UDT/SEAL Museum, Fort Pierce, Florida 2019

As I write this chapter, we are sitting in Hermosa, South Dakota, just south of Rapid City.

We have driven a long way since our last Blog chapter but that is because it is more fun to be out driving and looking at amazing things than it is to sit in this chair and get you caught up, but here we go.

After the Flagler Mansion, we drove a short distance north to a campground near Fort Pierce, Florida so that we could visit the Navy UDT/Seal Museum.

After the start of World War II, it was quickly determined that the only way to defeat Adolf Hitler's armies that had captured all of Europe was to directly assault the European Continent and take it away from them.

The Allied Forces decided that the invasion would begin with an assault on the beaches of Normandy, France.  The problem was that the Nazis also figured that would be a good place for the Allies to invade so they prepared very complicated defenses along all of the French beaches to counter any Allied attack.

Some of these defenses were passive obstructions to impede the Allied landing craft and slow the establishment of a beachhead from which to begin the Allied assault.

These passive obstructions were meant to impale and sink landing craft and prevent tanks and other armored vehicles from getting to the beach.

Something had to be done to determine what types of obstacles were present and figure out a way to defeat them.

It was decided in June 1943, to establish the Naval Combat Demolition Unit (NCDU) training school at Ft. Pierce, Florida.

This new demolition unit took volunteers from the Navy Bomb and Mine Disposal School and from the Navy Civil Engineering Corps. and Naval Construction Corp (Seabees) and began intense physical training to weed out anyone that couldn't meet the physical qualifications necessary for the upcoming mission to the beaches of France.

This harsh training is given credit as the beginning of the infamous “Hell Week,” a period of intense instruction that remains a fundamental component in modern-day Basic Underwater Demolition/SEAL (BUD/S) training program. 

By the end of Ft. Pierce training there was an overall attrition rate of 65-75%, much like it remains today in BUD/S.

After completing their training, these newly minted "Frogmen" were sent to England where they transferred to ships and were then taken close to the shores of France.  There, under cover of darkness and horrible weather, they transferred to smaller boats that took them close to shore.  Then, they slipped into the water and swam to shore, all alone except for their swim buddy.  They were armed only with a knife and a slate tablet and pencil.

Once they arrived at the beaches, they snuck around in the dark, mapping the obstacles as well as testing the density of the sand to determine if the sand would support tanks and trucks that needed to be brought to shore.

After completing their recon, they swam back out to sea where they were recovered by the small boats and returned to their ships where final plans were made for the invasion.

On the day of the invasion, these same heroes would precede the landing craft, swimming to the beaches to blow up the obstacles so that as many landing craft as possible could make it to the beach.

The plan worked and that is a small part of the reason we  speak English and not German.

The Underwater Demolition Team Frogmen also played a very large part of the beach landing preparations during operations in the Pacific theater as well.

The museum explains the beginning of the UDT/SEALS and then has numerous displays of equipment.

This was a large, fast attack boat that would carry a large number of SEALS and their gear into very shallow water.



Helm area

Team seats.  You can tell by their construction that they are made to absorb tremendous shock from the high speeds and rough conditions these boats operate in.

Fast underwater deployment vehicles







We learned that Suzie's head is too small to be a SEAL

This museum did a very good job of explaining why we need to have people ready to fight and it really makes you wonder where they find such men!

Our trip continues and we will write about more amazing places soon,

Tom & Suzie

Here we go again . . . Flagler Mansion 2019

We are on the road again for our annual winter travels.  

Our first visit took us to Palm Beach, Florida where we visited the Flagler Mansion.  

Many of you know that we now call Marathon, Florida our home and since moving to the Florida Keys, we have grown to greatly admire Henry Flagler, who was one of the main people responsible for opening the Florida Keys to everyone by building the Overseas Railroad from Miami to Key West in the early 1900's.

