Photo A Day #199 Coral Castle, Miami Florida

These road trip photos are becoming few and far between, with so much else going on here, but I promise I haven't forgotten and I'm itching to squeeze them in whenever I can. I have to admit, the main reason I wanted to drive all the way down to Miami was to visit Coral Castle. It looked like such a fascinating place, it was on the must-do list for ages! We had a great time, but far out, it was a stinking hot day, and barely a smidge of shade to be had. But we persevered and explored every nook and cranny of Coral Castle.

Coral Castle was built in the 1920's - single-handedly by Latvian immigrant Ed Leedskalnin using huge coral (actually oolite, a kind of limestone) blocks carved out of the ground where it was built. Ed would not let anyone assist him with the building process, nor would he let anyone observe his practices. He was a small man, he stood at around 5ft and weighed under 120lb, which makes his physical achievements even more staggering. He claimed to know the secrets of the pyramids and managed to build this structure alone, with blocks weighing up to 27 tonnes. Local teenagers claimed to see him levitating the blocks like hydrogen balloons, but nobody is really sure how he managed to build it.

I'm pretty sure this isn't life-sized, I'm not quite 8ft tall!

Poor Ed had been jilted by his 'Sweet Sixteen' back in Latvia and built the castle for her, in the hope that she might one day join him and they could raise their children there. He carved furniture from the oolite and had all kinds of astronomical observation points. There was even a 'naughty corner' for his future children, I'm sitting in it in this picture below :) It was almost like a confessional box so he could discipline his (theoretical) children with a stern talking to if they got out of line.

The most famous feature is the huge revolving stone door (to the right of the photo above), which rotates with the slightest push. Or it did, until engineers pulled it apart to see how it worked and couldn't put it back together properly (I'm rolling my eyes right now) It stopped functioning a few years later and they tried to fix it again. It still rotates, but nowhere near as easily as it used to. I thought I should share a photo with people in it too... You must think we only visit ghost towns, but we always take photos of places and try to avoid the people in our shots. I hate having photos of random tourists in my photos, is that weird?

Some of Ed's belongings. He had all kinds of tools and inventions that he built himself

So did Ed use supernatural powers, the secrets of the pyramids, magnetism or perpetual motion to build Coral Castle? To this day nobody knows. After our visit, I think it was sheer determination and a LOT of hard work, but it is still incredible to imagine the motivating force that created such an awesome structure. Honestly, if someone said, 'yeah, he levitated the stone', that would be easier to accept, because the hard physical labour involved in doing this boggles my mind. Poor Ed never had the family he dreamed of, his sweet sixteen did not appear and he died after a short illness in 1951.

Seeing this enormous monolith, accepting the fact that Ed moved this alone, without modern machinery makes me feel bad that I huffed and puffed trying to shift my organ a couple of inches today!

If you want to find out more about Coral Castle, you should watch this "In Search Of" episode hosted by Leonard Nimoy (!) It was the first thing I saw about Coral Castle and I was hooked! Part one is below, you can find parts two and three through the related video links.


I'm not going to lie, we played the "In Search Of" theme song as we drove into the parking lot! Loudly. With us singing along! Baaa-baa ba daaaa!!
Kitty
xo

Photo A Day #198 Cat Nurse

So I had my final wisdom tooth wrenched from my head yesterday... Needless to say I'm not quite up to writing a big post today, so I thought I'd just share something from my day... which was spent sleeping a lot! It's O.K. though, I have my nurse on hand should I need anything, Nico has been guarding me like a hawk. Just between you and me, I think she's just pleased to have someone share the day bed with her :)

Yep, I went all instagram filter on that photo. Not my usual style ;) You can find me on the instagram @kittyandbuck if you're so inclined. Did you enter the giveaway yet? You can click on the image below to head on over to the giveaway page :)

Kitty
xo

Photo A Day #197 Just Another Weekend

Why do the weekends rush by so quickly? I am a firm advocate of doing the old switcheroo on the working week. 5 day weekend, 2 days at work. How does that sound? Back to reality, it is Sunday night and I have not a lot to report on the weekend front. I spent pretty much all day Saturday in bed with a room-spinning, nausea-indicing migraine, which is really boring. I remember waking in a stupor and C asking me if I needed anything. I replied that I had been dreaming of trying to choose an ice-cream flavour to eat, and he rushed back in with a non-dreamland, honest-to-goodness real bowl of ice-cream. What a guy.

