Ryan and Debi Cragun’s Blog

There’s a lot to like about working as a college professor, but one of the best perks is the flexible schedule, especially over the summer.  We usually work every weekday, and usually most weekends, but sometimes we take a day off (or even a couple hours) to go explore our new surroundings.  The flexible schedules we have make this particularly nice, as we can take off some time in the middle of the week rather than weekends, so we can go places that would be very busy on the weekend and find them almost empty during the week.  At least, that was the logic in our decision to go bike Fort de Soto Wednesday afternoon.  And, our logic was accurate - the place was nearly deserted.

On our two previous visits to Fort de Soto with family, we went straight to the North Beach (which is a remarkable beach) and didn’t check out the rest of the island.  We did notice, though, that there is a great “recreation” trail along the main road.  According to the official website, the trail is 6.8 miles long (according to Google Maps it’s closer to 5 miles (4.79 to be exact).  Plus, it’s wide enough to ride at least two bikes abreast, which means we can chat while we ride.  So, we took the bikes out yesterday and biked the entire trail. Here’s an aerial shot of Fort de Soto with the key landmarks indicated:

We arrived around 4:45 (it’s about 25 minutes from our house).  We parked at the park headquarters, which is located right where the road comes in to the park.  We hit the trail around 4:55, heading east first.  We wandered through the East Beach on whatever trails we could follow on our bikes, then followed the trail to where it ends about 1/2 a mile past East Beach.  Here’s Debi at East Beach (it’s handicap accessible, so we rode our bikes all the way out to the beach).  In the background you can see the Sunshine Skyway Bridge:

We did find a secluded section of South beach, which we returned to a little later (more below), but continued on.  We followed the path to where it ends (better seen here), then turned around and retraced our path back to the park headquarters and continued on to the actual Fort, Fort de Soto.

Here’s Ryan at the turn around point:

Again, the Sunshine Skyway Bridge is in the background.

There are a couple of piers off the island, one of which is the launching point of a ferry to Edgmont Key, which is another island just southwest of Fort de Soto.  We stopped at Fort de Soto, which is pretty cool.  You can walk through most of it in about 30 minutes, though a full tour of the original fort could take a couple hours as there are a lot of other building remnants away from the fort with information signs that would take a while to walk to and read about.  We rode past most of them, then walked through the fort. Here’s Ryan in the fort:

Here’s Debi getting up close and personal with one of the four 12 inch mortars.  These guns are huge (some of the biggest ever made).

The fort is actually pretty smartly designed.  The mortars are behind massive concrete walls, making them invisible from the sea.  They could easily fire out (though they never were fired at enemies), but it would be hard to spot them.  You can also walk on top of the fort, which is covered with foliage to hide the fort. Here’s Debi on top of the fort with one of the many gorgeous beaches in the background (that’s not even a named beach):

We continued our bike ride up to North Beach, but since we’ve been there a couple times we turned around and biked back to the park headquarters.  The entire trip, with our side adventures, took about an hour and a half is all.  We put the bikes back on the car then drove to East Beach and pulled out chairs and books to lounge by the beach for a bit.  We originally tried our secluded spot pretty far down the beach, but the flies were pretty bad.  So we moved back to the completely abandoned beach (literally, by 7:00 pm there was not a single person there), and read for a while.  Here’s a shot to advertise for Florida:

This is literally one of the nicest beaches in the US and we had it to ourselves.  Yes, we’re lounging, but what you can’t see in the picture is what we’re reading: Debi’s reading a book on Biomedical Ethics for a book chapter we’re working on and Ryan is reading When Prophecy Fails by Leon Festinger on his handheld.  The perfect way to end the day.  Do you need any more motivation to come visit us?

The last couple of weeks of school were packed with grading and other activities. We are now finished with those responsibilities and have started our “summer of research” (some people get “summers of love” or “travel summers;” we get “research summers”!). We have enough research projects to keep us busy for two summers, but we’re going to do our best to get as much research done as possible.