Henry Flagler was the original partner with John Rockefeller and together they founded Standard Oil in 1870, back when oil was just beginning to be recognized as a commodity of great value.  It made Rockefeller and Flagler rich.

When in his 70's, Flagler brought his first wife to St. Augustine, Florida from New York City because he thought the warmer winter climate would be helpful to her failing health.  In 1888, while in St. Augustine, he built the first of many of his large hotels in Florida, the Hotel Ponce De Leon. 

Mr. Flagler eventually had 3 huge hotels in St. Augustine and began to realize that expansion south to still warmer parts of Florida would be a good project for his later years in life.

Web photo of Hotel Ponce De Leon

Web shot of Hotel Alcazar

Web shot of Hotel Cordoba

As you can tell from the web shots of his St. Augustine hotels, Mr. Flagler didn't mess around once he started a project.

Eventually, Mr. Flagler's wife died and he remarried, only to have that wife quickly succumb to mental illness and require institutionalization for the rest of her life.  Their marriage was annulled.

A third wife was acquired and thrived with Henry, also enjoying his love of Florida in the winter. 

As a wedding present, Mr. Flagler took his new wife to Palm Beach where he built her a new home for them to enjoy during the times they fled cold New York City in the winter.

We were able to take a self guided tour of his winter home.  The tour included hand held wands that provided a room by room narration of the sights we were seeing.

The tour starts at the entryway just inside the front door.  Mr. Flagler wanted your first impression of his home to be grand and it is.

To get a feel for the size of the entry room, the red arrow in the picture points to Suzie!

Mr. Flagler felt that since his home was being built in what we now call the "Gilded Age," it should demonstrate all of the finer things that mankind had developed to that point and be presented in a manner that could continue as a museum after he was long gone.

Mr. Flagler brought in many talented craftsmen who were able to create amazing details to the walls, ceilings and doors as well as all of the woodwork.

The preceding picture of a ceiling panel is all hand carved 3D images that are then gilded with thin pieces of gold foil.  The detail was amazing and every ceiling on the first floor of the mansion was covered in beautiful detail like this one.

The library was another huge room that defied proper photography.  It was very dark and cozy and masculine.  This is where the men would come to discuss business or smoke cigars.

Next to the library was the music room.  The women could meet here to discuss the topic of the day, play cards or listen to music.

The room was equipped with a very large pipe organ which was the rage of the day and a supreme status symbol.  

You can't have an organ without someone to play it so the Flagler's had a full time organist that lived year round at the mansion, just so he would be available if someone wanted to hear some organ music.  This is really significant because the Flagler's only spent  6-8 weeks a year at the Mansion. 

This is one of the chandeliers in the music room with the pipe organ on the wall in the background.  Notice all of the intricacies of the ceiling.

The pipe organ has 1, 249 pipes and has been electrified so you don't have to push the pump pedals to play it.

No, Suzie is not on the phone, she is listening to the guided tour wand.

As we continued through the mansion, we were amazed that Mr. Flagler built such a huge structure.  We eventually came to the ballroom.

It is the second largest room in the mansion and is over 3,200 square feet.

It must have been a real exciting time to receive an invitation to one of the gala events.

Elaborate ceiling at the entry to the ballroom.

We continued the tour for over 2 hours and were only allowed to visit a fraction of the 75 rooms in the 100,000 square foot mansion.

Dining room

Breakfast room

Drawing room where Mrs. Flagler could entertain, read, or knit.

Master bedroom

Master bath

Several of the many guest rooms.

The full-time staff of cooks, maids and servants all had quarters on the second floor, away from the guest rooms.  They were much less fancy than the guest rooms but still large, clean and functional for the times.

We didn't get to visit the third floor but there were additional bedrooms there where the servants of the guests to the Flagler Mansion were housed.  They were not as fancy as the Flagler staff quarters.

Outside was a beautiful palm coconut grove that is the only remaining coconut grove from which Palm Beach got its name.

