After lunch today we headed over to see the Carillon Tower here at the Stephen Foster State Folk Culture Center. The interior is quite impressive and houses copies of the some of Stephen Foster's original manuscripts and dioramas depicting some of his tunes.
There were daguerreotypes of Stephen & Jane Foster, a piano owned by Andrew Carnegie and a model of the carillon system.
In the camellia garden near the Tower we found a marker commemorating the organization of the 2nd Girl Scout Troop in White Springs in 1912.
We walked from the Tower over to the Craft Village, unfortunately many of the craft demonstrators weren't there this afternoon, but we did enjoy browsing around the Gift Shop.
After buying some postcards and some local honey at the gift shop, we drove over to the Museum. Our guide around the museum was Pat (dressed in an 1860's costume). There was only 1 other couple with us in the museum tour.
Pat told us about the life of Stephen Foster and the history of the song "Suwannee River" or "Old Folks at Home". He originally wrote the tune about the Pedee River and realized that it just didn't sound right. He tried the names of several different rivers before he settled on the Suwannee. We learned that Stephen Foster never
We learned a lot from our guide, Pat, about the life of Stephen Foster and she dispelled some of the myths about him. He was not a Southerner, he didn't die an alcoholic, and he didn't support slavery. We also learned that he never saw the Suwannee River.
Tomorrow we are going to visit the Stephen Foster Museum, Carillon Tower and Craft Village here in the state park.
According to the brochures for the state park, the memorial to Stephen Foster was suggested in 1931 by Josiah K. Lilly, son of Eli K. Lilly the pharmaceutical manufacturer. Stephen Foster's song, "Old Folks at Home", made the Suwannee River known worldwide and was designated the official Florida state song in 1935. The Florida Federation of Music Clubs adopted his idea and obtained contributions of land here in White Springs, Florida and the park opened in 1950.
The Stephen Foster Museum is housed in an antebellum style mansion which was built purposely to house the displays. This was one of our first sights as we drove through the park on our way to the campground.
Our next sight on the way to the campground was the Stephen Foster Memorial Carillon - a 200 foot bell tower which was completed in 1957. The 97-bell carillon was installed the summer of 1958. It is one of the largest musical instruments produced in the Western Hemisphere and the world's largest tubular carillon in the number of bells. The carillon plays Stephen Foster's tunes daily and can be heard here in the campground.
There is also a Craft Village with several small log houses across from the Carillon Tower with different crafts being displayed and the Gift Shop is also there.
We drove over to Live Oak to the Walmart Supercenter to do some shopping and on our way back through the State Park we took some photos of areas that we missed when we drove through the park on our way to the campground.
We didn't do a lot today. We did take a walk around the campground and looked at the different sites and picked a couple that we would like to be on if we come back here.
We did find out what was wrong with our satellite reception. Mike hooked up a different cable to the satellite dish and we had satellite TV. He is going to put new connectors on the cable he replaced and see if that will take care of the problem with that cable.
I went to the restroom/shower/laundry this afternoon. There are 2 washers ($1 a load) and 2 dryers ($1 a load). After putting in a couple of loads, I went in to take a shower. There are 2 shower stalls in the restroom and fairly large. There is a separate shower for handicapped and it is locked with a numeric key pad. The restrooms and showers are clean and well maintained.
Mike took his shower after I got back from doing the laundry and he said the men's area was the same as the women's.
By the time we broke camp and stopped at the dump station to empty our tanks, it was 11:45 when we left Eastbank Campground and headed south; but it’s only 148 miles to White Springs. We took US 90 east to CR 269 south to CR 270A to I-10 east.
We stopped at the Pilot at Midway to fill the tank in the RV ($2.739 gal). Then we stopped for lunch at the rest area a couple of miles east of Midway. While we were there Mike did his usual walk around and checked the oil in the RV. He told me to come outside and bring the camera. This is what he discovered in the RV engine.
Today we drove over to Tallahassee to visit with Mike’s cousin Dick and his wife Ernestine. We hadn’t seen them in quite a few years. We met their two daughters, Cindy and Debbie, who were there and we had a nice visit. Dick has been ill since the first of the year, so we only stayed for about an hour.
On the way back to Eastbank Campground we stopped at the Camping World in Midway to do some shopping. We bought the 2010 edition of the Next Exit (we had the 2009 edition). We rely a lot on the Next Exit when we are traveling on the interstates even though we use Microsoft Streets & Trips for our trip routing and we have a Garmin gps.
We also stopped at the Flying J to get gas in the Saturn ($2.729 a gal with our discount) before heading back to the campground.
We are leaving Eastbank Campground tomorrow and heading to White Springs, FL to the Stephen Foster Folk Culture Center State Park. We have enjoyed our stay here at Lake Seminole and will definitely come back to Eastbank Campground.
We've been spending our days here just relaxing and enjoying the campground.
Here are a some photos we took of the campground. The campground filled up during the weekend, but by Sunday afternoon the campground was less than half full.
