The Treasure Coast

From Disney World we went over to the East Coast and stayed around the Treasure Coast area.

The campsite at Sebastian Inlet was great - right on the Intra (they all say "inner" though) coastal waterway. There were quite a few dolphins and a couple Manatees swimming by right in front of us.

They had a playground Hanna liked (another great Jake photo).

One other thing I liked was the fishing - I just watched but it was very different from Alaska fishing. First off - you don't know what you'll catch. They use a throw net to catch Mullet and then use them live (fishing with live bait is illegal in AK), hooked either through the tail or lip to catch something bigger - even a bigger Mullet. The fishing regulations said "If you wade in the schools of mullet, you will get bitten by a shark." Sometimes there were pretty big schools of Mullet panicking on the surface - something big was after them!

This guy caught a Snook right in front of our campsite.

Right about here I realized I liked Florida a LOT more than I remembered...


When we left Sebastion Inlet we headed South and stopped at a couple museums:


The McLarty Treasure Museum is on the site of a 1719 Spanish treasure fleet shipwreck ( the entire fleet wrecked) and full of gold and artifacts. It was pretty interesting - 1500 survivors made it to shore and supposedly one of the boats had the Queen's dowry on it. She wouldn't sleep with the King until she received a pretty specific collection of jewelry that she had specified. What do we call those kind of women again? Anyway, the real good part is that the dowry was lost at sea the year before too!

Then we went to big Mamoo of treasure museums - Mel Fishers. Everything was "Mel Fisher" this and "Mel Fisher" that until Jake and I began to call him Biff Tanner (from Back to the Future...). But really, you can't begrudge the guy. He sold everything he had and spent 16 years finding his first big treasure.

The silver they find in clumps like this - but the gold is so noble that it is pretty much perfect after hundreds of years in the sea....

I couldn't talk them down to $350,000 for this gold piece so it's still there if you want it :-)

I learned a couple very interesting things - have you ever noticed how the old Spanish/Pirate coins are not perfectly round? They were cast round, but then an assayer would nip a bit off to make the weight perfect. And then, people might nip a bit more off the coins that passed through their hands, because who would know? Also, when the sailors got back to Spain, the gold they had was taxed... UNLESS it was jewelry. So there was some pretty gaudy stuff. Chains were popular - see the large chain below. It has about 3/8 inch links. The customs guys must have known they weren't going to wear it. I guess the sailors got off the boat in Spain decorated up like Mr. T to beat the taxman. I wish it were still so easy!