Our neighborhood is fancy, I noticed this a while ago. Almost
next-door are racehorses grazing and plenty of large and luxurious horse
trailers are being pulled on the road to our campground. For a few days now I’ve
been traipsing around our campground with my camera chasing all kinds of birds.
Mostly they elude my viewfinder or they play hide and seek in the trees, so I
looked for something else to photograph.
Right across the street from the Cliftwood RV Park is the Adena Golf and Country Club. It is a huge area bordered by a tall hedge with
impressive gates and gatehouses. There are
great looking gates all over the area here in Ocala and I thought those made
good objects to photograph. At least
they don’t get away from my viewfinder. :-)
After our morning shopping trip Benno and I took a little
tour in the truck around our neighborhood in search of nice gates. As I stood outside of the west entrance to
the Adena Golf and Country Club clicking away on my camera, a golf cart pulled
up next to me with two gentlemen in it. Thinking they must we wondering what I
was doing, I explained my fascination with impressive gates. “Well,” the man said, “Why don’t you and your
husband follow me inside all the way to the clubhouse. I invite you to take as
many pictures as you like and have a look around. My name is John Reger, and I am the General
Manager.” He didn’t have to ask me
again, of course we would come and so we slowly followed their golf cart
through the winding paths all the way up.
Once we were in the Adena clubhouse, a 40,000 sq. ft. impressive
building with all kinds of amenities, Mr. Reger handed us his business card and
led us to the upstairs very elegant dining room and out to the large balcony
where the view overlooking this 18 hole quarry-lined golf course with waterfall
and tennis courts took our breaths away.
Mr. Reger explained that they were just returning from a visit with John
Travolta, the movie star, who lives opposite the street in the gated community
of the Jumbolair Estates. We knew the
Travolta's have their main residence here and we had driven by the gated
community in hopes of getting a glimpse of one of his airplanes on the runway,
but no luck in spotting anything exciting.
Entrance to the Jumbolair Estate
“So,” Mr. Reger asked, do you know Frank Stronach? He’s a Canadian and
the Adena course designer.” Unfortunately we haven’t had the pleasure of meeting Frank
Stronach personally, but our Canadian readers know him as the founder of Magna
Int’l, the automotive parts company and being famous for his thoroughbred
horses, which won the Queen’s Plate. He also is the owner of several prominent
horse racetracks in the USA. Nevertheless,
Mr. Reger said we could have lunch or dinner anytime at the Adena Club and that
they served beef from their own all-natural, hormone-free, grass-fed beef
cattle and to feel free to take as many pictures, as we wanted. That just made our day! Later I looked up the Adena Springs Ranch It is only 30,000 acres in size. That is
thirty thousand!! acres also owned by Frank Stronach. (By the way, Frank Stronach
and Arnold Schwarzenegger both come from the same neighbourhood of Graz in Austria. Amazing, isn't it?)
Part of the Adena dining room
I took Google Map shots of our immediate area so you can see
our campground, the Cliftwood RV Park in reference to the Adena Golf and Country
Club and the Jumbolair Estates with Travolta’s house and some of his plains
parked next to it.
No comments:
Post a Comment