We enjoyed our visit to "Whitehall,"Henry Flagler's winter home in Palm Beach and would recommend a visit there to anyone that travels to the Palm Beach area.

We appreciate everything that Henry Flagler did to help develop Florida and make it our home.

Our travels continue and I will try to find rainy days to complete the next chapter of the blog.

We hope you are having fun out there and please keep us posted on what you are up to,

Tom & Suzie

The trip continues: Cabot's Old Indian Pueblo Museum

As many of you know, we leave our home base in Marathon, Florida in the wintertime to get away from all of the snowbirds that flock into the Keys for the nice warm winter weather.

When we leave, we try to find somewhere less crowded and warm.  We always end up in Southern California around Thanksgiving or Christmas to spend time with the parts of our family that still live there.

This Blog has a tendency to lag behind our current location because we don't have time to prepare it while we are traveling across the country exploring.

Because of that delay, we are never anywhere near the location of the current Blog when you finally get to see it.

Currently, we are in Las Vegas, Nevada.

Today's chapter of the Blog comes to you from our visit to Desert Hot Springs, near Palm Springs, California.

We stopped in Desert Hot Springs to visit an RV park we found on Passport America  ( https://www.passport-america.com/members/membership-rates ).  This campground offered Passport America members 50% off the regular rate so we decided to stop here and explore the area.

Our Roadside America App 
( https://www.roadsideamerica.com )told us about Cabot's Old Indian Pueblo Museum and away we went.

When we arrived at the Museum, we saw a large adobe building with lots of interesting artifacts surrounding it.

We went to the gift shop/ticket sales and bought tickets for the tour.  While we were waiting for the tour to begin, we took a few pictures outside.

Signs around the property explained why this amazing looking place happened to pop up in Desert Hot Springs.

It turns out that in 1913, Cabot Yerxa moved to the then undeveloped area and staked out one of the first 160 acre homesteads in the area.

The problem was that the area he staked out didn't have any water, and this being THE DESERT, water was necessary and hard to find.

Several times a week, Cabot would have to walk 7 miles each way to the train station located at 7 Palms on the dirt path that lead towards what is now Palm Springs.  

At the rail station, he was able to load up his containers with a few days worth of water and then he would head home to continue to develop his homestead.

On one occasion, he spoke to a local Indian who started teasing Cabot about how far he was walking to get water.  When Cabot told the Indian that this was the closest water, the Indian told him that the great Indian ancestors passed down stories of great underground springs right near where Cabot was building his cabin.

Cabot went home and using a pick and shovel started digging a well, hoping to find water.  To his surprise, he didn't have to dig very far and he found water.  There was only one problem. . . . . the water was so hot you couldn't touch it ( 132º ).

When Cabot told his Indian friend about his discovery and the problem with the hot water, the Indian suggested that Cabot dig a second well a short distance away.

Cabot trudged seven miles home and started digging again.  It wasn't too long before he again struck water . . . . . this time the water was cold.

It seemed like a miracle.  Not only did he now have hot and cold water.  The water didn't have the usual sulphur smell of hot spring water and was odorless and tasteless.

It wasn't long before word got out and soon the area around Cabot's homestead was called Miracle Hill.

Years later, geologists would discover the San Andreas Fault and determine that it ran right through Cabot's property, causing a displacement of the earth in such a way that the underground aquifers were both heated and cooled right where Cabot dug his wells.

As Cabot roamed around the desert, he began to collect anything he found laying around.  He would then bring it back to the homestead and incorporate it into his building projects.

This included old telegraph poles, discarded railroad ties and cables from abandoned mines in the area.  It was all then creatively wound into the homestead.

You have to remember that this is the desert where the summer temperatures can easily reach 110º to 120º so shade was important and just about anything that could provide shade had value.

Cabot also utilized the insulating properties of adobe style brick to build his structures.

The foot thick walls helped keep the summer heat out as well as the winter cold.

