The Florida Mom & Son Adventure - Day 8

 We had time to kill, and Jacksonville has a zoo. 

Isaac and I showed up at the gates of the Jacksonville Zoo and Gardens shortly after it opened having reserved our entry online.  We took a gander at the map and plotted where we might be able to see stuff that we don’t have around home.  We wandered first into the Amazon Jungle exhibit because – among other things – the exhibit boasted the howler monkey.  If you remember, this was the monkey that was Mr. Douglas Preston’s alarm clock when he was camping in the jungle at the site of the Jaguar City.  It seemed like the appropriate thing to do.  Speaking of Jaguar’s – the Jacksonville Zoo has one of those too.  We arrived at the cage just in time to see it playing with a large, plastic ball just like a big cat.  It would bat the ball around and then run and pounce on it.  We could have watched that for hours.

We had more fortunate animal experiences.  We reached the river otter cage just as a pack of them (6-7) were being let out for the day and fed.  Awesome.  And we reached the gorilla cage just in time for the keeper to scatter apples near the observation windows.  There was a momma gorilla and her newborn so we got to see the little guy as he held on while mom grabbed lunch.  She was very protective of him - even about pictures. Each time I raised my phone to snap one, she would turn her back so the baby was sheltered.  Animals truly are amazing.  We took an obligatory tour through the Wild Florida exhibit to see all the different kinds of snakes, fowl and lizard creatures native to the area – yes, there were alligators.

There was a bamboo forest so we walked through to take another listen.  We discussed and analyzed how there are different bamboo sounds – some squeaky and some clackky (to use the technical terms).  We hypothesized that the difference was due to the age of the trees.  This theory sounded logical, so we didn't explore further.  In a garden by the river, there was a huge octopus sculpture made out of plastic trash.  It is astonishing, and a little gross, when you see it all there in one spot.  And then there was a bottle tree.

We had heard about and seen a replica of a bottle tree in the museum of Mississippi history.  There was a sample in one of the displays.  This one at the zoo was up close and personal - we could really examine it closely.  We learned that bottle trees have been a part of southern culture for a very long time.  African slaves brought the tradition with them into the United States placing empty bottles on crepe myrtle trees.  Crepe myrtles are everywhere in the south.  Learning to spot them was another skill we acquired at Bellingrath Gardens.  

Essentially, a bottle tree consists of colored bottles hung on the ends of the branches of a dead tree.  Some gardeners use actual dead trees - the one at the zoo was of this variety.  But I've since learned that sometimes people will purchase metal replicas of trees and add the bottles.  The effect is interesting, arresting and - depending on the color of the bottles - very pretty.  The sun glinting off the glass makes the trees sparkle and the colors pop.  At the museum, we learned that the trees are more than just decoration.  They exist in an effort to ward off evil spirits.  The hope is that the spirits, while wandering around and creating mischief at night, will find their way into these bottles and get stuck.  Then, when the sun rises the next morning – the evil spirit stuck inside the bottle will be destroyed.   Sounds like a good plan to me.

We ate a tasty lunch in the zoo cafeteria and then headed back to hang out with Sam for the afternoon.  We had another long and terrific visit.  Sam played us some of his music compositions – two in particular were very good and only need lyrics.  We discussed video games and how Sam was doing in his tournament.  I learned a little about how to cast things to your television from your phone and we spoiled the Granddog - Snoop.  As promised, I made Bounty Rice for the boys for dinner.  It’s a large dish so there were plenty of leftovers for Sam to eat on for the rest of the weekend.  We ended the very pleasant afternoon shortly after dinner.  After hugs all around, Isaac and I went back to the hotel so we could rest up for an early trip to the airport and long day of flying.

The Mom & Son Florida Adventure - FINAL DAY (Saturday, April 24)

I’m tagging this day on to the prior blog because essentially – we got up, checked in the rental car and hopped the flight home from the Jacksonville airport.  We landed in Tulsa, found our way back to where the Traverse was parked in the garage and headed back to the residence hall.

