The Intentional Travelers

Less Well Known Attractions in Florida

A Few Small Museums and Attractions Well Worth the Time

There was a time when small roadside attractions where the highlight of family road-trips. While they have been overshadowed by the mega-parks and major resorts, there are still a number of roadside gems that you should explore – amazing little pieces of history encased in small museums. If you take the time, you will discover these surprises everywhere.

The famous American inventor, Thomas Edison first visited Fort Myers in 1885. On his first trip to Southwest Florida he purchased more than 13 acres along the Caloosahatchee River and returned to Fort Myers in 1886 with his bride, Mina Miller Edison. For sixty years the Edison family wintered at their Florida estate. In 1947, Mina gave the Estate to the City of Fort Myers. The city opened the estate to the public in 1947, and the Edison Ford estate property is a National Register Historic Site and is one of the most visited historic home sites in America.

The Central Florida Railway Historical Society Museum is a beautiful collection of railroad memorabilia displayed in a train depot in downtown Winter Garden, Florida.

Located in Lakeland, Florida off I-4, The Florida Air Museum displays a wide variety of vintage aircraft, ultralights, experimental homebuilts, air racers, military, aerobatic and factory-built aircraft from all eras.

The Bonnet House was built in 1920 on Fort Lauderdale oceanfront land given to Frederic Clay Bartlett and his second wife, Helen Louise Birch, by her father, Hugh Taylor Birch, a prominent Chicago attorney, real estate investor, and naturalist. In 1925 Helen died from breast cancer and in 1931 Frederic married Evelyn Fortune Lilly, who spent winters at Bonnet House until 1995. Today, the estate is a museum dedicated to remembering the history of Fort Lauderdale.

The St. Augustine Pirate & Treasure Museum offers an interesting and educational museum experience that transports you and your family back in time over 300 years to Port Royal, Jamaica, to the height of the Golden Age of Piracy.

spacing needed here

Another great museum of Spanish treasure is Mel Fisher’s Museum in Key West, Florida. Working out of Key West, Florida, treasure hunter and diver Mel Fisher spent decades searching for the resting site of a Spanish treasure fleet destroyed in a hurricane. They located the Nuestra Señora de Atocha in 1975, with an inscribed cannon to verify the wreck of Atocha. Subsequently, a substantial part of its remaining cargo of silver, gold and emeralds was discovered making it one of the worlds greatest sunken treasures. Much of the treasure is on display at the Key West museum.

In Sebring, home of the the famous race course where the first 12 Hours of Sebring was held on March 15, 1952, is an interesting gem for those who served in the military at sea.

The Military Sea Services Museum – an admittance free museum that has collected seagoing artifacts, stories, books and photographs relating to the time spent at sea by our military. In the collection are a large number of custom ship models, uniforms, weapons and some real finds like a commemorative brass plate cast for the WWII Japanese surrender on the battleship Missouri. The building sits in the middle of a WWII military training airfield.

CCC Museum at Highlands Hammock State Park

The Florida CCC Museum – Another stop in Sebring is a visit to Highlands Hammock State Park. Established in 1931 and developed later by Florida’s Civilian Conservation Corps, the park features a lush and incredibly diverse 9,000 acre refuge for endangered animals and ancient flora. While the park is a great place for hiking, it is also home to the Florida CCC Museum. Chock full of memorabilia and AV displays, it is a remarkable place to learn about the Civilian Conservation Core, the New Deal program that gave hundreds of thousands of young American men an opportunity for paid work and training during the Great Depression.

The UDT SEAL Museum – While on the subject of Florida small museums, there is one located on the southern end of North Hutchinson Island at Ft. Pierce. The National UDT And Seal Museum. It’s located at Ft. Pierce because that was the site of the original WWII training facility for Underwater Demolition Teams. It was originally named the UDT Museum but was later updated as the Navy’s UDT teams evolved into what are now known as the SEAL Teams.

The Seal teams have overshadowed UDT in recent years but Seals are a progression from the UDT units that were active in WWII up to the early 1970’s and they share the same training program (BUD-s for Basic Underwater Demolition School). Stop by and learn something about Seals, their training, missions and their predecessor’s, and the history of the Underwater Demolition Teams..

Weeki Wachee Springs Mermaids, Weeki Wachee
If you’ve ever wanted to get up close to a real mermaid, here’s your chance. Weeki Wachee has been offering mermaid shows in an underwater glass sided theater since 1947. Watch as trained professionals captivate audiences with graceful underwater ballet performances.

Robert the Doll is an allegedly haunted doll exhibited at the East Martello Museum in Key West and is purported to be the inspiration for the Chucky movies. Robert was once owned by Key West, Florida painter and author, Robert Eugene Otto. Be careful with this visit, Robert is famous for cursing visiting people with misfortune. Fort East Martello Museum houses artifacts and displays about early Key West. It’s an old civil war fort that has been restored by the Key West Art & Historical Society in 1950.

