We are Home.

Arrived home April 14th. We had a long enjoyable adventure this year.

We did get to stop by Huntsville, AL to visit with family. Having time to visit my aunt and uncle was great and a time of hiking with my cousin and his wife topped off the trip.

We camped there at the top of a mountain in Monte Sano SP. Lots of hiking/biking trails and a nice disc golf course. We purchased a few discs to play the course and had a good time. Now we have them in the camper and will look for courses on our travels.

Highland Hammock and Alphia River SPs

These were a new parks for us. We planned to stay only one week at the last 3 parks of our trip since they are new to us. The first was Highland Hammock which is one of the old parks of the state, begun in 1931 and improved by the CCC workers. There is a museum to the workers in the CCC camps which was very interesting.

There was also a tram ride that took us through the restricted areas of the park. We were fortunate to see red shoulder hawks, turtles, deer and many alligators including a number of groups of babies. And on a late afternoon bike ride we saw eagles nesting, deer, wild pigs and a bobcat crossed our path.

This park has a lot of wetlands and nice boardwalks to give you access to them. In the slideshow you will see some scenes from these paths.

The park also had the most brash armadillos that we have experienced yet. As we sat outside enjoying the sun one afternoon, an armadillo came running up behind Les to stop directly beside him and raised up on his hind legs. With the offer, Les reached down to touch his back and we were surprised by the reaction. The animal immediately jumped straight up in the air and scurried off to another campsite were the hoped for a handout not to be handled! This critter was searching for crumbs another evening.

We moved to Alphia River State Park March 21st. This is the opposite of Highland Hammock as it is one of the newest parks, an abandoned phosphate mine of 6,000+ acres that was donated to the state in 1996. The vegetation in the campground is very young and that creates an environment that attracts mocking birds and boat tail grackles. We are serenaded from day break to sunset. The campsites are large and open. From the picture you can see that the topography of this area is a drastic change due to the pits formed by the mining that have forested creating trails very similar to what we see in PA. This park is the site for the FL mountain biking state championships for a good reason. They also offer 20 miles of horse trails.

We enjoyed a paddle on the Alphia River with our friends Bob and Kathy. It was great that they could camp a few days with us here. They stopped on their way home to NY.

After the paddle we stopped at a local BBQ spot for a delicious meal. Wifi is hard to get here but we move Sunday to our last FL park. The weather has finally turned the corner and we are warm. But I understand the temps home have been close, or last week better, to ours. Good for you in PA!

Myakka Paddle and Oscar Shearer State Park

We had one last paddle before leaving Myakka River SP. As you can see we tried a very small tributary to the river; it was not a wise choice. We were finally stopped by downed trees and the narrow waterway was not comfortable for us with the residents so close, see the slide show. We really enjoyed our 2 weeks at Myakka River State Park. The wildlife is always such a treat there.

We moved here to Oscar Shearer Feb. 28th and will leave March 14th. We were so pleased to see the Sarasota Folk Festival was scheduled for March 6 & 7. We spent the weekend immersing ourselves in folk, bluegrass, and gospel. Many of the performers were songwriters doing their original works. What a treat. There were 3 stages running simultaneously so there was a lot of music. The weather was still cool but the sun helped during the day. We darn near froze ourselves though at the Saturday evening performance! We had our layers with winter coats, wool socks, scarves and gloves but forgot to take a blanket to wrap around our legs!! Welcome to Florida 2010!

Our Aliner friends, Forrest and Lynn, camped with us for a few days at the start of our stay. It was a treat to share some of our experiences with them. Lynn treated us to a great macaroni and cheese dinner with all the fixings. We hiked the “Green Trail” to see scrub jays and a bald eagle on a nest. We found out later that there is a juvenile in the nest also. The picture above shows one of our evening Yahzee sessions. It was too cold to sit out at a fire!

This park is nice. The Legacy rail to trails path is nice for biking. There are 3 trail systems in the park with other nature trails. The volunteers here organize quite a nice program for campers including Thursday morning pancake breakfast, Wednesday evening ice cream social, and Thursday jam sessions to name a few. There are many beaches close to the park. Turtle Beach is good for shelling, and Caspersen Beach is good for hunting shark’s teeth. Les had to get me a tool for the teeth hunting and we made our pretty well for beginners. There is a creek here that is good for paddling which we did and were treated to a pelican fishing for dinner by diving over and over in the water. In the slideshow you will see a Little Blue heron eating breakfast. We are really enjoying the wildlife of this state.

We leave here Sunday, March 14th, heading inland to a new park, Highland Hammock for just a week. We will try 3 new parks on our way north and see if they are interesting for another trip.

Myakka River State Park

The paddling here continues to be a pleasure. Each time we go out, I get more pictures. I had been averaging around 50 pictures per camp stay. But here I have over 200 and that is the good ones with a lot of deleted pics! This picture shows how calm the water was this paddle, looks like I’m floating in the clouds. In the slideshow you can see the black-capped night heron, peninsula cooter, snowy egret, and cormorant that I digitally captured.

