>>This program is brought to you in part by the Paul B Hunter and Constance D Hunter Charitable Foundation, a proud partner of WUCF and the Central Florida Community.

>>On this edition of Florida Road Trip, we make a stop at the Home for Live Mermaids at the Museum for the King of the Big Top, and at several spots that, let's say, offer an unusual perspective.

Join us as we uncover the history and the interesting stories about some unique attractions found only in Florida.

Road trip is on the road.

[MUSIC] Hello, everyone, and welcome to another edition of Florida Road Trip.

I'm Buddy Pittman thanks for being with us.

When you think of Florida tourist attractions, the mind naturally goes to Disney, SeaWorld or Universal.

But as we will uncover in this edition of Florida Road Trip, there is much, much more to see in the Sunshine State.

We start our journey about an hour north of the Tampa area at one of the state's original roadside attractions that help make Florida tourism what it is today.

The home of the live mermaids, Weeki Wachee Springs.

>>Weeki Wachee Springs State Park is one of Florida's oldest roadside attractions.

It opened on October 13th in 1947, and it was the brainchild of our founder, Newton Perry.

And he had this idea he wanted to apply the same concept of synchronized swimming or ballet, but underwater instead of the surface of the water.

So he had developed and invented this underwater breathing apparatus, the air hose, which they actually still use to this day.

And it allowed anyone using it to not be burdened with all the scuba equipment in order to breathe underwater.

>>Perry had discovered a group of synchronized swimmers in St. Pete called the Aquabelles.

So he asked them to transfer their on the top of the water skills to under the water.

It worked beautifully and the mermaids became the attraction.

>>One of the things that was really unique about my dad, he always felt like there was more to learn.

He wanted more underwater swimming and the Aquabelles created different moves underwater that my dad really approved of.

And one of the moves was the adagio.

And he says “That's the pose that we want to close the show with.

” That that is just a beautiful way to end.

And it became a trademark.

>>And ever since then, that's when the world famous mermaids were born.

They didn't wear tails at that time in the late forties, even early through the fifties.

But they were still called Mermaids of Weeki Wachee, but they performed underwater ballet to choreographed music, and the park has been that way ever since, it's evolved, obviously, through shows and the addition of mermaid tails.

It wasn't until about the mid-sixties that the mermaid tails came into existence, but people wanted to see the visual of the mermaid, the mermaid tail.

And so that's when the tails were implemented.

But for the past seven and a half decades, the mermaids have performed for audiences all over the world.

>>Dianne Wyatt was one of the original mermaids at Weeki Wachee some 75 years ago.

>>I just loved every minute I was there.

It's all I can say, and I love trying to do something new.

I was very proud of it.

I couldn't explain how proud I was.

It was just a wonderful feeling and still is a wonderful feeling.

We didn't get paid any money, but we did get our lunch.

We got Jantzen bathing suit after so many shows, so we figured that was our we couldn't be professionals, I guess in high school.

I'll never forget it, ever.

And I do dream about it myself quite often because I think it's the most wonderful thing to see.

And as somebody that did it, I still love to go see it.

I just wish I could be back there doing it.

>>Elvis Presley was filming a movie not too far from here.

He was filming a movie called Follow That Dream.

He stopped production because he told the colonel, I need to go see the world famous.

Weeki Wachee Mermaids.

So in 1961, Elvis stopped production and brought his whole entourage to Weeki Wachee, and they performed.

>>When Elvis Presley came, they had to put up extra chain link fences to hold the crowds back.

I mean, it was very, very exciting to have him here.

He was just a very total gentleman, very soft spoken and very respectful of your space.

He - he had brought his current album and he signed each one of us an album and mine said “To Mickey fondest wishes.

Elvis Presley.

” It wasn't all about Elvis.

When Elvis was with you, it was about you.

>>Through the years, the park has had numerous owners.

But in 2008, Weeki Wachee became Florida's newest state park.

