Thursday, February 18, 2016
We are in Cocoa, Florida (not Cocoa Beach!), east of
Orlando and near Cape Kennedy. We’ll be
here for 2 weeks, enjoying nice weather and waiting for a satellite launch.
We spent the weekend in Orlando at a hamfest (amateur radio
flea market, although they do have some seminars, etc.). The drive from Orlando to Cocoa was typical
interior Florida – untamed scrubby forests
and usually empty grazing fields.
The coasts of Florida are extremely crowded. One city bleeds into another without
breaks. But not very far in from the coast you can find
fields and undeveloped land. Looking at
the landscape and thinking back 50 years, it’s no wonder Walt Disney picked the
middle of Florida for his theme park.
Our current location was chosen for it’s closeness to the
Kennedy Space Center, but it’s been a pleasant park. We don’t have a view, except of other
trailers, but we seem to have a wifi booster on a pole right next to our back
window. We’ve had the best Internet
service we’ve had in the trailer. If we
can’t have a view, we’ll take good Internet.
We’re taking it easy this week, working on some projects
and sorting out stuff in the trailer.
Steve’s done some amateur radio work and I’m rearranging storage so that
we can get Maria’s car seat out of the truck and stowed under the bed.
I didn’t get a chance to write about our trip to Key
West. We went on Super Bowl Sunday,
hoping that might cut the crowds we’d heard about. We also started early; we’ve learned that we
can beat the crowds in most places by going early. Key West was no exception. Parking is limited and can be difficult to
find, but we had little problem finding a spot near the Little White House. We weren’t certain what we should see in our
one day, but chose to do this first and we are glad we did.
Stepping out of the truck, we were greeted by
chickens! Apparently, they are a Key
West icon. This fellow seemed anxious to
pose.
President Harry Truman was the first President to use the
Little White House, but it’s been used by several Presidents as well as other
high-ranking government officials. After
his first 18 months in office, Truman was exhausted. He had only been vice president for about 83
days before President Franklin Roosevelt died.
The war with Germany ended shortly after that, but the war with Japan
was raging. He made the decision to use
the atom bomb to end the war and hopefully save millions of soldiers live.
His doctor ordered rest and the Navy offered the
facilities at Key West. The building that housed the commandant was available,
it was secure and the weather was lovely.
Truman continued to visit throughout his presidency.
The house was used by the Navy and others until 1974,
when the Navy closed that part of the base.
A developer bought the unused part of the base and developed a gated
residential community, signing the Little White House over to the state of
Florida and helping in its restoration.
It’s still available for government use, as needed.
We couldn’t take pictures inside the house and it was
difficult to get a picture of the outside.
Strolling through the gated community around the Little
White House was quite pleasant. Trees
shade the streets and the only pedestrian traffic is dog walkers and tourists
headed for the Little White House. The
least expensive single family dwelling in the gated community is
$1,150,000. You can get a condo for
under $600,000. Without an ocean
view.
We had a nice lunch at a restaurant with an outside
patio.
The weather was fine for me. Steve wore his jacket, as there was a good
breeze. We watched the world go by. And the conch train, which pulled tourists
around town.
The bar on the second floor in the picture advertised
itself as a clothing optional bar. We
did not check it out.
As we walked around town, we found the original
Margaritaville Café. We didn’t check out
the café, but did hit the store next door, where Steve found a polo shirt! White, of course.
After
wandering around for a while, we called it a day and headed for home. Before settling in for the Super Bowl, we
went down to the dock to catch the sunset.
It was a nice ending to a good day.
Deb
Deb
