to Everglades National Park, it became easy for logging trucks to reach the cypress trees. The big baldcypresses were cut down to be made into gutters, stadium seats, coffins, pickle barrels, and the hulls of PT boats. Now, thanks to the creation of the state and national preserves, the few remaining baldcypresses are protected from that fate. Some of the ones that have survived are 600 to 700 years old!

In the second picture you can see an air plant (this one is a bromeliad) that lives on a cypress tree. It looks like a pineapple plant growing on the trunk of the tree. Other air plants in the preserves are varieties of orchids. These plants that grow on trees are called epiphytes. They aren't parasites of trees, because even if the trees die the epiphytes continue living. They attach to the tree but don't take nutrients from the tree or do it any harm, as a parasite would do. Bromeliads, like this one in the photograph, catch rainwater in the cup-like bases of their leaves.

There are a few Florida panthers in these preserves, as well as the threatened Florida black bear. And about a zillion mosquitoes!

The twisting shapes you see wrapping themselves around these cypress trees are the roots of strangler figs. The figs got their start in the top of the cypress trees, their sticky seeds being deposited there most likely by birds. The figs began to grow there at the top of the trees, sending their roots down and around the cypress trees until they reached the ground. After taking root in the ground, the figs' root trunks increased slowly in size, encircling the host tree in a strangling embrace. The strangler figs seen growing here on the old cypress trees in this preserve (Fakahatchee Strand State Preserve) near Big Cypress National Preserve are some of the finest specimens to be seen anywhere.

In Ft. Myers, Florida, I visited side-by-side winter estates of two good friends, Thomas Edison and Henry Ford. Mr. Edison bought his estate first, on the bank of the Caloosahatchee River, near where it flows out into the Gulf of Mexico. That was in 1885, and he and his family spent every winter at Seminole Lodge, as he named his estate, until his death in 1931. It was after he purchased his estate that he met Henry Ford at a convention, and they immediately became good friends. When the property adjacent to Seminole Lodge went on the market in 1916 Henry Ford bought it, naming it Mangoes. It is the house you see in the first picture. The grounds around the house are lush with bamboo, citrus trees, and tropical plants. There is a garage outside the house where three tin lizzies are parked. They are all three in running condition. I learned there that Henry Ford was the world's first billionaire.

The second picture shows a Ft. Myers woman (wearing a hat) who occasionally surprises visitors to the Edison house, Seminole Lodge, as she pretends to be Mrs. Edison. Even our tour guide was surprised, because she thought that lady wasn't working at the site that day. "Mrs. Edison" spied a toy that the little boy in our group had in his hands and said, "Oh goodness, my husband would have been very interested in that invention!" The Edisons owned many acres of land around their house, and on it Mr. Edison built several labs where he and many employees carried out some of the research on Edison's inventions during the winters. Mr. Ford had one of the buildings from the complex moved to Greenfield Village in Dearborn, Michigan, where I saw it in August. There are over 14 acres (5.7 hectares) of tropical plants surrounding the Edison complex, including a large banyan tree outside one of the labs. It was a gift from a close friend of Edison's and Ford's-- Harvey Firestone (of the Firestone tire company). He presented the small seedling of a tree to Thomas Edison in 1925, and it is now the third-largest banyan in the world. The largest one grows in

These two manatees live at Homosassa Springs State Wildlife Park near the town of Homosassa Springs. There are seven other manatees living here, and all nine of them were brought here because they couldn't live in the wild. Two were born at a Sea World-type marine shows and had never lived in the wild, and several of the others were injured by propellers on motor boats and brought here to heal. Some manatees that have been brought here to heal from injuries are later released and are able to return to the wild very successfully. These nine are very happy to be here at the wildlife park where they are fed well and have caretakers whom they are fond of. When I arrived mid-morning all nine were swimming in and out of a big floating pen that green and leafy vegetables had been dropped into. A sign painted on the pen says it's the Manatee Salad Bar. The manatees can swim in and out of it while most of the food stays inside the confines of the pen. The first manatee you see in the picture had brought a half head of cabbage out of the salad bar and was munching on it just under the bridge I was walking across. The second manatee I observed from an underwater viewing room called the Fishbowl Underwater Observatory. All the fish swimming with it are not bothered by the manatee at all because manatees are strictly vegetarians.