Today, I pottered in the garden and photographed a couple of DIYs to share with you, one you'll get to see this week. I'll try to spread them out so you don't get bombarded with awesome projects ;) Tonight C and I enjoyed a lovely dinner date, which is something I am determined to do more often. We got dressed up and had a lovely dinner together in a converted library built around 1908. It was a largely unplanned excursion, but very nice and refreshing. Unfortunately I am a doofus and brought my camera sans battery, oops. Grainy pictures courtesy of iPhone at nighttime. I kind of like them though, after a little going-over with photoshop.

I'm off to see The Red Shoes tomorrow night, I won a competition to attend a special screening! It's the first thing I have ever won, I'm pretty excited. I shall report back, The Red Shoes is one of my favourite films and is one of the most notable early technicolor films. It was made in 1948 and is based on a fairytale by Hans Christian Anderson. If you haven't seen it, I highly recommend it, I'll tell you more tomorrow.

I hope you had a fabulous weekend, please share any highlights/random facts below, I love to see what you've been up to :)

Kitty
xo

Photo A Day #196 Florida Part 1

Hi! It's time for another road trip update. I might explain these posts again since I have a few lovely new followers and these have been far and few between lately. You can click on the "travel" tag to get all of the posts from our great road trip if you want to read back over a few. (There's an Aussie Great Ocean Road trip and a few other bits filed under 'travel' too)

Last year, C and I embarked on an East Coast adventure, first taking in Montana and then Niagara Falls. We then hired a car and traveled through NY up to Maine and all the way down to Miami, then across to New Orleans. We also visited Tucson, Arizona, so I could finally see where C grew up. It was an amazing trip and I hope you enjoy my travel photos and anecdotes, we met some lovely (and interesting) people and I can't wait for Round 2! (maybe next year?)

We needed to go to Florida for a few reasons.
1. To visit Coral Castle in Miami.
2. Disney World
3. Harry Crews

I'll get to those later. For now, I'm just going to share something I thought was a lie on tourist t-shirts and postcards, the sunsets! We get pretty amazing sunsets in Australia, but in Florida, just wow. They were pretty spectacular. I suppose it's the ONE good thing about Florida being so flat, there's a lot more sky to admire :) We witnessed every beautiful colour from flaming reds and oranges, to undersea turquoise and even peach. It was really lovely driving and gawking at the beauty of nature.

That's me and my hire car. As you can see, I just got out with my GPS in hand. I was SO excited to see this little fellow, her name is Mimi. By this point in the journey, I was having major cat withdrawals and was getting cuddly with any old stray... Mimi was so tiny, I thought she was a kitten, but no, my cats are just enormous. She wasn't a stray either, she lived next door to our B+B. I don't think she minded the extra attention, and I got some cat cuddle quota filled :)

The next Florida post will be at Coral Castle, you're going to love it, I promise!

Kitty
xo

Photo A Day #195 Sinking into Spring

I recently wrote a post for Blythe Ponytail Parades while Violet was photographing a wedding in Japan, the lucky duck! I have tonnes of photos from my shoot, so I thought I'd share some more with you today.

Since everyone is gushing about pumpkins and fall colour, I decided to lift my spirits by celebrating spring. The Royal Botanic Gardens in Sydney has a Spring Colour exhibition showing, so I wandered down to smell the flowers.

I love going for a walk in nature, even if it is in the middle of the city. There's something revitalising about it. I need to get myself to a park more often, the concrete, steel and glass of the city can really get me down. Thank goodness for these beautiful gardens and their pretty flowers! I'm so happy I live close to nature, one day I hope it's a lovely cabin in the woods where I can while away my days taking photos, playing some music and making silly movies. A girl can dream, right?