With that we concluded a terrific journey full of memories, grand stories and good discussions.  It was a good, long and needed break.  Home is an interesting concept.  Many of us grow accustomed to thinking of home as a physical place.  But ‘home’ is really so much more.  The great poet and truth teller Maya Angelou defines home as ‘the safe place where we can go as we are and not be questioned.’  Sitting in the apartment in Florida surrounded by my boys – I was home.

The Florida Mom & Son Adventure - Day 7

 Today was a driving day.  It was time to return to Jacksonville to spend the rest of the week with Sam.  We woke up, checked out of the hotel and headed back north. 

In between Jacksonville and Orlando is a quiet little beachfront town called New Smyrna.  It’s located just south of the more famous Daytona Beach and situated almost exactly halfway between our two points of destination.  And what – you might be wondering – is in New Smyrna that makes it remotely interesting to the Hicks family?

New Smyrna happens to be the location of the Bob Ross ArtWorkshop and Gallery.  It was opened by The Man Himself in 1992 and it has a large collection of Bob’s original paintings.  You can take classes at the property to learn to paint in the Bob Ross style.

The Hicks’ – all four of us – are big Bob Ross fans.  So we could not.  Could. Not. Get that close to New Smyrna and not go check it out.

We took a stroll around the outside of the room where the paintings were hung.  There were several on the wall I remember seeing on the show.  We bought a magazine all about Bob Ross to take home to Ross.  We chatted with the young man running the place – he was appropriately friendly and probably gets this kind of drop-in a lot.  He gave us some tips for the best place to view the ocean while we were in town.  And we left.  All in all we were there about 10-15 minutes.

We were really glad we didn’t make a special trip just to visit the studio.  But it was a nice break in our drive back to Orlando.  We were also like 4 minutes from the Atlantic Ocean.  So we popped over and took a look. 

It was cold and windy.  We did observe how the locals ‘do’ public beach.  It’s similar to how the northern folks ‘do’ ice fishing.  They drive on out there, park and set up shop out of the backs of their vehicles.  That, I can get behind.  After taking a few quick pictures and looking around – we walked back to the car and our venture back to Jacksonville.  We also decided that the two of us are not the beach people in our family.  We'll let Ross and Sam take that honor and wear it with pride.  Isaac and I will stay in the hotel and keep the sand from off of our feet and out of our shoes.  Unless of course the point of the day is to go to the beach.  In which case, I will come properly prepared with a book.

In the car, we had decided to try out Malcolm Gladwell’s Tipping Point.  Isaac was enjoying it, “This is interesting - it’s about trends,” he said.  The book discusses the anatomy of what makes a trend happen.  What is the point where something that starts small 'tips' and becomes something that is huge.  As an initial example, he talks about the Hush Puppy shoes comeback in the mid 1990s.  He boils his theory down to the three necessary ingredients or agents for change.  Interestingly enough – Malcolm compares this phenomena of the 'tipping point' with how epidemics occur.  One of his examples was the Spanish Flu pandemic.  Talk about sensing a ‘trend.’  This is a perfect example of what I love about life – coincidence, chance, God Winks, serendipity - whatever you want to label it.  It’s fascinating how things sometimes just all work together in chorus.  

I love it when it happens.

We got to Sam’s around noon and woke him up again.  We told him we would go check into our hotel and be back to give him a little time to adjust.  When we returned, we all piled in Sam’s truck and went to the grocery store to load him up.  I shopped for the ingredients for Bounty Rice which I promised I would make the boys for dinner the next evening.

After we put up all the groceries and got everything stowed away neatly, we sat and visited for a bit.  That evening, Sam was busy tournamenting again – so on a tip from Bill Spiers, Isaac and I headed out to the Seafood Island Bar and Grille in the San Marco historical district.  It was a cute neighborhood – kind of reminded me of the area over by Hatman Jack’s in Wichita.  The food was really good – we got the Captain’s Platter so we could have plenty of leftovers to bring back to Sam.

Then it was back to the hotel for a quiet evening, movies and sleep.