A little later a wildlife biologist waded into a shallow part of the pool near the bank to drop in whole carrots. All the manatees heard the sound, knew what it meant, and swam over--not quickly, but pretty fast for a manatee! They floated around the man and munched on the carrots as he talked to the crowd of us assembled on bleachers on the bank, and he told us the manatees' names and how they came to be at the wildlife park. He also hand-fed them some treats they love, and Amanda did a little trick for us by turning on her side and lifting her flipper up into the air. That got her a treat, so she just kept on doing that trick over and over. What the manatees don't know, the biologist said, was that the treats have vitamins in them. Manatees breathe air and must come to the surface every fifteen minutes or less. They are closely related to elephants, actually, because their nose works something like an elephant's trunk. They are very curious about humans and will even swim up to them in the wild. They seem to be very affectionate animals.

One of the reasons that the manatees are here in this park is that the water here is fed by one of the many springs in the area of Homosassa Springs. The water from the springs stays at a steady 72 degrees F (22.2 degrees C), and in this colder winter weather the manatees like that warmth. The ocean water gets a little colder than usual, now that it's winter (nighttime air temperature in the 40s F and daytime air temperature in the 50s and 60s F), so manatees in the wild are coming now into the shallower bays and waterways to find warmer water, as well.

Here in Tallahassee, nearly at the end of the six weeks I've spent in Florida, I have at last learned how the state got its name. Ponce de Leon was the first European (that historians know of) to reach the area, landing in the early days of April, 1513, near present-day St. Augustine. He named the area Florida in honor of the Spanish Eastertime celebration, "Pascua florida" -- feast of the flowers. There had been people living in Florida for at least 11,500 years previous to that, but the written record of Florida's history began with Ponce de Leon's expedition. (Leon County, in which Tallahassee is located, was named after this famous man.)

The British gained control of Florida at the end of the Seven Years' War in 1763, trading Cuba to Spain in exchange for Florida. Florida was split into two parts by the British: West Florida, with its capital at Pensacola, and East Florida, with its capital at St. Augustine. Spain, as an ally of France and thereby participating indirectly in the American Revolution, captured Pensacola from the British in 1781. Spain was then given Florida as part of the peace treaty that ended the American Revolution in 1784. During the ensuing years the area became increasingly "American" because of so many people moving in from northern states, and in 1821, under the Adams-Onís Treaty, Florida was ceded to the United States. Territorial status was granted, the two halves of Florida were merged into one, and Tallahassee was chosen to be the new capital city because it was halfway between the previous two capitals, St. Augustine and Pensacola. At that time, only the northern part of Florida was settled. Native Americans were the only people living in south Florida.

The building you see in the picture is the old state capitol building, which was in use from 1845 until 1978. There had been many additions to the building over the years, but it has now been restored to its 1902 appearance and serves as a museum. Behind it is a 22-story tower which is now the state capitol; attached to the tower there are two lower side wings on the building which contain the chambers for the Senate and House of Representatives. I saw both chambers, but neither was in session when I was there. From the 22nd story of the tower I had a panoramic view of the city. Looking down, I saw the Florida Supreme Court building on one side of the capitol and the iLeon County Courthouse on the other--both buildings providing the scene for many court battles in the recent presidential election aftermath.

As stated in the previous report, people had inhabited the area now known as Florida for over 11,500 years before Ponce de Leon brought the first European visitors. The mound you see in the picture, plus five others in the immediate area, are believed to have been built by a previous culture around 1200 A.D.--only 800 years ago. Archeologists who have worked at this site believe that it was a ceremonial complex and that the area was probably the political and religious center for Indians of this region at that time. It is believed that the society which built this complex was a well-organized political system with tribal leaders more than likely residing within it. The remains of important tribal members have been found at the site, buried with elaborate objects like copper breast plates, shell beaded necklaces, and cloaks still in place. Some of the artifacts could not have come from this region and give a clue to the wide-spread trading and cultural exchange in which these Indians participated.

Today these mounds are protected within the boundary of a state park. Below the mound in the picture is a picnic area with a playing field beside it. I was here two days after Christmas, and while a father and two of his boys played with a new football on the field, the littlest boy practiced on his brand-new scooter in the nearly-deserted parking lot. He proudly showed it to me between zooming trips up and down the pavement. "Santa brought it to me!" he announced proudly. I wonder if archeologists will dig up scooters 800 years from now and study the clues they present?