Kitty
xo

Photo A Day #194 Paper Flowers

Oh yes, today was a lovely day! I managed to drag myself out of bed early and attend my "Body Attack" class, which is a dreadful as it sounds... When I arrived home there was a huge storm cloud looming overhead, so I decided to weed the garden before the rain fed my out-of-control dandelions and creeping lawn-destroyer any further. After cleaning up, C and I ventured into town for a wander and stopped by a pretty new cafe for lunch. I can still imagine the taste of my fresh fruit passionfruit soda... mmm mmm. We decided to just wander around the city, holding hands and checking out some of the spring colour, including these pretty paper flowers on display in the Queen Victoria Building.

It was so refreshing to have a day to wander, no agenda, no deadlines in front of the computer. This is how weekends should be.

C graciously snapped a photo of me, taking a photo of my feet. I couldn't help it, my shoes matched the tiles brilliantly! You can find that one on Instagram ;) @KittyAndBuck

I insisted on taking C's photo as well! I need some lovely shots for when we're old and wrinkly ;) xox

I hope you had a fabulous weekend, whatever you got up to.
Kitty
xo

Photo A Day #192 Savannah, GA

My goodness, I've wanted to go to Savannah forever (since reading Midnight In The Garden of Good and Evil at school, anyway) and it didn't disappoint. Well, to be honest, at first it did. The GPS was pretty confused and we drove right through town and popped out the other end with no sign of the beautiful squares or architecture I'd read about. We landed in a bad part on the outskirts of town and had to stop to reset our directions, which was a pretty tense moment.

The sign on this building says:

"NO PROFANITY. IF YOU RESPECT YOURSELF OTHERS WILL RESPECT YOU! Management"

We finally made it to our old hotel, where we had been lucky enough to book the last room. While C was exploring the hotel, I did my usual nosy internet research about our lodging and the town. Turns out our hotel was used as a Civil War hospital and was haunted. Like every other hotel in Savannah! I read further and apparently all of the paranormal activity was restricted to our floor. Awesome. Reading on... our room # was the 'most haunted' room in the hotel and people suggested not to stay in that room. Ever. The fact that it was the last room to be booked in the hotel only made me feel more paranoid about it! I'm not a huge believer in ghosts and supernatural activity. I like to believe that there is a rational explanation for everything. I would LOVE for ghosts to be real though, what an interesting world we would be living in. I heard the sounds described online like marbles dropping on our roof and other various scratching noises. It was daytime and I assume it was birds/critters on the roof.

We decided to try some 'local' cuisine as we always do, and were recommended by the concierge to dine at Paula Deen's all-you-can-eat buffet. I'm not sure my weak Australian constitution was quite ready for Paula's Southern Cooking style! One plate each of all-you-can-eat is apparently shameful (the waitress gave us 'that' look) and I was left with a decidedly wicked indigestion! (I did eat both desserts, peach cobbler and banana pie - C's not big on dessert, more for me!) We wandered about town and found all of the lovely squares, what a breathtaking city! Just beautiful, I adore the old houses and streets oozing with history :)

We were heading to New Orleans shortly, but thought it might be more fun (and hopefully less cheesy) to do a ghost tour of Savannah. We found one that was not thrill-a-minute people (extras) jumping out from behind gravestones, but more focused on the real history and stories behind the city. (If you go to Savannah, I highly recommend the Uncensored Zombies Tour with Tobias - it has to be Tobias as the guide! It sounds cheesy but was actually interesting and informative, and not really about Zombies) Tour booked, I headed down to the hotel bar to soak up some of the atmosphere of our historic building. The bartender was from Kentucky and he was an absolute riot! He was bantering with the customers and other bar staff in such a dry, hilarious fashion, it was highly entertaining! I'd never tried a Mint Julep before, but it was essential to have one made by a Kentuckian. I was not disappointed, and I needed some Dutch Courage for our tour ;)