But life isn’t all about doing research… Okay, the tenure clock is ticking, so it is all about doing research! But all research and no play makes me… go… insane! So, I insisted that we schedule a few fun activities amidst the 12 hour research days (literally, we wrote them into our calendars). Yesterday was our first fun activity. We biked the Gandy Bridge that connects Tampa and St. Pete. The walkway/bike path is actually called Friendship Trail Bridge (sounds so inviting, doesn’t it?). The bridge is about 2.6 miles and is the old Gandy Bridge for vehicular traffic. It was converted from car traffic in 1999 and is now open only to walkers, runners, bicyclists, rollerbladers, skateboarders, etc. Having crossed the Gandy Bridge via car a number of times, I’ve seen the Friendship Trail Bridge and thought it would be fun to bike across it. I mapped out some of the key points in Google Maps. Here are a couple of helpful pictures. First, here’s the Gandy Bridge (the thin strip at the top is the Friendship Trail Bridge:

Here’s a close-up of the parking area:

And here area a few pictures of us there. First, here’s Debi on the west side of the bridge, advertising water bottles:

Here’s Ryan sporting his summer hair-do:

If you look close in the above picture you can see some buildings in the background; that’s downtown Tampa.

And here’s Debi on our way back over (headed east),

We were biking the trail for exercise, but we were also chatting about our research as we went and didn’t push ourselves. At our pace, it was about 20 minutes from one side to the other. The great thing about the bridge is that there is no concern of cars; your biggest concern is hitting other people. But the bridge was not busy at all and everyone there was friendly. There is one hill towards the east side where the bridge rises up to allow boats underneath, but otherwise it is flat and perfectly straight.

If you’re looking for a great place for a jog or to get a little exercise during a trip to Tampa/St. Pete, this is a very scenic place to do it.

Aside from our biking adventure (we’ve got another one penciled in for next Wednesday), two of my aunts (with their husbands) came to visit us this last Saturday. One aunt and uncle, Al and Norma Liston, were serving an LDS Mission on the LDS ranch in Florida (Deseret Ranch, of course). We kept talking about going over to visit them, but with how busy we were, we never did get over there. But, as loving relatives, they decided to come visit us. Another aunt and uncle, Helen and Ray Johnson, were in town to visit them and drive home with them. So, they came over to Tampa (the ranch is near the east coast of Florida) on Saturday, arriving at 1:00, just after our commencement finished. It was great to see them and spend the afternoon with them. We took them to Fort de Soto’s North Beach, the same place we took my dad when he came. We now have quite a collection of beach chairs, beach towels, and beach umbrellas (hint, hint) - enough for all six of us to sit comfortably in the shade and enjoy the beach while we caught up. We had a great time.

After the beach we headed to Rouen Thai for dinner. There was an unfortunate, relatively minor accident on the way into the restaurant (one of my aunt’s skinned her arm when she tripped on a parking block - I still feel bad about that as I almost caught her), but we had a great dinner (Rouen Thai is awesome and they were very accommodating). We then drove up Bayshore Boulevard and stopped at the University of Tampa to show them our campus, which is very beautiful. By that time it was getting late and they had to get back across Florida and home. Which leads me to my funny story…

My aunts and uncles are super nice and very knowledgeable in their respective areas of expertise (one is an electrician, the other builds homes). But they aren’t particularly tech savvy. They bought a brand new GPS unit for their trip home driving across the U.S. to Utah. It’s a Mio unit and it’s very nice. But, they weren’t exactly sure how to work it. They plugged it in and figured out how to put in an address and used it to get from their place, literally just miles from the east coast of Florida, to mine, just miles from the west coast. They called about 10 minutes before they arrived and told me that they were on Martin Luther King Blvd. and about 22nd street. That wouldn’t be unusual except I-4, the freeway that runs east/west from one coast to the other would have taken them right passed that area. It sounded to me like they got off the freeway early, but I didn’t really think much of it.

