Solomon's Castle... way out there in the boonies

Solomons Castle

Out there in the swamps, under and behind some old huge live oaks... and after counting hundreds of live prime ribs and walking sirloins... there we found this little secret! Actually so secret we had never heard about it before! Hidden in the lush Florida wilderness, we found this "castle" - filled with the home of the Solomon family, and galleries with the most unique art! Also they have a restaurant (the Boat in the Moat) where they serve great homemade food (their Chicken pot pai was delicious).  

The home, galleries and workshop of Howard Solomon are open to the public, we walked into his kitchen, and looked out of his beautiful stained glass windows. Actually there were more than 80 of them with different motifs around the castle! And - all his strange metal sculptures, made from oil-drums, old showels, rakes, chainsaws... stone, broken appliances, car parts and the old steel style drink cans and things you wouldn't imagine! Ahttp://www.solomonscastle.org/nd  we even found a wooden replica of "the Scream" (Edvard Munch). The screamer was carved wood and put together with Elmers glue (bought by the gallon, we learned, very handy and very strong)

We walked a nature trail through the woods, bridge over the Horse Creek, a boardwalk across the swamp, said hello to "The horse of a different color", (he had walked the "yellow brick road") before the paint dried (bought from Walmart) - look at his hoofs))... all the stories Peggy told us were just hillarious!

The Horse of a different Color..

This bird was made from 2 rakes, a sickle and a showel!

Sue, here you have something to work on!!! A basket of a bike! And - it was big enough for a ride!

Look at the size of this oak... and this was only one of the branches!!

After the tour in the castle, we had a wonderful homemade lunch out under one of the oaks, before we took another walk around the the castle, and found the "Alamo" - (read about the original here). See the canon outside with the canonballs? They all had 3 holes in them... you know what that means? Yeah, this is Howard Solomon's claim to fame, he sees art in everything! Even in a rake or a showel!

Thank you for taking us, Sharon (Adventure Queen) and Dave (the Driver!)