Integrity Cruise

Day 266 - In Ft. Myers, FL

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Day 266: Tuesday, January 17th: This morning we walked the ž miles to the Edison-Ford Winter Estate, Museum and Laboratory. This is the place where Thomas Edison built his winter home and laboratories. A few years later, his close friend Henry Ford built a home next door. The two men collaborated on many ideas and projects and were very close friends.

Later, during World War I, Harvey Firestone, Edison and Ford formed a company to develop a way to make rubber from native US plants. They built a self-contained laboratory on the estate.

So today the property is home to both the Edison and the Ford homes, Edison's guest house, gardens, rubber laboratory, museum of both Ford's and Edison's notable achievements and miscellaneous out-buildings (like the garage and swimming pavilion).

On the grounds we saw this life-size statue of Edison in front of a Banyan tree Ford gave him. Today the circumference of the roots is over 400 feet.

Then as our tour started we passed this giant Bougainvillea plant - about 25 feet high:

One other remarkable tree was this one. Its label said it is a Mysore Fig tree; it had some very strange roots:

There was a breezeway between Edison's main house and the guesthouse. This is the main house:

..and this is the almost identical guesthouse:

The fireplace inside the home was unique in that it had a "warmer" compartment in back and water heating pipes along the brick liner to heat the rooms:

The house had several of Edison's inventions in it. One was this highchair that converts to a stroller. Edison owned over 1,000 patents on such devices:

Royal Palms line the pathway between the Caloosahatchee River in back of the properties and the rear door of Ford's winter home. Edison had miles of these palms imported to Fort Myers and planted. Hence the moniker "City of Palms":

There were a few antique Fords in one of the outbuildings, including this 1917 Model T truck. It is all original except for the front right tire:

The rubber research laboratory was impressive. It was 100% self-contained. If they needed something, they made it. Sorry for the bad light:

By the way, that is the 6000th picture we have taken on this trip. Imagine how many of them we threw away!

The museum could take a day all by itself to view thoroughly. This is one exhibit of Edison's early phonographs:

We wearily walked back to the boat and got ready to go out to dinner with Ruth's brother's wife's brother (Lewis) and his wife (Debra). We had happy hour as Bill described the Great Loop route to them:

Here is a better picture of our guests:

We drove to a favorite restaurant of Lewis and Debra's and had a delightful dinner. All in all, it was a very fun and interesting day!

Position tonight: N26 38.488 W081 52.580

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