Lake Wales, FL

Ah, wedded bliss! At least that is how I feel; Barbara’s mileage may vary. This is our 8^th wedding anniversary and we celebrated by driving to Lake Wales, FL to have lunch at Chalet Suzanne and walk the Bok Tower Gardens.

Chalet Suzanne Inn has been around since the 1920’s and is currently operated by third generation owners. Looking at the photos on the wall and in the scrapbooks as you enter it has been a must stop for decades for politicians and celebrities. There is a grass strip on the property and is a popular fly-in destination. During the Gemini and Apollo space programs the astronauts would fly over from the cape to eat. The restaurant even canned soup for the moon missions. It is now available at the restaurant as “Moon Soup”.

The interior of the restaurant certainly shows its heritage as it expanded in starts over the years. The bar is a quaint dark enclave, and the “round room” were we dined with a view of the lake had a dark paneled ceiling so low that I could not stand up straight.

After lunch we drove over to Bok Tower and enjoyed walking through the gardens while listening to the three o’clock carillon concert. If you are visiting central Florida this might be worth a stop. Built in the 1920’s by a Bethlehem Steel industry executive, the gardens and carillon offer a stark contrast to the central Florida citrus country. They occupy the highest point of land on the Florida peninsula and the foliage has matured to provide considerable shade and protection for the sun’s heat.

Barbara has caught on to the geocaching trend and found her first cache while we were walking the grounds.

Withlacoochee State Forest, FL

We have been on a few weekday trail rides with the Orlando Jeep Club, but today was our first weekend run. These weekend events are usually bigger and, like this week, frequently include camp outs. We elected to just show up Saturday morning for the official ride since it was a rainy weekend. We split up in to two groups of ten to twelve jeeps each to cover separate sections of the forest.The part of the forest we were riding in is the Citrus Wilderness Management Area.

We had ruts.

We had mud.

And more ruts.

And, in between, a little bit of smooth sailing.

 

Barbara Takes On Winter Garden SWAT

Barbara and I enjoy our YMCA membership. When I saw they had a self-defense class offered I signed us up not knowing it was evidently a women’s class. I was the only guy there. We had fun and Barbara learned a few things that will keep me from pissing her off anytime soon.

Barbara is shown here taking on the mugger (a Winter Garden PD SWAT member & instructor). While it does not show, he was taking a pummeling that would have caused a mugger to think about finding someone else.

Sorry for the fuzzy pictures, but they were taken by someone else on their phone and sent by SMS.

Hardrock Off-Road Park, Ocala, FL

Barbara and I spent Wednesday at the Hardrock Off-Road Park in Ocala, FL. I had just finished installing a 2.5” suspension lift and wanted to try it out. Since our Orlando Jeep Club just happened to have a trip planned to the park we were all in. This facility is not large at somewhere around 39 acres, but it has varied terrain. With Florida’s highest point at just over 400’ you can’t expect too much, but there is quite a bit packed into this small space.

We had about ten jeeps in the group. Most were newer Wrangler JK’s, but there were a Liberty and Commander in the mix. We represented the older TJ versions pretty well, and right in there, doing everything the newer jeeps were, was a stock 1958 Willy’s. Pretty cool!

The hills were not too long, but very steep. Having a Rubicon model with locking differentials allowed us to easily handle the steep hills, and the Rubicon’s 4:1 geared transfer case allowed us to come down the very steep descents fully under control. It was a great confidence builder for our upcoming trip out west. 

All shots, including video, were from the iPhone5. We were surprised at how well the phone managed to dampen the shakes in video mode. Sorry, but one video is all I could stand trying to upload. Took way too long. I need to learn to post to YouTube and post links instead.