>>I never thought when I was 17 years old and I dove in that water for the first time, that I would discover all the mysteries and the magic of the spring because it's there.

It really is.

>>When that curtain rises and you are seated 16 feet basically below the surface and you're looking out on this beautiful first magnitude spring that they used to call the Grand Canyon, it takes your breath away.

But now you throw in these young women who are performing under water.

And there's the magic.

And I think the two combined is what has kept Weeki Wachee in the forefront of tourism for 75 years now.

>>From Weeki Wachee, we continue our journey as we travel east of the Tampa area into Plant City and a place that even to this day, dinosaurs still roam the earth.

>>Dinosaur World was founded in 1998 by Christopher Svensson.

He actually owned a Swedish traveling carnival over in Sweden.

He would vacation with his family over here.

And they loved all the parks, they loved the tourism industry in Florida.

And this location actually used to be Gator Jungle.

So once this went up for sale, he bought it and he started Dinosaur World with an emphasis on, you know, something that's a little different than the bigger parks.

Its fun, it's educational, and it's affordable.

People do travel here to come to Dinosaur World, and they actually have two other parks that are in Texas and Kentucky.

But they really wanted a fun, affordable and easy to access, easy to get through park.

>>Whoa, they have long necks.

>>Here at Dinosaur World, we've got over 200 life-size dinosaurs When they come here, they get to walk among dinosaurs that lived millions of years ago.

So they're able to see these tall life-size examples of the fossils and the creatures that they would see on TV.

So we're able to tie that in to where they can read about dinosaurs, there's information about when they existed, how long they existed, what kind of other animals they existed with.

You know, in other locations they can see fossils and read about them and everything.

But here we want them to see what they look like.

And for a little kid to see a 30 foot dinosaur, it makes it way more fun.

And they don't realize that they're actually learning about dinosaurs.

We have different activities for the kids, so we have a gem mine where you can find like, authentic gemstones.

We give them a pamphlet, they can read about the gems or the history with the gemstones and everything like that.

Then we have a fossil dig where it's full of actual Floridian fossils.

So there's sharks teeth and like crinoids and ammonites all kind of small, little fossils.

But we let the kids sift through them.

We tell them all about the different fossils that they're finding and how they're native to Florida.

We have a big bone yard where there's a, I'm not going to tell you which dinosaur is buried.

But you can go out there, grab a sifter and a brush, and you can uncover this big replica of a huge dinosaur to scale of the fossil.

And then we also have an indoor museum.

It's an air conditioned section.

We've got probably 20, 25 different windows and displays of actual bones and other things.

Actual fossils, authentic fossils here in addition to our replicas that are outside.

And at the end, in the museum is really cool.

We have animatronic dinosaurs.

So they actually move and they roar and everything.

And kids go crazy for that.

Our favorite thing is when somebody comes in and they say, “We've lived here for 20 years and we've seen the dinosaur, but we've never been here.

” And they - they go crazy.

They don't realize that like, it's an awesome way to have fun with your family.

We invite people to bring picnic lunches, to hang out and spend a day here running around with all the different dinosaurs and we've been here for 24 years, and we still have people that say they've seen us for years and haven't stopped by.

And they're so surprised when they come in because we've been a staple in the community here locally, Tampa for quite a while.

But people, it's still a new park to some people.

Again, even though dinosaurs have been around for millions of years.

It's something about dinosaurs that people just love, you know?

And as long as people keep coming, we're going to keep growing.

We're going to keep adding dinosaurs.

We started with maybe 50 dinosaurs in the first park and now we're up to over 200.

You would think, Oh, it's a dinosaur park.

You know, paint the dinosaurs and we're done.

But it's changing.

We're discovering things every single day.

Like in Texas, they just uncovered new footprints of dinosaurs.

You know, like there's information from millions of years ago that are still coming to light today.

And here at Dinosaur World, you can see that.

And we make the changes.

We update and there's something new with dinosaurs almost every single week, at least.

