The unit was designed to look like a cabin in an old sailing ship. We were in a studio but a partition of wooden shelves and wooden colored glass panel folding shutters separated the bedroom from a small sitting room with a pullout couch, old sea chest, coffee table and television. That sitting room had three large double hung windows and a door that opened to a balcony overlooking the beach and the ocean. A thick knotty pine table and benches in the corner of the bedroom had a steering wheel light fixture above it.

The kitchen was separated from the bedroom with a block and tackle on a rope. Four faux mirrored windows were used as a headboard over the king size bed. Under the bed were pull out storage drawers. The kitchen was small but it had a new electric range and refrigerator.

During the week renovations were in progress on the first floor. An indoor Jacuzzi room was warm and inviting on cold days. Visitors from the northern states jumped into the big heated outdoor pool even though it was March and the air temperature was 60 degrees. The exercise room was being renovated.

On the beach, in that area, the ground is so hard cars are allowed to drive along it. When Ormond Beach first became a resort town, the beach was a race track that has since been replaced by the big one in Daytona. Sea gulls will play Follow The Leader with you if you imitate them on the beach. They're always the leader. Watch out for people that walked toward you from a recently parked car. They’re likely to be timeshare solicitors.

• Unit Type: Studio
• Activities: Not Available
• Amenities: Not Available
• Unit Satisfaction: Poor
• Family Friendliness: Good
• Service: Fair

We walked down a menacing dirt drive way, past deserted buildings, until we found a structure that was actually carrying on business. Gnarly old live oak trees surrounded the buildings, making the area darker and adding to its clandestine appearance. People ahead of us were turning around and leaving. Bob my husband, suggested we do the same. Wanting to experience the "real Florida," I persuaded him to give it a chance.

As we entered the porch, leading to the restaurant, boards with jokes written on them hung from the ceiling. If you have reservations you're in the wrong place was typical. Walking straight ahead we came to a deck with outdoor picnic tables covered with loud colored plastic tablecloths. A magnificent live oak spread its twisting heavy branches until it seriously interfered with every table. The Halifax River went right up to the deck. It was raining a little so we decided to sit inside.

The Bike Week menu was still in effect. Pictures of bikers, crowding the restaurant, were on the cover of the menu. We took a chance on Fishermen's Platter. It included fish, shrimp, deviled crab, oysters, scallops and clam strips and gave a choice of two sides. Bob chose French fries and cold slaw for his two sides and I chose new red potatoes and cold slaw, $16.95 apiece. Miss Genevieve, a former wooden sailboat, was stripped of her sails and now served as a bar in the center of the room. A black potbelly stove stood ready to accommodate a cold spell.

I thought the fried seafood had been properly prepared, but Bob said, for the price, it should have had a more appetizing appearance. I had to agree. I did want to try one of the old waterfront seafood restaurants, but that one might have been a little too rustic for our taste.

The menu offered various appetizing seafood dishes. Bob, my husband, ordered shrimp and scallops stir fry over linguini, $7.95. He also ordered a garden salad that was an extra $2.95. I ordered lemon pepper grouper, $9.95. I was entitled to two sides and chose fried sweet potatoes and garden salad with vinaigrette dressing. Our garden salads were crisp and fresh and were served with dinner rolls and butter. Bob's stir fry included yellow and zucchini squash, mushrooms, pieces of tomato, broccoli, onions, jumbo shrimp and sea scallops. He ordered tomato sauce for the linguini. He said the dinner was excellent. We had been looking for a restaurant that could cook grouper and cause it to taste like lobster. This restaurant did just that. I think it’s the type of grouper and the way they add the butter. It was delicious. The sweet potatoes were sliced thin and fried to perfection.

The Halifax River, an intracoastal waterway, flows through the town of Ormond Beach, FL. In the early 1900s, Henry Flagler, developer, built the three hundred-room Ormond Hotel along that river. It was fashionable, at that time, for the wealthy to go to Florida and spend their winter months in megasize resorts near the ocean.

Flagler's former business partner in Standard Oil, John D. Rockefeller, was one of those early snow birds. He was attracted to the area because he liked watching sport car racing along the beach, not too far from the hotel. That wide beach, with its hard surface, was used as a racecourse before the now famous one was built in nearby Daytona.

Many fine homes were being built in that area, at that time, to accommodate the affluent. Rockefeller bought a modest home (for a man of his wealth) across the street from the hotel, and spent his next twenty years living in it, enjoying his retirement. He called his home The Casements because of the casement windows throughout. His former home is now on the National Register of Historic Places. It isn't just a tourist attraction, though, it's used by the City of Ormond Beach for community affairs as well.

Some changes have been made to the house since Rockefeller resided there. A comparison can be made by examining the photographs in the auditorium, formerly his dining room. The sun parlors up and downstairs have been accurately restored to the way they were in his day and the living room looks much like it did then, as well. Tall cabinets in the kitchen, built all the way to the ceiling, are correct for the early 1900s.

In the center of the octagonal living room is an octagonal balcony that opens up to the second and third floors. Photographs show Rockefeller's elaborate Christmas parties held every year in that living room. The community still holds a celebration there at Christmas time to continue the tradition. White wicker furniture with brocade cushions, in the first floor sun parlor, are the same type of furnishings he would have used in that area. His roofed wicker beach chair is on exhibit in that room.

In the second floor sun parlor his roll top desk is still in place in front of the window where he could look out at the magnificent park leading down to the river. Appropriately, Victorian furniture, and Oriental rugs fill the rest of the room.

It is the only old lighthouse complex in the country with all the original out buildings still intact. The brick light keepers' houses are now museums. Two are furnished as they might have been in the late 1800s and the largest one, the principal light keeper's house, is a museum about the sea. In the museum there was a model of an archeological site of a shipwreck showing how the area in the water can be identified with metal stakes and ropes squaring it off. Navigational tools were on display and a video showed how they were used. In the woodshed, we watched a video about the lives of the light keepers at Ponce Inlet.

The new Lens Exhibit Building houses the first order Fresnel lens installed in the light house when it was built in 1887. The lens was ten feet tall, six feet wide and weighed 2000 pounds. It had the capacity of 15,000 candlepower from a kerosene lamp and could be seen 18 miles out at sea. It not only guided vessels to Ponce Inlet, it also guided their course along the Atlantic shore toward the shoals around Cape Canaveral.

We climbed the 203 old cast iron steps, inside the tower, circling up to the light. At the top of every 22 steps there is a landing. While we relaxed from the climb we read the informative display boards hanging on the wall. From the lookout at the top we could see Ponce Inlet and south, the marinas along the Halifax River and Daytona Beach along the Atlantic Ocean. The view is spectacular and time should be allowed to enjoy it after the long climb. The lens room was sealed off with an iron grid. The pedestal for the original Fresnel lens was still in place. The inside of the tower was painted gray and in places the walls felt damp.

We entered the complex through the Visitors' Center and gift shop. There is a $5 fee to go out on the grounds and see everything.