Thalatta Estate

Today's mini adventure was to check out the Thalatta Estate.  

         

It's a 1925 Mediterranean-Revival house on a long piece of land that ends in Biscayne Bay.  The Deering Estate is it's neighbor to the north.

The place is set up as a venue for weddings and large parties.  No playgrounds here!  Odds are I'll never go back there again, but I am glad we finally stopped in to check it out.  The fact that there's a cache there didn't hurt, either ;)  Though the house there is pretty cool, I just couldn't get any decent picture of it.

What was more fascinating to me was the house immediately next to Thalatta...That place is HUGE!  I remember Hurricane Andrew pretty much tore it to shreds and I'm glad that it's been fixed up...but for all the times I've seen it, I have yet to see any signs of life there.  There is a running fountain up the front steps, and what appears to be an awesome pool out back...but no cars, no people, no nuttin'.

Right across that canal is where we put our kayak in to go over to Chicken Key.  This area is known as Snowden's by the local oldtimers and I was happy to see a bunch of teenagers jumping off the bridge there today.  It's tradition - you jump and jump and jump until the cops come and run you off.

Overall, I'd say Thalatta would be a nice place for a wedding.  It has a killer view of the Bay, but it is severely lacking in shade and I HATE the fact that there is no mention of the home's history or anything anywhere that I saw.  But I give the Village of Palmetto Bay 2 thumbs up for preserving it.  Much nicer than a bunch of cookie cutter homes or condos, that's for sure.

The End of a Fantastic Era

From NASA...

Thu, 21 Jul 2011 05:18:04 -0500

At 5:57 a.m. EDT, space shuttle Atlantis landed for the final time at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center after 200 orbits around Earth and a journey of 5,284,862 miles on STS-135. It was the 25th night landing, the 78th landing at Kennedy and the133rd landing in shuttle history. Atlantis’ main gear touched down at 5:57:00 a.m. followed by the nose gear at 5:57:20 and wheels stop at 5:57:54 a.m. At wheels stop, the mission elapsed time was 12 days, 18 hours, 28 minutes and 50 seconds. The STS-135 crew consisted of Commander Chris Ferguson, Pilot Doug Hurley, Mission Specialists Sandra Magnus and Rex Walheim. They delivered more than 9,400 pounds of spare parts, spare equipment and other supplies in the Raffaello multi-purpose logistics module - including 2,677 pounds of food - that will sustain space station operations for the next year. The 21-foot long, 15-foot diameter Raffaello brought back nearly 5,700 pounds of unneeded materials from the station. A post-landing news conference at Kennedy is planned for 10 a.m. on NASA TV and http://www.nasa.gov/ntv. The participants will be Bill Gerstenmaier, associate administrator for Space Operations, Bob Cabana, Kennedy center director, Mike Moses, space shuttle launch integration manager, and Mike Leinbach, space shuttle launch director. Since STS-1 launched on April 12, 1981, 355 individuals from 16 countries flew 852 times aboard the shuttle. The five shuttles traveled more than 542 million miles and hosted more than 2,000 experiments in the fields of Earth, astronomy, biological and materials sciences. The shuttles docked with two space stations, the Russian Mir and the International Space Station. Shuttles deployed 180 payloads, including satellites, returned 52 from space and retrieved, repaired and redeployed seven spacecraft. STS-135 was the 33rd and final flight for Atlantis, which spent 307 days in space, orbited Earth 4,848 times and traveled 125,935,769 miles. A welcome home ceremony for the astronauts will be held Friday, July 22, in Houston. The public is invited to attend the 4 p.m. CDT event at NASA's Hangar 990 at Ellington Field. Gates to Ellington Field will open at 3:30 p.m. The ceremony will be broadcast live on NASA Television.

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List of Must Do's

I have been working on a Bucket List of sorts...places I want to see in Florida before I move to Pennsylvania.  Of course I'll be back to the Sunshine State often, but I just feel like I need to do some of these before I officially leave.


-Visit the ancient monastery of St. Bernard de Clairvaux Church.  The oldest building in Florida, and even the U.S., I believe.
- Float in a tube down the Ichetucknee.
- Go to St. Augustine again. It's been years!
- Explore Hatchbend again.  I'm literally related to probably the whole town.  Good to go there and get back in touch with my Southern roots before I head north!
- See Thomas Edison's house in Ft. Myers.
- Visit KSC again.  Have to.
-  and YES, do the whole Disney thing!  I can count on one hand the number of times I've been there, so it still holds magic for me!
-  Stop by the Billie Swamp Safari and Ah-Tah-Thi-Ki Museum.


That's it for now, but it is a list in progress.  Any ideas or thoughts on other places to see or things to do?


Thank SophieMae...Cross Creek and Morikami Gardens, too!

Let's Visit The Deering Estate

Saturday was a free admission day to the old Charles Deering Estate.  I hadn't been there in years so we decided to check it out.

Charles Deering's brother, James, built the magnificent Vizcaya further north on Biscayne Bay.  This place is not nearly as ornate and extravagant as Vizcaya, but certainly has it's own charm.

Looking out the back door of the house, this is what you see...it sure must've been nice to wake up to that each day!

The house is not really furnished completely like Vizcaya is.  It was virtually destroyed by Hurricane Andrew, so I imagine a lot of things were lost.  Besides, I believe the place was still owned by the Deering family at that time, so who knows really what original things were still in the house.

Below is the dining room.  I love the bookshelves!

