Travels in the 2nd half

  You might not expect to find a museum dedicated to Salvador Dalí in St. Petersburg, Florida, but you would be wrong. And St. Petersburg has Albert Reynolds Morse and Eleanor Morse to thank for it. Photo by Ebyabe vis wikicommons Reynolds Morse (1914-2000) was an Ohio industrialist. Reynolds and his wife Eleanor (1912-2010) purchased their first Dalí in 1943. Together they became consistent collectors of his work. In 1971 they created a museum for their collection in Beachwood, Ohio, near Cleveland. Their gallery was in a building at their industrial plant. In 1980, the city of St. Petersburg approached the couple and offered a new home for their museum. Originally in a warehouse near the city’s waterfront, in 2008 St. Petersburg commissioned a new building. They hired Yann Weymouth to design the new home for the collection.  Today, The Salvador Dalí Museum is home to over 1500 paintings, watercolors, drawings, and other artifacts. It has more recognized Dalí masterpieces ...

  Like most of Florida’s coastline, the Pinellas Peninsula is lined with small islands or keys. Near the City of St. Petersburg, these islands offer beautiful beaches, some history, and, of course, resorts. Fort DeSoto Park Fort DeSoto Park covers five keys at the southern tip of Pinellas Peninsula. It sits at the main channel into Tampa Bay, so the site played a key role in several wars fought by and among the United States. The keys were used by the Union Navy during the Civil War to help anchor the blockade of Tampa Bay. In 1898, during the Spanish-American War, the local governments in Tampa and St. Petersburg were worried about being invaded, so they petitioned the federal government to build a protective encampment at the mouth of Tampa Bay. The fort was never fully enclosed by walls, so the only structure left is the poured concrete embankment that offered protection to the Laidley Battery, a collection of eight 12-inch mortars, of which four are left today. Fort DeSoto was...