Having only been to Fort de Soto once, I wasn’t 100% positive of how to get there, but I was positive that we could take I-275 most of the way. So, I directed my uncle who was driving to get on I-275 then pulled out their GPS unit and plugged in the address for Fort de Soto. It took me a minute to get used to the new unit, but I figured it out and told it to plot us a course to the beach. Right away it told us to get off the freeway. That seemed really odd to me as I knew the fastest way to get there was on the freeway - my GPS unit (a Garmin) told me so last time. I figured maybe it was trying to route me a different way, but I wasn’t convinced, so I ignored the unit and told them where to go. Even so, I left the unit on and it continued to tell us to get off the freeway at every possible exit. After about 15 prompts to get off the freeway it dawned on me that maybe there was something wrong with the settings of the GPS. I started flipping through the screens and eventually found the setting that I was looking for. Apparently the Mio allows you to choose your method of travel: taxi, car, big rig… and walking! The default setting on their GPS was “pedestrian.” The reason it was telling us to get off the freeway was because pedestrians are not allowed on the freeway and it thought we were pedestrians. Apparently it’s pretty common for pedestrians to do 65 mph (come on, Mio, how hard can it be to figure out when someone is a pedestrian and when they are not?). I was glad I figured it out, but then it dawned on me what had happened earlier: My relatives had driven all the way across the state of Florida on back roads because their GPS thought they were pedestrians. That’s why they were not on the freeway when they called. I felt kind of bad telling them, but they were cool about it and we all had a good laugh!

We had our first familial visitor last weekend. My Dad was in Orlando for a carwash convention and made a side trip out to Tampa (about 1 1/2 hours away). He and a colleague of his spent the night then we took them out to Fort de Soto. Debi and I had never been but had heard a lot of good things about it. Fort de Soto’s North Beach was recently chosen as the #1 beach in the U.S. Unfortunately I forgot to take my camera, so this borrowed photo will have to do:

It’s an amazing beach, and that’s not all there is to see/do there. There is, in fact, a Fort, too, along with a great bike trail. The best part - the only cost is the tolls to get there - about $0.85. The sand is remarkably fine and there is a lot of it. We’ll definitely be going back.

On a different note, if you’ve been following Ben Stein’s movie-making efforts with his anti-evolution flick, Expelled, you should check out this NYTimes review, which I think does a great job of summarizing the film. (Update: eSkeptic has even better reviews.)

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As luck would have it, the latest space shuttle launch coincided with our spring break. The only thing I really, really wanted to do upon moving to Florida was see a shuttle launch in person. So, when I saw a chance for us to go observe a launch, we jumped at it. Given it is our spring break, we decided to turn our trip across peninsular Florida into a day-long excursion.

We left Tampa around 11:00 and drove to Lake Wales, FL to see the Bok Tower Sanctuary. Our neighbor lent us a book of one gas tank trips from Tampa and one of the attractions listed in it was Bok Sanctuary. It’s basically a really nice garden with a unique tower. The tower sits on the highest point in peninsular Florida (we’ve been to the highest point in Florida, Britton Hill). We weren’t sure what to expect, but were very pleasantly surprised.

On the way in to the Sanctuary you drive through miles of orange trees. Everyone knows Florida is famous for oranges. Now I know where they grow:

You can also see the tower in the distance:

It costs $10 per adult to enter the “sanctuary,” but it is worth it. You walk through the visitor’s center, which has a museum and video, then you can wander around the gardens, all the way up to the tower. It’s actually a carillon tower, which means it has bells and plays music. We arrived around 12:45; the first concert of the day starts at 1:00. We walked around in the gardens while the music played and snapped photos. It’s very picturesque, with all sorts of foliage and even some swans.

This is the tower from the far end of the reflection pool.

Here’s Ryan behind the tower.

Here’s Debi pretending this is a friendly swan (it kept inching closer and trying to take a piece out of our legs).

These last two are kind of cool. Calvin Coolidge dedicated the sanctuary in the 1920s. Apparently, while he was there, he and his wife planted palm trees. There was no mention of this in any of the information in the park, but as we walked around, I saw these plaques indicating which palm trees they had planted. I’m standing next to the one planted by President Coolidge; Debi is by the one planted by First Lady Coolidge (I apologize for the gendered titles, but they are what they are):

We spent a good couple hours at the sanctuary then headed out to find another local attraction - Spook Hill. That same guidebook suggests this attraction. As an inveterate fan of the obscure, I thought it might be cool to find some sort of local optical illusion - a road that is situated such that gravity seemingly pulls you uphill. I’m sure there are places like that around the U.S., but not this time.