>>It's no wonder that Sarasota was the circus capital of the world in the 1920s when John Ringling picked Sarasota as the winter home for his famous Ringling Brothers Barnum and Bailey Circus.

>>Ladies and gentlemen, children of all ages, Nicole Feld and Alana Feld are proud to present Ringling Brothers and Barnum and Bailey.

Welcome to the greatest show on earth!

>>A true spectacle.

That is how most people remember the greatest show on Earth.

The concept began back in 1880 when five of the seven Ringling Brothers set out to start their own circus.

It started as the Ringling Circus, a five cent show in Iowa.

It grew to become a traveling railroad production.

And in 1909, its success led to a merger with the Barnum and Bailey Circus.

>>When John made a home for himself in Sarasota, Florida, he realized there was an opportunity to bring the winter quarters south to a climate that would actually be a really good place to have the show frame up and practice during the winter months, but also to actually have it as a tourist attraction, to have it as a place that people could come see the circus in its winter home.

So in 1927, when the show came off the road, it came here to Sarasota for the first time, and the winter quarters stayed here for over three decades by bringing the winter quarters here.

He really developed a new base for our community.

So everywhere you go here in Sarasota, there are multi-generation circus families, people you meet walking down the street have a circus connection.

And that's because starting with that movement in ‘27 and running, especially through the 1940s and fifties, people from all over the world who performed with Barnum and Bailey came here to Sarasota and made their home here.

>>Although Ringling Brothers and Barnum and Bailey Circus closed in 2017, the Ringling Museum in Sarasota continues to tell the story and the legacy of the greatest show on earth.

In 1948, the Circus Museum opened featuring wagons and props and wardrobe and amazing historic prints and posters, all of which tied the thread together to show the history of the circus from its founding in 1768 through the present time.

And today we keep that alive.

We are constantly adding and updating the exhibitions here to keep up with the history of the circus itself.

>>Welcome to the 2022 edition of the Summer Circus spectacular!

>>This is a partnership between the circus arts conservatory and the Ringling.

We bring in from all over the world to present the circus arts at the highest level.

We have aerialists, we have acrobats.

We have very good comedians.

It's a gamut of different varieties of disciplines that we present each year.

And believe it or not, we sell out almost every performance.

It's about joy, laughter, excitement.

And that's what the circus brings to the audience.

And to see the smiles on the little kids, it's just, you know, you building memories.

>>About 75 miles east of Sarasota and the Ringling Museum is the small community of Ona, Florida.

Home to a rather unique attraction called Solomon's Castle, built by a sculptor named Howard Solomon.

Howard Solomon was an internationally known sculptor.

More importantly to me, he was my dad.

He says people were either born to be an artist or they weren't.

And if you're an artist, you just can't help but to create things.

And my dad was a perfect example of that.

He moved here in 1972 and he thought, “Well, every man's home is their castle, so I think I'll build a castle from my home.

” He knew that certain things were required for it to look like a castle, so he built towers and turrets and odd shaped doors.

And of course it had to have stained glass windows.

And they all have a different story or theme behind them.

And he'd jokingly say, Oh, a tower here, a turret it there, before you know it, you have a castle.

He was known as the Rembrandt of Reclamation, the Wizard of Odds and Ends, The Da Vinci of Debris.

He sought something for the outside skin that would be inexpensive, yet hearty.

>>That turned out to be aluminum printing plates that he got for $0.25 a piece from the local newspaper publisher.

>>I tell people that Dad built all of this as a kingdom for his family to live in and to work in, and people thank me on a daily basis for still having it open.

The tour houses Howard's artwork.

There are probably more than a thousand pieces of his artwork here, just a wealth of artwork from his life.

So you come to Solomon's Castle, you take the castle tours, the encore building tours, have lunch.

The restaurant is called The Boat in the Moat.

It is inside the replica of a 16th century Spanish galleon.

And then we have beautiful outside patio areas and a lighthouse that Howard built all for the the restaurant and the restaurant guests.

