Out of Bounds – Florida (Part 1)

Those who have been following along with this project and my personal life know that the past couple years have been pretty rough. I decided that the best way to kind of shake off the negativity of the past, and hopefully kick off the next portion of my life was to take a birthday trip to one of my favorite places – Disney World. It had been 11 years since I was last there…much has changed. While there, I wanted to check in on Universal Studio as well, as it had been 25+ years since I’d been there and even more had changed.

I was going to write a detailed travelogue, filled with all sorts of stories and helpful hints. Then, after nearly two days of writing half a book’s worth of stuff and only being through day 2 of my trip, that wasn’t going to work. So I’m sharing the short, short version of the trip and even that I’m going to split into two (maybe three) parts.

There were a few non-theme park places I wanted to check out before my dad and I got enveloped in the loving embrace of Walt Disney World. The first one is in a lovely little town called Mount Dora, about a half-hour north of Orlando.

The “Van Gogh House”

In 2017, the owners of this house, in an effort to make the house easier for their autistic son to find, painted the ugly white wall in their front yard to match his favorite painting – Van Gogh’s “Starry Night”. The local government wasn’t having it. They decided the fence was “graffiti” and potentially distracting to drivers, and that it be needed to be changed to match the house.

So, the couple painted the house to match the wall. The city began fining them for breaking the city signage code. A legal skirmish ensured, which the couple eventually won. The city paid for the court fees, apologized, and now the “Van Gogh House” sits proudly on the side of the road for people to appreciate. There is no parking in front of the house. Luckily, the next-door neighbors were having a garage sale, so we stopped for the sale (sadly, nothing good) and I snuck over and got to spend a few minutes admiring the artwork.

I highly recommend going down on the Google Map to street view and checking out the before and after pictures. It’s a vast improvement.

Knowing me, you knew I had to do a little bit of graveyard hunting, right? Well, just a few miles north of the Walt Disney World main entrance are two cemeteries that feature the final resting spots of two legends in their fields.

Bob Ross’ Grave – Woodlawn Memorial Park

What is there to say? Bob Ross whisper-talked his way through 31 seasons of an oil painting show on PBS. He filmed the show in my former hometown of Muncie, Indiana (his studio is being turned into a Bob Ross Museum…hello future road trip!). Since his death from lymphoma in 1995, his legend and pop culture status has only grown. It’s so neat to see people leave small paintings at his grave. It’s hard to fathom it has been 25 years since he died.

Everyone I’ve shown this picture to says “I can’t believe he doesn’t have a bigger headstone.” Given his whole television persona…I think this fits.

The grave is in Section O, near the back of the cemetery. Ross’ parents and his first wife are also buried in the vicinity.

I do greatly thank the person that marked it as a monument on Google Maps, that made it much easier to find.

Another special shout out to the incredible mural on the front of the mausoleum. We saw it from the road, unfortunately we couldn’t really get closer as there were 6 funerals happening there as we visited.

Linked from their website

Payne Stewart’s Grave – Doctor Phillips Cemetery

First off, there’s a suburb of Orlando called Doctor Phillips. That’s strange enough. Turns out Doctor Phillips is named for Dr. Philip Phillips…a man whose parents clearly hated him. Unfortunately for them (I assume, with a name like that, you don’t share your wealth with the people that named you), he turned out to become a wealthy citrus magnate in the 1920s.

Doctor Phillips Cemetery is an extremely small place. It doesn’t even have a road to drive on, just a slightly worn path in the grass. After a couple of minutes, I spotted an American flag stuck in the ground. I got out of the car and started walking through the freshly cut grass. It actually felt like walking along a golf course, which was fitting. Next to that flag I found the final resting spot for PGA legend Payne Stewart.

Payne was known to non-golf fans as the guy that wore the goofy short pants and weird flat hat.

Mandatory Credit: David Cannon/Allsport

Payne won 11 tournaments in his career, and was having one of his best seasons in 1999 when, after missing the cut at a tournament in Disney World, he boarded a plane heading to Texas for the next tournament.

Soon after takeoff, however, the cabin rapidly and mysteriously lost air pressure. For unknown reasons, nobody was able to get supplemental oxygen, and everyone on board passed away. The plane continued flying on auto-pilot until it ran out of fuel and crashed in South Dakota.

Stewart was inducted into the World Golf Hall of Fame in 2001.

The Doctor Phillips Cemetery is very close to Arnold Palmer’s Bay Hill Golf Club, an iconic course, and the site of one of Stewart’s wins.

Next time, we enter Walt Disney World!