Mail Tour

Another Marion County

Our residence is in Silver Springs, Florida about 7 miles east of Ocala.  Ocala is the county seat for Marion County, Florida.  In the United States there are 15 counties named "Marion," including the one in Indiana which is (essentially) the city of Indianapolis.  All of these, except the one in South Carolina are in the "Second Grouping" of states (as I will call them) that followed after the original 13 colonies which became the "original" 13 states.  There are also 30 townships named Marion.  There are also 14 cities names Marion.  All of these derive their name from Francis Marion, a hero of the Revolutionary War.  He was a militiaman in South Carolina originally commissioned as a Captain but ultimately attaining the rank of General.  His "nom de guerre" (war name) was "The Swamp Fox."  He is widely regarded as one of the "Fathers" of the idea of "Guerrilla Warfare" - hit, inflict as many casualties as possible and disappear into the ethereum.  He was born and died in South Carolina.  The movie "The Patriot" is extremely loosely based upon his lore.  It kind of gave the writers a skeleton to build the movie around.  Its interesting how many cities are named after revolutionary war heroes that today no one realizes how they got their names because they no longer teach AMERICAN HISTORY in Junior or Senior High School, they teach American Apologetics.  Many of you may not be aware that Carolyn's husband, Nat Marion is a distant relative of Francis Marion.

We went for another walk this afternoon.  I'm really proud of Irene, we walked 1.87 miles.  That's wonderful.  Give her a digital "High 5" on her Facebook page everybody.  After that we drove up to get our mail in Green Cove Springs about 68 miles away.  Our new Florida Regions Account ATM cards got there today.  Yippee!  There was some other good stuff there too.  Since they aren't open Saturdays and Monday is a Federal Holiday - Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. day, we thought it best to go get it all today.

Coming back we drove around the SouthEast portion of Marion County.  The burgs of Oklawaha and Belleville as well as SouthEast Ocala.  There's so much of the land here that is boggy.  The Oklawaha River looks like a spiderweb and it barely moves.  There is a great percentage of the water that is still enough that it's covered with Water Lilies.

There is also a Cross Florida Barge Canal that we drive over when we are going up to Green Cove Springs.  There is at least 1 lock on it because we can see it from where the bridge is that we drive over it on.  This is interesting to me because one of my great great _______ grandfathers was a lock master on the Ohio River (Contact Joel at arthurgordon@yahoo.com for all the specifics, he's the genealogist in the family).

Irene and I just finished watching "Captain America: The Original Avenger."  Thanks to Brad, our son-in-law, for the WD:LiveTV setup that has about 200 movies on it.  Thanks sir - but less R rated movies next time please! :-)