Prior to Dad's passing, he would say “Tin castles are for temporary kings and you have to rain before it rusts.

” Having this legacy makes it easier.

I don't feel like he's totally gone.

I still feel like he's here.

I hear him in my ear all the time.

It's a blessing with a lot of responsibility.

>>If you travel about an hour northeast of Solomon's Castle, you come to Bartow, which is the site for the home of some rather rare construction.

It's called The Wonder House.

As the story goes, Conrad Schuck moved to Florida from Pittsburgh in the 1920s after being given some rather bad news by his doctor.

>>Nobody really knows what kind of health problems he was encountering, but the doctor said he had a couple of months to live.

However, if you move to the warm tropical climate of, say, Florida, you could live for a whole year and Conrad was willing to do that.

So he packed up his wife and nine kids and they came down to Florida, acquired the property for the Wonder House on April 29th, 1926.

>>Despite the fact that most of the property was on bedrock did not slow down Schucks mission.

>>He had the frame of the house up in the first year and so most of the construction you see was just all by hand.

No blueprints, entirely freeform.

>>Conrad Schuck was mostly self-educated, having only an elementary school education, but his construction design was quite impressive.

>>The house is truly unique, so we like to call Conrad Schuck “the Da Vinci of Bartow, ” if you will, just because he was so brilliant.

So when he built the house, he actually made the walls two foot thick concrete, his own blend of concrete.

And the entire house is reinforced with railroad tracks.

But the house is four stories above ground and two stories below ground.

He actually put air conditioning into the house, and the way it worked was on the fourth floor of the home.

There were these large cisterns outside on the porches that gathered rainwater.

Inside the columns of the house were these big pipes, but the pipes would collect the rainwater and actually keep the house about seven degrees cooler.

The water would get recycled out to, we call it the moat, but the swimming pool, the fishing hole, and then back to the house on a closed circuit watering system.

And he came up with that in the twenties, which is awesome.

Again, second grade education.

He was just truly brilliant.

I mean, he had all kinds of wild things.

There's a giant spinning Susan spice cabinet in the kitchen that's still around.

The mosaics on the floor, spending between 8 to 14 weeks doing them by hand.

The House was shaped like a cross, so you have porches on either corner and when you'd light the fireplace, hot air obviously rises and it would suck air through the house and have that cross ventilation.

They lived down the street in just a normal little house, and they'd come here, work and go back home.

And it's always “Dad, when do we get to move in the cool house?

” and he's like, “Soon.

” >>Soon never came, however.

Conrad Schuck lived to be 91 years old, but the family never actually lived in the house.

It is still a private residence, but the current owners are restoring the house in order to save and share a piece of history.

>>We're really, really grateful to be able to share the house.

It's really awesome to share just because Connor was a genius and we really want his legacy to survive.

So we're going to try to take the best care of it that we can and put it back to like we like to say, “What would Conrad Schuck do?

” or is this Wonder House worthy?

Because the house truly deserves to be loved but still appreciate something that's been around for a long time.

>>If you're ever in the Homestead area, you might want to stop by a place called the Coral Castle.

It's been around since the 1920s, but even to this day, they're still trying to figure out how this place was built.

The grounds of the Coral Castle consist of a thousand tons of stone in the form of walls, carvings, furniture and a castle tower.

The stones are fastened together without mortar.

They are set on top of each other, using their weight to keep them together.

The craftsmanship detail is so fine and the stones are connected with such precision that no light passes through the joints.

The eight foot tall vertical stones that make up the perimeter wall have a uniform height.

Even with the passage of decades, the stones have not shifted.

A Latvian immigrant named Edward Leedskalnin built his first structure in Florida City in the twenties and then moved about ten miles over to Homestead in the 1930s to construct this masterpiece.

But how did one guy, only five feet tall, 120 pounds, and working only at night, build such an amazing structure?

>>An echo from some ancient stone age is the work of Ed Leedskalnin, a 120 pound Superman.

Using the most primitive of tools, he handles huge 15 ton pieces of Coral Rock with the greatest of ease.