Air Force Armament Museum
Eglin Air Force Base is located in northwest Florida, comprising over 640 square miles.
This is one of the countries best air museums and it’s free. The Air Force Armament Museum houses Air Force aviation warfare armament from the early days of World War I right through to today’s high-tech planes and bombs – and it won’t cost you a dime. Bonus cool quotient: a vintage military aircraft including the fastest plane ever built, the SR-71 Blackbird.

Much of the base was part of a National Forest until the outbreak of war in Europe when a proving ground for aircraft armament was established at Eglin. The U.S. Forest Service ceded over 340,000 acres of the Choctawhatchee National Forest to the War Department on 18 October 1940.

Florida Caverns State Park
Florida Caverns State Park in Marianna is one of the few state parks in the U.S. with dry (air-filled) caves and is the only Florida state park to offer cave tours to the public. The cave has dazzling formations of limestone stalactites, stalagmites, soda straws, flowstones and draperies. Native Americans used the caverns for shelter for thousands of years.

The Citrus Tower
Driving route 27 through Claremont you’ll find one of Florida’s first “attractions,” the Citrus Tower was built in 1956 on one of the highest hills in Florida’s ridge section. The Citrus Tower rises to a lofty height of 226 feet (equivalent to 22 stories). The tip of the highest antenna reaches to 500 feet above sea level.

The glass-enclosed observation deck allows visitors to enjoy the panoramic view of the rolling hills of Florida’s ridge section and hundreds of spring-fed lakes in the surrounding 8-county area.

Todays Featured Image Water Lilies

They draw our attention and our cameras. Perhaps it’s because they’re complete, beautiful and untouchable or maybe it’s that they’re isolated while being part of that world of water but also of air. Named nymphaeaceae commonly referred to as water lilies. They grow in temperate and tropical climates around the world. Water lilies are rooted in soil in shallow bodies of water, with leaves and flowers floating on or emerging from the surface.

These giclée prints will soon be available in several sizes and styles, custom printed for each individual order on archival, museum grade paper using fade resistant inks.

Join us as we visit historic treasures, natural wonders and vibrant cities set against backdrops that are endlessly changing and visually magnificent. Celebrate a world of travel experiences with these posters that are perfect for framing.

The Legend Of RMS Titanic

Places Keeping The Legend Alive…

In the annals of travel there have been a number of great tragedies.

The Hindenburg Disaster
The air disaster at Tenerife
The Vegas hotel fire
The Tsunami at Ao Nang, Thailand

Also on that list are a number of ocean liner disasters.

The Lusitania
The Andrea Doria
The Costa Concordia

The Blue Star Line’s RMS Titanic

One tragedy seems to be a true legend that stands out from all the rest. The sinking of The White Star Lines RMS Titanic. After more than one hundred years the story still draws our attention. It has been the subject of a half dozen movies and numerous books and our fascination even extends to speculation over just what music the band was playing when the liner slipped below the sea.

There are at least four museums; Belfast and Cobh, in Ireland along with two in Orlando, Florida. In addition to the museums, a popular tour is to a cemetery in Halifax, Nova Scotia where many of the passengers and crew were laid to rest.

The Titanic tragedy remains of interest for a number of reasons. Firstly, it was the maiden voyage of what was promoted as an unsinkable ship. Next it was a disaster that could have been easily avoided, with the loss of life aggravated because she didn’t have enough lifeboats. Additionally, a large number of wealthy and famous people died in the disaster while equally sad a larger number of lower class passengers were prevented from even getting to what lifeboats there were. The Titanic sinking caused a number of nations as well as companies to change policies regarding safety at sea.

Belfast is famous as the shipyard that built the Titanic. At that time the Harland and Wolfe Shipyard was one of the worlds largest employing thousands. Today much of the area of the old shipyard has been turned into a memorial to this one ship and features the drydocks, the slip way, the tender and a museum built to match the giant ocean liner’s height and size.

The Cobh, Ireland connection involves it being the last port before great ship set sail across the Atlantic and into history. Cohb was called Queenstown at that time and was where the last passengers boarded the ship for its intended journey to New York. Of those one hundred and twenty three souls who joined the ship, only forty four survived. Today, the original buildings, streets and piers of a century ago are still standing along the waterfront and includes the original offices of the White Star Line, which today is the Titanic museum.

The front section of the Titanic rests at a depth of 12,800 feet

Just how massive was the RMS Titanic? When she was launched she was the largest ship afloat but times have changed. Todays newer cruise ships can be seven to ten times the tonnage of the Titanic.

Royal Caribbeans Allure of the Seas measured against the RMS Titanic

To Blog Or Not To Blog

That’s becoming the question…

This is the first in a series exploring what little I’ve learned about the world wide web and attempts to grow my image on the internet. I’ve devoted a lot of effort exploring how to optimize SEO, making use of social media, employing networking, improving online presence and the real question becomes is there a way to make money?. Along the way I’ve discovered some surprising things and have developed some suspicions about tools and methods employed by the tech companies to keep us from giving up.

