Enjoying Florida by Motorcycle

There is a lot more to Florida than beaches and big cities. We reconnected with our Florida motorcycle friends this week, and spent much of our time riding the back roads of central Florida.

Fran and Patti know so many places to ride, and always find an interesting place to have lunch.

Paul's Diner in Wauchula, is one such place.  Every meal starts with a big bowl of homemade soup.

Central Florida has miles of citrus groves, 

Several varieties of row crops - this field is sweet peppers.

And many cattle ranches.  On a tour of Babcock Ranch one year, we learned that there are more cattle in Florida than in Texas.

We interrupted breakfast for this flock of vultures on our ride Sunday.

We stopped for lunch at Solomon's Castle

where they have a great outdoor dining area and even live entertainment.

This is a very popular bike ride - our group was 8 bikes.

Here we are on the side of a country road taking a short break.

We hated to end our ride at lunch time, so the very hardiest riders continued from Solomon's Castle to Anne Marie Island.

The Lutheran Church on Anne Marie Island has a big Osprey nest on the top of the spire.

Pierre and Nicole

Real and Lisle

Bob and Rosemarie

Fran and Patti

Ron and Rosie
All made the whole trip - starting in Englewood, heading into the middle of the state to Solomon's Castle, back to Anne Marie Island, and then down Longboat Key to Sarasota.

It was a lovely day in Southwest Florida in November.

Inside Solomon's Castle

We headed out early this morning for our planned ride to Solomon's Castle with our new motorcycle friends, Patty and Fran.  Even at 9 a.m. on another beautiful SW Florida day, we could ride without coats.  When we stopped to pick up some other friends of Patty and Fran, Ron and I also ditched our helmets.  We are so accustomed to riding with helmets in Georgia and Washington, that we rarely ride without them.  However, it could be addictive!  There is nothing like the feeling of wind in your hair even when it leaves it in a hopeless tangle.

Jerry and Monique had just taken delivery of their new bike, and it is a beauty!  They are from Quebec, the bike is made in Quebec, but it is much less expensive to buy it in Florida.

Our caravan included four bikes and one car.  Nine adults and two children all headed out for the castle.

Fran is an excellent guide as he knows every road and how they interconnect, so we were able to take mostly rural back roads and still go in a pretty straight line to Ona, where the castle is located.

Howard Solomon, the owner and artist responsible for all the amazing art both inside the castle and out, mingles with the guests.

Waiting for our tour to start.

 Every piece of art is made of some recycled material.  Many are put together from tiny pieces of discarded wood, like the large piece in the middle, and the one to the left on this wall.

 These animals are all made from old wire coat hangers.

 The chair in the corner is made entirely from beer cans.

 Lots of famous paintings have been reproduced using metal, wood, and assorted other materials.

 The painting in the middle is a Norman Rockwell cover for The Saturday Evening Post.  If you enlarge the picture, you will see the original cover to the right of the art piece.

 This dragon is made from oil barrels.

 Notice the toenails of the elephant - clam shells.  Tusks are manatee ribs.

 The artist and his wife's living quarters.  They have two rooms that they rent out - we didn't see those.

 Back door.

This is the only "Plane Wall" in the house.  The tour is really interesting and worthwhile, but every single piece of art comes with a punny name, which is almost painful at times.

Motorcycle Ride to Solomon's Castle

We met some other motorcycle riders last Saturday and Patti and Fran told us about a neat ride to Ona, Florida, to Solomon's Castle.  We originally planned to ride with them to see the castle today, but they had unexpected visitors and had to beg off.  So I went on line last night and found an address and directions using MapQuest. I printed the directions, and about 10 a.m. this morning, we headed out under cloudy skies with the temperature hovering near 80, for the middle of Florida.

Most people think of Florida and see beaches, Disney World, Epcot Center, and the big cities of Jacksonville, Fort Lauderdale, Naples and Miami.  However, the interior of the state is something entirely different.  Lots of cattle ranches, saw palmetto jungles, orange groves, tomato and sugar cane fields, and swampy ground.

This longhorn steer, like most cattle, has his own cattle egret.

The miles of orange groves mean lots of big trucks on the main roads filled with oranges.

That are hauled to this big orange juice facility

We ended up taking an extremely circuitous route to Solomon's Castle, because we missed our first turn onto County Rd 661, and found ourselves on 661A (definitely not the same road!) where we wandered around in a orange grove maze for quite a long ways.  We came to several dead ends before we finally popped out onto the real 661, still about 20 miles away from our destination.  Since we had gone about 95 miles, we were determined to find the castle, and suddenly, we saw a timeworn sign where we could barely make out the words "Solomon's Castle" and finally knew we were on the right track.

It's kind of hard to tell what it is constructed from because the entire exterior is sheathed in what looks like a heavy tinfoil.  All of the windows are lead glass, created by the owner over the years.  

We never took the castle tour because we are still planning to go back with our new motorcycle friends this coming weekend, and have saved ourselves for that.
Here is the article I found about it on line before we went:
Roadside America Story about Solomon's Castle which gives some more information about the owner and how it all came to be.