Cabot had a secret recipe for his adobe.  Instead of just mixing local dirt and water, placing it in a mold and letting it dry, he would add a handful of cement to each brick.  This made the finished product much more resistant to the occasional flooding downpours that had a tendency to wash away traditional adobe homes in the area.

After a few minutes of looking around outside, the tour guide rounded up the 12 visitors that would be taking the tour.  She told us that the reason the tour size was so small was that even though the the home was 4 stories high and over 5,000 square feet in area, each of the rooms were so small that only one small tour group at a time could enter.

As we began the tour, the tour guide also told us that we would not be allowed to take any pictures once we were inside.  

Bummer!!

The tour wound us through several of the 65 doors that led to some of the 35 rooms which were lit by light through over 150 different, hand made windows.

As you can see from the above photo, there are over 30 different roof levels.

The tour guide spoke to us for the entire hour that it took to tour the portions of the house open for visitors, only stopping every once in a while to take a breath.  She really had a lot of information and I will try to only hit a few of the highlights.

Cabot was born in 1883, and when he was 14, he began working and saving all of his money.  At 16, he told his parents he was heading to Alaska to get rich during the gold rush.

Before he left, he filled up 2 big steamer trunks with cigars and chewing tobacco.  When he got to Alaska, he found out that mining for gold was really hard work so instead, he rented a small storefront building and started selling the tobacco products that he had brought.  

Soon, he rented out the front porch to a barber and another vendor for more than he was paying for rent and that was when he discovered that he was an entrepreneur.  

He never went back to mining but made a fortune anticipating and supplying the needs of all of the miners.

Eventually, he left Alaska and ended up in the desert, where he filed homestead papers.  He was 30 years old and would continue to build on his homestead until his death in 1965 at the age of 81.

I was only able to find a few pictures of the inside of his home on line.

The rooms were small and often dusty if they were on the ground floor.  That is because the floors there were dirt.  Cabot left the floors dirt as part of the air conditioning system.

After he discovered both hot and cold springs, he piped the water to the home and had hot and cold running water.  Every morning and throughout the day in the summer, he would wet the dirt floors.  As the day progressed, the water would evaporate, helping to cool the house.

He would also strategically open many of the 150 windows, depending on which way the wind was blowing.  He would open the downstairs, upwind windows and the upstairs, downwind windows to create a natural forced air ventilation system.

He also installed roof access hatches that allowed him to sleep on the roof when there were cool evenings and also allowed the hot air to vent.

Cabot and his wife were also very talented artists.  The house was filled with interesting bits of art.

This hand carved statue was almost 5 feet tall and depicts how some people speak out of both sides of their mouth.

There were also more interesting things outside.

He had a very accurate weather machine.

There was also a statue carved by Peter Toth, which is one of his 74 big Indian heads located in all 50 states and Canada.

This statue was carved out of a log, and it was pretty tall.

43 feet tall!!

One final interesting note is that Cabot Yerxa died in 1965 and shortly after his death his wife moved back to her family in Texas, abandoning the house.

For several years after that, the house was unoccupied and was slowly stripped of many of the furnishings and artifacts that were left behind.

Eventually, it became a real nuisance as a party and drug house for the locals.

That is when the City of Desert Hot Springs decided to tear it down.

One local man objected to the City's plan and moved into the house, preventing its demolition.  Eventually, the City was able to force his eviction and after removing him, sent bulldozers to level the place.

At the last minute, many locals surrounded the property, refusing to yield to the City and its bulldozers.  Finally, through negotiations, the City changed their minds and a Foundation was formed to restore and maintain the property.

We really enjoyed our visit to the Cabot Indian Pueblo and if you are ever near Desert Hot Springs, try to find the time for a visit.

Oh, I guess by now you know that Cabot Yerxa was the founder of the town of Desert Hot Springs.

Try to get out there and explore our Country and please stay in touch,

Tom & Suzie