Who and Why

This site is my hobby TheIntentionalTraveler.com (Intend2Travel.info). I was a photographer, I’m retired, in my seventies and I have long lived to travel. Six continents, over 80 countries and islands and every one of the worlds oceans. I started a free WordPress site over four years ago to let friends and family see where I am and where I’ve been. It had nothing to do with money but as people visited and subscribed it may have become about validation. Fame and money started becoming a possibility but it was still my hobby.

Today I manage two additional free websites, a paid WordPress site (I ran out of room) two online store sites (only marginally successful) and almost a dozen social media sites along with with two Etsy outlets. After all that, I confess that I understand very little about how to succeed on the web.

A Recent Change

I’m going to start at the end and work backward. Just in the past six months my travel site experienced some serious growth. Following is a chart showing results reported by Google data compared with the contributions from other search engines.

Looking at the data it raises some interesting questions:

The Google impressions show major changes in growing, peaking in May and falling off again.
The percentage of clicks per impressions also grow (from about 1% to 1.5%) with a peak in June and falling off again back to 1%.
The percentage of Google clicks to all other search engines starts at about 27%, grows to almost 57% and drops back over 3 months to 27%.

What do I make of this?

First, Google clicks seem to correlate somewhat with reported total impressions but do also grow as a percentage showing a deviation of about a half a percent (same bell shaped curve).

Second, various other search engine contributions as a percentage of total search referrals seem to remain constant with the exception of Googles contribution. Google’s share starts at just under 28% of total search referrals, grows to almost 47% in May and drops gradually back to under 28% (the bell curve again). All other search engines remain pretty constant.

Finally it leaves the impression that there is an operator at work outside of the seasonal flow of internet activity and searches.

Conclusions?: Google results do not seem to be part of a general algorithm pattern but statistically seem to be driven by a specifically targeted process applied to my website. Not just mine, I’m sure every site has similar activity.

Can anyone else offer any ideas? In the next couple of installments the plan is to explore the effectiveness in SEO efforts, techniques and practices that seem to have an impact on search activity and growing evidence that we may be involved in a giant feedback loop engineered by the big tech companies to keep us involved.

The Knights Hall Of Akko Israel

The Knights Fortifications Of Acre, Israel

On the Mediterranean coast in Israel is the city of Acre and within the city is a quarter square mile site known as Old Akka. Beginning in the 12^th century, Akka became the stronghold of Christian Crusaders in the Holy Land. In building their fortress the knights dug tunnels, erected defensive walls, citadels, a harbor and churches. There were a number of military orders in the Crusades but The Knights Templar and the Knights Hospitaller were the two dominant religious military orders established early in the First Crusade. Akka was their city and for two centuries they fought to keep the Holy Land open to Christian pilgrims. Because of support from the kingdoms of Europe, their large numbers and their commitment to the cause, they accumulated substantial wealth and power.

The Hospitallers were a military, monastic order devoted to caring for the sick in the Holy Land and to maintaining the personal safety of the pilgrims who flocked to the holy sites of Jerusalem. They patrolled the roads going to Jerusalem, managed hospitals in both Jerusalem and Akko. In the first years of the Crusaders’ settlement in Akko, the Hospitallers were given property in the city and they built a fortress in the northwestern section of the city, adjacent to the northern wall of 12th century Akko. In 1169, a pilgrim by the name of Theodoric visited Akko. He recorded his impressions of his journey to the Holy Land, describing the Hospitaller center as a most impressive, fortified structure, second only to the Templar Fortress to the north.

In 1187 in the Battle of Hattin, Akko fell to the Moslem army led by Salahadin and its Christian inhabitants fled. The Crusaders returned to Akko four years later in 1191 led by Richard the Lionhearted, the King of England who headed the Third Crusade along with King of France Philippe Auguste.

The Hospitaller fortress behind defensive walls consisted of three floors around a central court as well as vast underground sections with water reservoirs and a sewage system. The site is not yet completely excavated; to date, an area of about 55,000 square feet has been excavated, which includes the central court and the northern, eastern and southern wings. The western wing has yet to be excavated. Visiting the site you will only see the remains of the first floor of the Hospitaller headquarters and some excavated lower levels.

The larger Templar fortress has mostly been lost but the primary Templar tunnel was discovered in 1994. The western edge of the tunnel begins where the main fortress of the Templar order once stood. The Templar Fortress was during the Crusades, the strongest one in the city and, for the most part, it connected to the sea line. Described in a journal by a Templar who lived in Akko during the siege of 1291 it was the largest and best protected fortress in the city, its entrance was protected by two powerful towers with 28-foot thick walls. Two smaller towers were built on either side of the towers and each tower was topped by a “gilded lion”. The opened tunnel is 500 feet long and extends from the Templars fortress location in the west to the city’s port in the east. It crosses the Pisan quarter and, in the past, served as a strategic underground passageway connecting the stronghold to the port.