Day 6
Today we decided to take a short drive down US41 to Fort Myers to the Edison-Ford Winter Estates.
Guest end of Seminole Lodge
Ford's Caretaker House
Henry Ford's House
Edison's Model T.
1930's Ford V8
Mina Edison's Gardenia
Orchids. Mina used to attach them to tres to grow and they still do it now.
Mina's midnight garden
Mysore fig tree
New hat.
TomTom was already primed from the Tyre program on the laptop at home to have all the addresses we would need, apartment resorts and hotels in Key West and Fort Myers Beach. Plus the EFWE and the Triumph and HD shops in Fort Myers.
The lady at Alamo chuckled when we called TomTom "satnav" as it is apparently geepee-ess or I guess (see what I did there?) GPS.
Anyway, the Mustang (aka Sally) is a thirsty beast and manages only 24mpg at these around town tiddling along speeds.
She needed a drink of something called regular. There seemed to be three varieties of unleaded at Sunoco. The pump wanted a zip code and refused the one here at the village. Having to pre-pay for petrol never happens at home.
I decided to spend $20 and that took the gauge to half and the estimated mileage from 72 to 198.
Maybe try a different station next time? On the way home we have to return the car full as part of the rental. That should be interesting when you have to guess how much to put in!!!
From there it was about 20 miles to the Estates. The cost for a guided tour is $25 each. Not cheap but it was worth it. The guide, Bobby, was funny and very entertaining.
The estate is really nice and quite small. The story of the two men and their other "Vagabond" friends John Burroughs and Harvey Firestone is quite amazing. When you are rich you can do anything!
Once the official tour was over we looked around the gardens.
Of the two houses I much prefer Edison's "Seminole Lodge" to Ford's.
Some pix:
Once we had finished the museum it was time to hit the road.
By now it was only about 96F and so hot in the car that the leather seats were too hot to sit on. I had to start the engine and let the air con fight the heat before we could drive off.
We hadn't gone far, across the Caloosahatchee river, on US41 on the way north and chose a Perkins Restaurant and Bakery for lunch.
No pictures today but we both had a salad.... Very nice. They had a "buy 3 get 3 free" offer on cookies... We couldn't resist.
Then it was TomTom power to a Publix to get dinner and beer and back to the apartment.
Claire insisted on swimming and I go, but am not a good swimmer. When I was a kid there were no lessons for kids, and only one pool miles away! I can swim a little but tend to "lie doggo" as they used to say in the Navy.
The end almost of another hot sunny day in Florida.
http://www.nps.gov/edis/historyculture/mina-miller-edison.htm
Beautiful flowers. I didn't know you could grow orchids off trees. That would be pretty.
ReplyDelete