Hot, Sunny and dry!
Had a couple of odd jobs to do this morning. Lyn bought a quilt rack the other day which is a little large for travelling. Luckily it was screwed together, and came apart easily to pack flat.
Having done that it was time to change the igniter on the BBQ. When the original one died I replaced it with an el-cheapo ebay one. This one still sparked but the rubber push button had cracked. The warranty replacement one I received was the wrong type, but I figured I could make it work. While sorting through the parts I put a battery in the old igniter, pushed the button and was greeted with 22,000 volts across my finger! Reinstalled the old one and tried to fire up the BBQ. Now the gas wouldn’t turn on. The valve had been stiff the last few evenings, now it had seized! Off with the valve, unscrew every screw I could find, put it back together, check there were no parts left over and check it out, we now have a spark and we have gas, put them both together and we now have a working BBQ
After lunch we headed north a few miles to a place we had been planning to visit since we arrived, Bok Garden. It is situated atop Iron Mountain, one of the highest points in Florida and THE highest point between Washington DC and the Rio Grande! The garden is just that, a garden spread over one square km, built in the 1920’s by Edward Bok – a publishing guy with way too much money!
The flower gardens were amazing, and by keep putting off the trip we arrived at what appeared to be peak bloom time.
The other item of interest in the garden is the”Singing Tower” This is a 205ft tall tower with a 60 bell carillon at the top. While we were there, there was a live concert of the bells. Each week-end an expert carillonist (a new word meaning one who plays the carillon) plays for an hour or so. On one side of the tower was a huge sun dial, nothing too unusual in that other than it was the first one I had seen with graphs underneath to convert the sundial time to standard time, i.e. accounting for the fact that each revolution of the earth is not exactly 24 hours.
After wandering around the gardens we headed back down the road to the base of the mountain and headed home via the gas station. Thanks to Col G in Libya diesel has gone from 3.36 to 3.66 a gallon over the last 3 weeks…… not impressed.
For those interested Iron Mountain is a staggering 291ft (two hundred and ninety one) above sea level !!!!!!
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