Information Resources Doc Ford’s Rum Bar & Grille: - 2500 Island Inn Rd, Sanibel, Florida 33957; Phone: 239-472-8311. Other locations in Captiva, Ft. Myers and on the new St. Pete Pier. www.abe.com: all of White’s books are available in major bookstores or through Amazon, but I prefer to shop for his titles online through this great source for used books. He is usually listed as Randy White, but don’t forget his two pen names, Randy Striker and Carl Ramm. For example, when Cuban president Fulgencio Batista escaped from Castro in 1959, legend has it that he looted the national treasury and loaded its gold aboard a B-26 headed for Tampa. The aircraft never arrived. Many claim that it carried its precious load to a watery grave in the Gulf of Mexico, where treasure hunters have been looking for its wreckage to this day. In the bookDeep Shadow, Doc finds B-26 wreckage in a sinkhole near Lake Okeechobee, but an underwater cave collapses; the searchers are trapped, leading to death-defying adventures in Florida’s famous subterranean Karst geology of twisting water-filled passages and caverns. Apart from the storyline, though, the book has much factual information about Batista’s escape and the flight of the famous gold-bearing B-26. Another book − Bone Deep −has a background set in Bone Valley, the large phosphate mining area stretching from north Lakeland southwards to DeSoto County. Covered by a prehistoric ocean millions of years ago, huge fish such as the 55-foot megalodon shark swam here with teeth as large as seven inches. Today, the area is rich in rare fossils. Who knew that such fossils could sell at auction for hundreds of thousands of dollars? Phosphate companies hired security guards to ensure that there was no midnight poaching. The illegal trafficking, smuggling and black-market activities of fossil poachers create the backdrop for this fascinating book. Bone Deepwill take you inside this criminal world which has been said to be able to “hide in plain sight.” Doc Ford books cover storyline subjects as varied as voodoo, human smuggling, baseball, drug transport with drone submarines, piracy, SecondWorldWar wrecks and even a supposedly haunted house − to name a few. Through his former secret military service, which he never seems able to escape, Doc has access to some very special tools of the trade. Randy has done an excellent job of researching and providing details of some very unusual, high-tech military weaponry. Doc’s adventures hold a particular appeal for me, since I know these waters well. For many years, Kathy and I bare-boat chartered a 28-foot sailboat and navigated the area, visiting well-known locations such as Cabbage Key and Useppa Island, where the CIA trained Cubans for the 1961 ill-fated Bay of Pigs invasion of Cuba. Archaic Calusa Indians and the famous Key Marco Cat play a role in "Ten Thousand Islands," a gripping tale of archaeology, gold grave goods and a murderer running for the Senate. 24 | www.snowbirds.org Travel
RkJQdWJsaXNoZXIy MzMzNzMx