This was the only painting hanging on the wall that I knew who the artist was.  

The doors look like wood in the picture, but they are copper.

Right next door to the "Stone House" is the "Richmond Cottage".  It appears to be used mainly as a place for the "resident artists" to hang their works.  No furnishing inside, but it is still cute.  I could definitely see myself living in that place!

My favorite room in the cottage.  

The grounds of the estate are have yielded some very important archaeological artifacts.  The Tequesta used to live there and many tools and fossils have been unearthed there.

Out back is the old carriage house.

All in all, I'd say we had a good day, but it would've been more interesting if we had gotten in on one of the guided tours.  If you're ever in Miami and want to see something more than the beach, I recommend taking a drive down Old Cutler Road to the Deering Estate...it's just fun to imagine what it must have been like to live there a hundred years ago.

Geowoodstock IX

July 2nd was the 9th annual Geowoodstock.  This year it was in Warren, PA, so I knew we HAD to go!  Because of a last minute flight cancellation back in January, AirTran had given me 2 free roundtrip tickets which I decided to use for Sam and myself to fly up to Pittsburgh.  Sam hadn't been up there in 2 years, so he was overdue for a trip.

The first night there, George took us on a nighttime tour of downtown.  We rode an incline down to the city, which was lots of fun.  The picture below is really bad, but I think you can get the idea of how beautiful it is at night.

On our way to Warren, we stopped at a park that had a small lake in it.  We all had to go into the water up to our knees.  Doesn't sound like much, right?  But let me tell you, that water was FREEZING!  And there were BABIES in it!!!

We decided to stay in Ludlow which is less that 20 miles from Warren...this is where we stayed:

The Olmsted Manor was built in 1917.  It is a beautiful place, full of fine, old furnishings and gorgeous landscaping.  We had the place to ourselves, too!  There was a Steinway in the living room, fireplaces in every room (too hot to start 'em, though!), stained glass windows, a grand oak stairway, oriental rugs everywhere...kinda creepy, but very cool.  I think my favorite room was the kitchen.  It was bright an cheery. Modern yet had the most wonderful old stove!  I've decided I want one.  Bad.

Entrance to the driveway (sorry for stupid blogger not uploading the picture right).

Here is a little tour.  First, the Dining Room.

 (Blogger is making me MAD. These pictures were oriented right side up, but when I uploaded them here, they got laid down and I can't seem to fix them. SORRY!)

This is that stove. Isn't it great?

The entrance.

The main staircase. Let's go up!

 This was our room...

Our room had the neatest little sun porch with a bed on it.  After the kitchen, this was my favorite room!  I could imagine spending hours sitting there reading.

 This was Sam's room...

The bathroom is Sam's room was beautiful...the colors and layout of the tiles, the half circle shower...very nice.

 This was a creepy little "servant's room" down the hall from us.  For whatever reason, there was an old teddy bear propped up in a chair.  It was creepy. Trust me.

Now this is where the trule creepiness begins.  When we first got there, I went through all the rooms in the house taking pictures.  The one below was of the bedroom next to ours.  Not a good picture as I've blown it up.  See, that bed is made perfectly, right?

The morning we left, I again went through all the rooms.  I noticed in the room above, that in the bathroom, there were 2 towels on the floor.  Had they been there before?  I couldn't remember.  I picked them up and they were dry, as was the shower.  Strange, but whatever.  Then George calls me to come look at something...

 He asked if I'd messed up the bed.  No.  Maybe Sam did, to mess with us.  No.  I though that maybe it was possible to have not noticed it before.  I didn't realize at the time that I had taken a picture of it a couple days before.  You can imagine how we all reacted when I looked through my camera later and saw that I DID have a picture of that bed and that it WASN'T MESSED UP!

NOTE:  WE WERE THE ONLY PEOPLE STAYING IN THAT HOUSE THAT WEEKEND.  NO ONE ELSE WAS THERE - NO STAFF OR ANYTHING!

Hmmmm.....George had stayed there before, and although nothing had ever happened to him, he had heard other people talk about strange things...being pushed, blankets being pulled off them, etc.  I wonder if all the incidents happened in THAT bedroom?

 Just some random shots of the grounds around the house, "Olmsted Manor".

 A labyrinth across the street.  It's nice, but George can make them much better than that.

 GEOWOODSTOCK!!!  Trust me, this doesn't even come close to showing how many people were there.  Last I heard, it was over 5,000!

Ana made this her 5000th find.  I would've burned if I hadn't told her to look at her sign.

 Off in search of caches!

 Saw this street and had to get a picture of it for my friend, Heather, who's caching name is "Blueye"!

Fresh bear print...YIKES!  Can you see it?

Back in the Manor...there is a bowling alley up in the attic.  Very cool and very old!

Off to Niagara Falls!  we made a pitstop at Kinzua Dam...amazing with awesome views.

Niagara Falls!  The view from the Canadian side is better, but without passports, Sam and I couldn't go across the bridge.  Still a pretty amazing view.

 Hello, Canada!

That's the top edge of one of the Falls...I'd hate to go over that in a barrel!

 My guys!

(again, not a great picture, but I like it)

I have a few other picture that are still on my phone.  I'll try to post a couple of them later.  Now it's time to get off the computer and start cleaning the house!  After that, we're planning on going to the Deering Estate.  They are offering free admission today. Hopefully it won't be too crowded and I'll be able to get some pictures for here and my "Remembering Old Miami" blog.