Tobias himself gave me the impression of a slightly weird southern preacher. I'm not sure why, but he was very clean cut but seemed a little.... strange. I'm sure this is an intentional twist on his character, and it made me kind of uneasy from the start. He took us around various sites in Savannah and explained the history and the supernatural events that had been recorded at each place. The real history is sometimes scary enough, without the ghosts! The photo of the cemetery above was in an 'orb' (read: ghosties read: reflections on your lens) hot spot. Unfortunately, no orbs on our shots. Ho hum. The shot below is of an old hospital with Civil War history as well as being home to a women's mental facility. We visited "The Amityville" horror house of Savannah, which was fascinating (and chilling). I won't spoil all of the stories, but Tobias showed us newspaper articles to back up his stories, some of which were fascinating. My favourite story was at the Mercer House, which is featured in Midnight In The Garden of Good and Evil (I highly recommend this book, and if you're not a reader (!!) the movie is also great, with Kevin Spacey playing the home owner Jim Williams, and John Cusack as the author, John Berendt) Tobias shared some background stories about the house and Jim's occult leanings, plus some scary stories not covered in the book or movie, which were fascinating.

As we completed the tour (we lost a few scaredy cats along the way), Tobias offered a drink in one of the nearby bars, but we politely declined, it was almost 2am and we had to be in Miami the next day. I settled into bed but didn't sleep at all, I'm still trying to decide if the agonizing pains in my abdomen/chest that night were from the ghost stories Tobias told us about hags possessing young girls, the Civil War ghosts 'in' our room or the Southern buffet. You decide.

Happy Halloween, a little early, but it gives you time to book tickets for the midnight zombie tour with Tobias if you're anywhere near Savannah!

Kitty
xo

Photo A Day #191 Weekend Flashback - Maggie

This picture of Maggie when she was a kitten pretty much sums up my weekend. Lots of snoozing :) I love how lanky kittens are, and just so you know, she still sleeps like that, with a pillow made from whatever she can find :)

Kitty
xo

Photo A Day #190 Great Ocean Road Part 7

Trying to keep on farm-time, we got up fairly early and had breakfast at the beach we had found the day before. There was a seal playing in the surf, this particular cape is home to Australia's largest mainland seal colony. There was a sea lion playing in the surf just here. but you can't see him with my non-zoom lens, sorry!

We drove down to the very edge of cape and went for a walk to find the petrified forest that we'd heard someone mention. The land on this part of the coast was like an alien landscape. It's very desolate and very windy. We found the petrified forest only to discover that it isn't actually a petrified forest, it is just strange erosion on the rocks. We both felt SO cheated. We'd just trekked over rocky terrain in the freezing wind, only to find that the tourist brochures (and signs pointing to the site) LIED.

We did enjoy watching the wind farm though. Gosh those turbines are strange. It's surreal being in a vast landscape with no buildings around, but these huge man-made wind farms humming away. I can't think of a more perfect place for a wind farm, there was certainly no shortage of the resource!

The Great Ocean Road Trip is almost done... Short but sweet :)

Kitty
xo

Photo A Day #189 Great Ocean Road Part 6

After driving all day, we found a quaint little seaside town with quite a beautiful beach. We asked after accommodation in a few places, only to be turned away. Luckily, on the road in, we had noticed a farm with rooms available, so we drove in to find out if they would have us for the night. I'm so glad we did!

We had our own cottage with a lovely wood fire, and were free to wander the farm as we pleased. The paddock next to our little house had two sheep with 2 newborn lambs which were only 2 days old! They were so darling:)

We went for a walk before the sun set, there was apparently a mob of kangaroos on the property, but we couldn't find them. We did find this beautiful horse though, as well as more sheep, which were being guarded by an alpaca. I never knew this, but alpacas are used to guard sheep because they get really possessive over them. This alpaca gave us a what for when we got too close!

There was also a couple of emus, and we found out the farm used to be an emu farm, and these guys were some leftovers.

Around the back paddock I spotted this skull, it was so beautiful with tufts of grass growing from it and some nice mossy green over the bone. As the sun went down, we headed back to the cottage to warm ourselves by the fire.

Kitty
xo