Planted 3/07/04
Alive and well as of 7/26/08
By: Amanda from Seattle
The Persistance of Memory
Trail Description:
This greenway follows the shoreline of Tampa Bay on the St. Petersburg side of the bay from Vinoy Park to Flora Wylie Park
Trail Stats:
Nearby City: St. Petersburg, FL
Length: 2.5 total miles
Trail Type: Out-and-Back
Skill Level: Easy
Your starting point is AT the
Renaissance Vinoy Resort and Golf Club.
Pennsylvania businessman Aymer Vinoy Laughner purchased the site of the Renaissance Vinoy (overlooking Tampa Bay)in 1923, commissioning Henry L. Taylor as the hotel's architect. In 1925 the $3.5 million, 375-room Vinoy Park Hotel was open for business. The hotel featured a Mediterranean Revival design. During the early 1940s, the hotel was converted into a training facility for the Army Air Corps. Military cooks and bakers learned their trade here as well. The Vinoy reopened as a hotel in 1945 and continued operations until 1974. The salmon-colored hotel underwent a $93-million restoration and expansion in 1992 that added a guest tower and complete recreational facilities, including an 18-hole golf course designed by Ron Garl.
The Vinoy is located on Fifth Avenue (Rt. 595) and Bayshore Drive, in the heart of St. Petersburg's many cultural and entertainment attractions. The Salvador Dali Museum, Museum of Fine Arts, Mahaffey Theatre, Baywalk, the Pier, Al Lang Stadium, Tropicana Field, Florida Holocaust Museum, St. Petersburg Museum of History, and the Florida International Museum, are all nearby.
While walking along the trail be sure to look out for wild parrots in the trees and in the grass at the BOTTOM of trees.
Established flocks OF wild parrots are widespread in Florida, where at least 10,000 monk parakeets (or Quakers) are now believed to live. The Quaker is a small parrot, reaching 11 to 12 inches in length. As a comparison, the Quaker is a bird similar in length to a Cockatiel, but the Quaker's body is heavier and more substantial with an average weight of 90 to 120 grams.
The overall color of the Quaker is GREEN, with pale grey on the forehead, cheeks, throat and extending down to the chest. On the chest, the grey feathers are white-tipped, giving a scalloped effect. Some blue can be found in the tail and flight feathers. The eyes are a dark brown, and the bill is horn colored. Young birds look much the same except the colors are not as bright as on adult Quakers.
Florida also hosts substantial populations of wild black-hooded parakeets, red-crowns, orange-winged parrots (Amazons), yellow-chevroned parakeets, white-winged parakeets, mitred parakeets (mitred conures) and chestnut-fronted macaws (severe macaws).
None of these birds is native to the United States. Only two species of parrot - the Carolina parakeet and the thick-billed parrot - were ever indigenous to the U.S. The Carolina parakeet became extinct in 1918, killed off by a combination of guns, habitat devastation and capture. The thick-billed parrot, which has not been seen in Arizona since the 1930s, is undergoing a reintroduction effort there.
Where did all these parrots come from? And what are they doing here?
According to Kimball Garrett, an ornithologist and researcher who founded The California Parrot Project to monitor and study California’s parrot population, imported birds were the progenitors of today's naturalized flocks.
"We think all these populations got established when a large shipment came in directly from the wild and, for whatever reason, they (the parrots) got out," says Garrett. "They were wild birds. They knew how to survive in the wild. We don't believe these populations were started by some little hand-raised bird getting free."
As you walk along, you will pass the Gizella Kopsick Palm Arboretum. Development of the Kopsick Palm Arboretum began in 1976. The two-acre park was once a city miniature golf course which was closed due to escalating maintenance costs. A concerned resident and park volunteer, Mrs. Elva Rouse, proposed the area as ideal for a palm arboretum. The proposal was adopted by City Council and subsequently the palm arboretum was created through a generous gift of stock from Miss Gizella Kopsick, a long-time palm admirer. Initially, 60 palms representing 10 species were planted in the park. Drinking fountains, a gazebo, conversation corners with wooden benches and red brick paving were installed in a graceful circle winding through the palms. Several of the palms have a little POST in front of them with information, including the scientific name and the nickname or common name if one exists. Palm scientific names are in two parts. The first name is the genus name or a group of palms within the palm family. The second part of a palm name is its species. All the facilities were designed to meet the needs of the handicapped, which included Miss Kopsick, who was confined to a wheelchair. The arboretum was dedicated on May 16, 1977, Miss Kopsick’s 100th birthday.
Don't worry if you are falling BEHIND. You will soon reach the letterbox. The letterbox stamp is inspired by The Persistence of Memory, a painting by Salvador Dali. The painting is memorable. Hard objects are limp and melting in this bleak dreamscape. Mastering what he called "the usual paralyzing tricks of eye-fooling," Dali painted with what he called "the most imperialist fury of precision," but only, he said, "to systematize confusion and thus to help discredit completely the world of reality." It is the classical Surrealist ambition, yet some literal reality is included too: the distant golden cliffs are the coast of Catalonia, Dali's home. Those limp watches are as soft as overripe cheese—indeed "the camembert of time," in Dali's phrase. In the painting time loses all meaning. Permanence goes with it: ants, a common theme in Dali's work, represent decay, particularly when they attack a gold watch, and become grotesquely organic. The monstrous fleshy creature draped across the painting's center is at once alien and familiar: an approximation of Dali's own face in profile, its long eyelashes seem disturbingly insectlike, as does what may or may not be a tongue oozing from its nose like a fat snail. The year before this picture was painted, Dali formulated his "paranoiac-critical method," cultivating self-induced psychotic hallucinations in order to create art. "The difference between a madman and me," he said, "is that I am not mad." The Dali Museum in St. Petersburg is in the opposite direction from the Vinoy near the University of South Florida campus.
You should have passed the
Elva Rouse PARK at North Shore Dr. & 10th Ave. N. It is basically nothing more than an open field. Elva Rouse also provided for The Elva Rouse Award, which honors citizens whose individual efforts have led to help perpetuate the beautification and environmental preservation of St. Petersburg. Each area along this trail has a SIGN identifying it, so you should not get lost.
The distance from the Vinoy to the Letterbox is approximately 1 mile. I hope you enjoy your walk along the St. Petersburg waterfront.
Please remember to be discreet and replace the letterbox hidden from view!
Thanks!
To email me with comments or questions about a letterbox: samanark@yahoo.com
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