This is his life work.

Building a great stone city that he hopes will stand for thousands of years.

>>He was not going to divulge his secrets when people would ask him, “Hey, Ed, how did you build this He said, “I know about weights and balances.

” And also he was a stonemason, so he knew the techniques, but he was never divulge how he did this.

>>Legend has it it was built single handedly by Leedskalnin using reverse magnetism or supernatural abilities to move and carved the stones.

There was even a nine time revolving gate in the castle that was so well balanced a child could open it.

The gate is carved so that it fits within a quarter of an inch of the walls.

>>He would say, basically, I use the same techniques that the Egyptians used to build the pyramids.

And he would point out his anti-gravity generator that would reverse the polarity of the poles and make it easy for him to lift these rocks.

The heaviest rock here weighs 30 tons.

So you can imagine that even with the best of equipment, it would be very difficult.

But he did it over a long period of time at night, which is remarkable.

One of my favorites at the castle is a sundial, and that sundial tells time, month and season.

Although Leedskalnin possessed only a fourth grade education, some believe he somehow discovered a means to reduce the gravitational pull of the earth.

Scientists have yet to figure out how he did it.

They all come here and they leave with more questions.

How did this guy do this?

>>If you love snorkeling and scuba diving, there's a spot just north of Ocala in Williston that's perfect for you.

It's a natural wonder that has been turned from a mere scuba diving spot into a world class tourist attraction.

Devils Den itself is a karst window it's called, It's an opening from the surface to the Florida aquifer.

The geologists and archeologists estimate that it's somewhere between 10 and 75,000 years old, so, pretty remarkable.

>>The water stays a constant 72 degrees, but in 100% humidity.

So when the outside temp drops, steam comes off the water.

Legend says that's caused by the heat from the devil's home below.

Thus the name Devil's Den.

>>It's an open water dive with an overhead environment.

It's kind of a jewel in the middle of nowhere.

It's right now about a 50 to 55 foot deep.

But it goes way out under the overhangs, at least four times as big as what you can see at the top.

Just a unique experience to feel spiritually when you go down in there.

It's also an opportunity for scuba divers to be able to swim in an overhead environment without being caged certified.

And that's because we have an opening that brings daylight into the cave.

It's an absolutely beautiful thing to see, especially when the daylight shines down that cavern and lights up the floor, what you see.

Devil's Dens, beauty and its challenge attracts over 10,000 visitors each year.

>>It was amazing.

Cold in the beginning, but you get used to it.

The sights are awesome.

A lot of fun.

>>People from all over the world literally come here trying to stay in harmony with nature and keep it sort of low key and not real high tech, but still keep it neat and presentable.

It's quite a lot of work.

A labor of love, however.

>>From Devil's Den, you can head over to the East Coast to the Daytona Beach area.

Just north is the city of Holly Hill, which is home to the gnomes, lots of them.

The gnomes live in and around a tree on Riverside Drive.

They started gathering here almost 20 years ago, thanks to Virginia and Dewey Morris.

They started with just three gnomes.

And through the years, members of the local community have dropped off new members and the family has grown.

Don't worry about the hurricanes, though.

The Morris's collect all of the gnomes and take them inside to weather the storm.

About a half hour south of Holly Hill, near New Smyrna Beach is the city of Edgewater.

There you will find this most unusual site, a palm tree with an oak tree firmly wrapped around it.

The trees sit just off the east side of North Riverside Drive.

And if you're in the area, it's worth a drive by to take a look.

No one seems to know how or when this happened.

But nonetheless, another rare oddity found in the Sunshine State.

And that wraps up another edition of Florida Road Trip.

I'm Buddy Pittman.

Thanks for being with us.

Join us next time as we continue to explore the rich history that surrounds us all each and every day.

[MUSIC] >>This program is brought to you in part by the Paul B Hunter and Constance D Hunter Charitable Foundation, a proud partner of WUCF and the Central Florida Community.