JACKIE ROBINSON HONORED cont.

After posting the original story I still was pondering this pic.  Since the sun had already set, the lovely sky (above) had darkened considerably thus enabling an exposure with sufficient latitude to reveal detail in the foreground where the lightness of the field lights more closely approximated the lightness of the sky.

Again, the photo was taken with my Samsung Galaxy cell phone, hand held from our bleacher seats.

JACKIE ROBINSON HONORED

By Major League Baseball in historic Florida ballpark

It was on April 15, 1947 when baseball great Jackie Robinson broke the color barrier in modern, Major League Baseball.  That milestone was celebrated for the second annual time this week at the Vero Beach, Florida facility, Dodgertown, where the then Brooklyn Dodgers held their spring training for many years.

Pro teams from nearby St. Lucie, FL (NY Mets) and Melbourne, FL (Milwaukee Brewers) engaged in this memorial game this April 15th with St. Lucie prevailing after a grand slam home run in the second inning sealed their ultimate victory.

Nearly 6,000 local fans were on hand for this soon to be classic celebration.

Robinson did spring training in this very facility every year he played in the major leagues and the Dodgers prepared for the season here until they moved West in 2008.

Fifty years after he became the first modern, black player, major league baseball retired his number 42 from every team in baseball; the first player ever so honored.  Robinson died in 1972.

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Photo by the author; with a cell phone camera *Gasp*

  

FOX LAKE SANCTUARY--
Where Prescribed Burns are Beneficial and Geocaching is Welcomed

We were geocaching in this 2,568 acre preservation land just days after a prescribed burn.  That's Sue (in pink) walking a trail past this area of burn.  This trail is a tiny segment of the 7 miles of hiking, horseback riding, kayaking and mountain biking trails in this bountiful conservation area.

This sanctuary is part of the Brevard County, Florida EEL program--working to preserve Environmentally Endangered Lands.  The county also contains the Kennedy Space Center on Florida's East coast.

Population growth tends to fragment natural areas and this program preserves and sometimes recombines what is left.  The fragmentation also tends to reduce or eliminate natural forces--like lightning induced fires-- that have over eons of time helped create the areas we enjoy today.

Composting organic waste creates a marvelous byproduct well known to gardeners.  Think of fire as being an accelerated form of composting.  Initially, it makes a soot-blackened mess but, soon, very soon, fire, acting as a rapid mineralizing agent, produces natural fertilizer and new growth will appear to have spilled from the intense green of an artist's palette.

Long periods between fires also allow combustible material to build up thus creating the possibility of even more dangerous fires.

Firebreaks can be natural like a river or are man-created perimeter areas vacant of combustible material that contain the fires in their intended area like the one shown below.

Note the luscious green growth on the left of the firebreak while the acreage on the right appears ravished extending high in the background trees.  Within weeks with adequate rain the fire damage will escape notice except upon close examination.

Sue is following Greg and Leslie Cornet, our geocaching partners, as we worked our way to some caches in this huge area.  Turns out, a cache we were seeking, which was part of an event known as the Space Coast Geo Adventures Trail, had been destroyed by this very fire.

The cache also is likely to enjoy its own version of a regrowth soon.

FOREVER FLORIDA!

A web search for the above name for this popular Florida attraction will take you to a page where it trumpets itself as a thrill pack of adventures in zip-lining, horseback riding and motorized coach rides.  Ho hum.

But, believe me it is all of that and more.  A lot more!

On our visit we did the "motorized coach" attraction and promptly encountered horses enjoying rainy-day pastures of immense freedom; horses that were the direct descendants of their Spanish ancestors from the state's colonial period and before.

We intruded on mama alligator and three of her offspring (red arrows).  See the yellow vertical stripes.  They were very much in their wild habitat.  We humans were properly confined to an elevated platform on a smooth-running but clunky looking swamp-type vehicle being piloted by an extremely knowledgeable and just as friendly lady naturalist, Leslie (right).

  

We chugged our way, bouncing merrily over rutted tracks winding through thousands of acres of pristine natural habitat known as the Allan Broussard Conservancy.  

"The mission of the conservancy is to preserve and protect the fragile eco-systems of Florida's native wilderness to provide a permanent protective habitat for wildlife, to maintain the historical ranching operation and to educate the public about the importance of conservation and the preservation of our unique ranching heritage."  

We rambled through hundreds and hundreds of acres of active ranch land then crossed a magical divide into a wilderness of 3,200 acres of undisturbed natural ecosystems: longleaf pine, wiregrass and palmetto flatwoods, slash pine and sable palm flatwoods, dry and wet prairies, scrub cypress domes, a variety of hammocks, a blackwater creek and sloughs.

We enjoyed seeing this whitetailed deer lounging in her piece of tranquility.

We enjoyed the exquisite horsemanship demonstrated by this very patient equine while the rider cracked her whip so intensely its tip broke the sound barrier and left the cloud of vapor in the foreground of her head.

We disembarked from our jitney and wandered into our own sense of Nirvana via a hammock with indescribable, natural solitude.  Where Leslie...

...put scholarly meaning to the raw beauty of Florida Forever.

Please stop by Saturday and see this young equine lady who was then suffering a "bad" hair day.  She is part of our story on Florida Forever, a terrific attraction near Orlando which carries the meaning of tourist "attraction" to an entirely new level.

Please enjoy our account of a 4,700 acre facility which has the mission of preserving the native, natural, unblemished eco-system that we know as the state of Florida; where I learned a reddish colored lichen is evidence of air quality of the highest order.

...where, while we didn't see any, the elusive Florida Panther, roams a range his ancestors from antiquity would recognize with enthusiasm. 

A MUSING OF A GERIATRIC ADOLESCENT--

I saw an automobile recently with Ohio antique auto license plates.  It qualified for that lofty status by being more than 25 years old.

I soon will be 75 years old.

Wondering, by Ohio BMV standards, what that makes me?
 

PHOTO POTPOURRI--

The Grassy Waters Preserve near West Palm Beach, FL is the setting for the first picture above.  We were in the process of logging an Earth (Geo) Cache there in the company of Brad and Wendy Smart from the Syracuse, NY area.  Sue is in the yellow Capris (left), and Wendy's hubby is pondering a lunker Largemouth Bass in the background.  The Smarts winter in VB and are potential geocaching enthusiasts.

The pier at Venice, FL is the setting for the second photo.  That's Sue on the left and long-time friend Pat Haas, now of Punta Gorda, FL looking for fossils and shark's teeth in this shelling hot-bed on the Gulf coast side of the state.

Note the apparent difference in water color; rich blue's to the left and right with a green hue dominating under the pier; all in the same body of water.  Naturally all that water is the same color but the blue is perceived as a reflection of the sky while the pier is blocking the water's view of the sky.  Obviously things are not always as they appear.

 
We wrapped up this evening with dinner on the rooftop of Punta Gorda's downtown Wyvern Hotel.  This is a view northbound along US 41.  Southbound this highway rumbles through Ft. Myers then swings East to Miami enjoying the name Tamiami Trail as it sluices across the Everglades.

We also welcomed Pat to the ranks of Geocaching this day.  She participated in finding 2 conventional caches and two Earthcaches on her inaugural outing.

For you photo enthusiasts, all three of these pictures were done with a *Gasp* cellphone.