of days at Disney World. We are really looking forward to going to Epcot Center and Universal Studios. From there we head out to Cape Canaveral to check out the Kennedy Space Center. We hope we can get a look at the last shuttle that went up in March (Discovery). Here I am on the roof on our RV watching it launch on March 22, 2009 --- wow! Isn’t photoshop incredible? I really did get up there to watch it, but I guess we weren’t quite close enough.After Cape Canaveral, we’ll go up to St. Augustine --- the oldest city in the United States. I understand that it is very quaint and beautiful. We’ll be staying at a park near there for a day or two and then go up to Fernandina Beach, on the far northeast coast of Florida. After some beach time, we’ll head up to Savannah and hang out in that ‘ol southern city for a week (I can’t wait!) and then up to another ‘ol southern city, Charleston, So. Carolina. We’ll spend about a week in Charleston and then head up to Myrtle Beach for 3 days for more beach time and then to Wilmington, NC for more southern culture. On our way north, we’ll stop for a few days Delaware to visit my sister, Kathy and her lovely husband Don, at their summer place on the Delaware shore just south of Dover. We’re really looking forward to that!
Just a few notes of fun times since out last blog entry… Fort Myers hosted some great spring break fun on the beach. There were tons of college students here to celebrate and almost as many partying in boats docked off the main beach a
s there were packed up against this outdoor bar and live band spot. It was great entertainment.The last time we drove home from the beach, we decided to take a few pictures of the “Florida” mailboxes. Floridians love their mailboxes. Here are a couple of samples of what we captured on our
camera - a Mermaid and a Dolphin - but there were many more, such as full-size Manatees & huge sea-horses and full size sailors clad in rain coats. These are all over the place down here! 
Pretty entertaining.A good friend of ours from Minnesota visited us a few weeks ago --- Mark Brewster from Lanesboro. He only stayed a couple of days, but we had fun. Here we are visiting the Twins summer training park here in Fort Myers. Brewster is our friend who’s Red Hotel housed our Strawhouse Studios Art Gallery on it’s main (street level) floor in Lanesboro.
I’m going to hand this over to Jeff now for his blog entries on a couple of interesting places we visited in the last few weeks. So --- here’s Jeff… pictured by a bridge in the Koreshan State Park 
Just down the road from us is the Koreshan State Historic Site. My friend Carolyn suggested we check it out mainly because it is so unusual. She was right. We visited the state site on a beautiful Saturday afternoon with our usual open minds, but just couldn’t seem to shake the weird feeling we both had until after we left. The picture above is the "Seven Sister's Plantetary House". Yes --- they were definetely into astrology --- just not the kind we're familiar with.Throughout its history, Florida has welcomed pioneers of all kinds. Cyrus Reed Teed was probably the most unusual, bringing followers to Estero in 1894 to build a New Jerusalem for his new faith, Koreshanity. The colony, known as the Koreshan Unity, believed that the entire universe existed within a giant, hollow sphere. The colony began fading after Teed´s death in 1908. In 1961 the last four members deeded the land to the state. Some of their beliefs include:
Cellular Cosmogony, which is Teed's unique form of Hollow Earth theory which puts forth the idea that the earth, and universe are contained within a concave sphere, or 'cell'.
"The sun is an invisible electromagnetic battery revolving in the universe's center on a 24-year cycle. Our visible sun is only a reflection, as is the moon, with the stars reflecting off seven mercurial discs that float in the sphere's center. Inside the earth there are three separate atmospheres: the first composed of oxygen and nitrogen and closest to the earth; the second, a hydrogen atmos
phere above it; the third, an aboron (sic) atmosphere at the center. The earth's shell is one hundred miles thick and has seventeen layers. The outer seven are metallic with a gold rind on the outermost layer, the middle five are mineral and the five inward are geologic strata. Inside the shell there is life, outside a void." Pretty weird stuff when we now know that man has walked on the moon. The interior photo is a shot from inside Teed's house. Notice the prominent picture of Napoleon on the wall. All pretty strange indeed.Another place we visited was Ave Maria, Florida. This town is a totally planned Catholic Community located about 45 miles from where we reside in Fort Myers. Its centerpiece is an awe inspiring cathedral like church located in the center of town currently under development. Wendy and I visited one recent Sunday and recognized a distinct similarity to the Koreshan experience we had a few weeks earlier. The town is planned for more than 8,000 residential units at build out, as well as many amenities. Amenities are to include a 17 court tennis facility, a golf course, a water park with separate lap pool, resort pool and water park, multiple soccer and softball fields, pickle ball courts, a dog park, an amphitheater, two indoor fitness facilities which will include indoor basketball and gyms, as well as walking and preserve trails and an activities director. The town and university opened in 2007. The driving force behind this development is Roman Catholic philanthropist Tom Monaghan, founder of Domino's Pizza and the Chancellor of Ave Maria University. We both found this place to be a bit unusual (having a contrived, monastic quality) , but they did have some great architecture there as well as incredible sculpture. Here's a photo of an artist working on a sculpture of Ave Maria.
So --- we're off tomorrow morning for more adventures.
Here's Jeff and his altered ego