It took us a good 30 minutes just to find this place as the signage around town is terrible. I was beginning to think that the mystique surrounding Spook Hill was actually that there is no Spook Hill - it’s just a myth and you drive around trying to find it, which makes it “spooky.”

(This actually gave me an idea that I thought would be kind of fun if you live in a small town - come up with some weird “attraction” that you think people would actually go out of their way to see. Then go out around your town and put up signs with arrows and names that send people in a very large circle around town but never actually send you to an attraction. Then build a web page talking about how amazing this attraction is. Once you start getting hits, go see if people start showing up and follow them around, laughing. Okay, that’s mean, but it would be funny.)

We eventually found the place and then busted up laughing. Remember, the whole idea is that your car is supposed to role in such a way that it is spooky. You might think that means rolling in the direction opposite of what you would think. You would be wrong. I was so disappointed I filmed the whole thing (well, Debi did while I ran through it).

After watching several other people fall for this ridiculous attraction, we decided we’d had enough and left. Final word: Spook Hill is the dumbest thing attraction I’ve ever visited. Don’t go!After wasting an hour at Spook Hill we headed toward Titusville to set up camp and watch the shuttle launch. We arrived around 5:00 pm and found there were already about 50 people camped out at Space View Park. Many of the front row spots were taken, but we found some that were not and set up camp. I had researched online the best places to view the launch. Without spending anything, Space View Park is the place to go. But it fills up fast. We got there at 5:00, almost 10 hours before the launch, and barely got a front row spot. By about 10:00 pm people were stacking up several rows deep. By the actual time of the launch there were probably 800 to 1,000 people in the park (and it’s tiny) and people were backed up quite far. We knew we had time to kill, so we brought Scrabble and Stratego to play while it was light then had books and games on our handhelds to keep us entertained. We also brought blankets and pillows and got in a couple hours of sleep.Amazingly, the launch went off without a hitch (a first in a long time) and I got this footage.

I actually filmed it in hi-def and am happy to share that footage with anyone interested (it’s still grainy until ignition because it is so dark, but once it lights up, the picture is amazing). It was a very cool launch, even though it was short-lived. The shuttle took off, lit up the sky, then disappeared into the low cloud cover. It was just a cool event.We waited a while for the traffic to clear out, but we still ended up getting stuck for about an hour. We got home around 6:00 am and crashed for a few hours before starting the day Tuesday.

Overall, I’d say Florida is pretty freaking cool! Bok Sanctuary is amazingly beautiful and the launch was awesome. Spook Hill should be nuked, but you can’t win them all.

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This was a pretty boring day, really… Or, at least it seemed so at the time. We took my rental car back to the airport in Newark then flew, without incident to Atlanta. But that’s when things got a little weird. I noticed on a TV in the Atlanta airport huge blackouts in Florida. We weren’t home yet, but I was wondering what was going on. I didn’t see the details before we boarded. We taxied out to the runway and were about to take off when the captain came on and told us the flight controllers in Tampa had just put our flight on a 1 hour delay. We ended up sitting on the tarmac for an hour waiting for the go-ahead. I was wondering if the blackout was connected to the flight delay.

We eventually took off and everything seemed fine until we got pretty close to Tampa. Then we hit the turbulence. I’ve been on some pretty turbulent flights, but this one was great. We must have dropped quite far one time because I heard screams, moans, and vomiting (not sure if it was dry or not). It got pretty wild for a few minutes, then the captain came on the speaker again and informed us that we were circling about 20 miles away from the airport as it was getting hammered by storms at the moment. We could see the ominous black clouds enveloping the entire coast. So, we circled for about an hour waiting for the storm to pass.

Turns out the blackout was a mechanical issue in the power grid (and human error); the flight delay was the storm. No connection. We arrived safe and sound. Home, at last.

Oh, and we have a small garden started. We have snow peas, tomatoes, basil, and cucumbers growing. Florida…

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