And yes, there were some LARGE alligators on this trip. We had been seeing a bunch of gators but this particular day the big ones were out more than before. If you look closely at the slideshow of the gator Les is passing, you will see he is having a problem with a upper left tooth. It looked abscessed and we figured that would make him pretty grumpy? Oh no!

We caught a sunset by the river here. Being in these parks like this has been such a blessing. The Lord’s creation is an awesome and wondrous thing to live in so closely. In the slideshow you will see a couple of gators heading out for the evening hunt after sunning all day and one of the MANY trees that the vultures roost in for the evenings. It is quite comical to watch them jockey for the prime position in the tree tops. The mornings reveal that the best spots are on top for the evidence of a lower branch is quite clear on those birds. ;-)

This was another addition to my bird album I have begun, a juvenile Little Blue Heron. They go through a white phase before getting their pretty blue feathers.
We drove around the surrounding area a few days this week (rainy day and then cold day to follow). It was neat to see the wide open spaces compared to the super congested coastal areas. We saw lots of ranches and ranchettes. We also ran into some large dairy farms.
Our friends, Lynn and Forrest, will be camping here for the next few days with us. That will be nice. Unfortunately we are to have a rainy Saturday, that will put a crimp on our paddling wishes.
We move 30 miles west to Oscar Shearer on Sunday. They have wifi there at that park also so we will be able to check email very regularly. It will be a place that we can drive to the beach for a bit more shelling time.

Myakka River State Park

We are in Myakka River SP now. The temps are still falling below the normal for this area, today was the first day in about a week that the temps broke 60o. Les seeks the sun! We are making good use of the sweatshirts and wool socks we brought. But we are still glad to be here. This park is the one we love for the wildlife here and we haven’t been disappointed on this trip. At night we hear the raccoons raiding the campsites of those not careful with their grub, and are serenaded by South Florida Gopher Frogs.


Myakka has a good system of trails: hiking, biking, and equestrian. This trail shows that this area has had a good amount of rain this winter. We had to do some creative stepping to get to the other side where the trail continued. There are pretty wildflowers in bloom and that special green you see in the spring with new growth on the trees. On this 7 mile walk we saw deer, wild pigs, turkey, red shoulder hawk, and other birds. We have been seeing robins at this park. Looks like they are pulling together to get ready for their trip back north. They will beat us!


Along with extra water on the trails, there is good water in the river. Last year we could not paddle some areas of the Myakka river due to low water levels, but this year the waterways are full and very enjoyable to kayak. Along the paddle we viewed little blue heron, green heron, white egret, cattle egret, tree swallows and let’s not forget the alligators.

The birds have given us special treats this year. Above you see a great egret with his catch. If you watch the slideshow at the side you can see why we watched with amazement and concern as he swallowed that big fish. There was a lump in his throat for quite awhile as he worked to push it down that long neck! I was afraid it would choke him, but no problem and he kept on fishing! Also in the slideshow are pictures of a mother limpkin teaching her young one to get snails to eat, how cute. And there is a picture of the large flocks of tree swallows we see at the lake in the evenings. There must be thousands! Another feeding picture is of an anhinga that swims with it’s body totally submerged.

We have another week here in the park. Friday they have a concert scheduled where a fellow will play black water bayou blues. I can’t wait! I will try to get a posting on before we move Sunday to Oscar Shearer, just 30 miles from here, short move that time.

Koreshan SP

Our time here south of Ft Myers has been very nice. A few late afternoon rain storms with cold fronts did not dampen our time here. We were camped at Koreshan SHS which has very nice camp sites and a very interesting historic area of a turn-of-the-century communal group. As you can see from the above picture, we are also close to the beaches for some shelling opportunities: Bonita Springs beach and Lovers Key SP beach.

We visited Lovers Key for a day. The picture above shows a fallen tree on the beach whose roots have been decorated by us shellers. We also walked a 3 mile nature trail seeing lots of birds and one alligator. We were treated by an osprey with a fish attempting to take lunch back to the nest. Unfortunately, the fish was just a bit too big or the wind just a bit too strong and it couldn’t quite get it to the nest. The mate was very frustrated by this turn of events and tried to encourage it to try again. The bird sat on a branch just a few feet from the nest refusing to let the catch go. We did not wait to see the result. Hope he made it up! We planned to kayak the water trail there but the wind picked up and the clouds darkened, so we did not put the boats in.

This settlement has some good living history re-enactors here. This is a bread making demonstration of rising bread done in a dutch oven with charcoal. Yum! A local tropical fruit grower brings her preserves for us to put on the bread also, double Yum! We also attended a session of cowboy cooking with the cast ovens and pots of beans and ham, cornbread and mango crisp. Oh so good. An evening of stations where characters from the settlement were portrayed to give us some history on the group was a treat. And then there are the Sunday afternoon musicals in the Art Hall taking advantage of the 1885 Steinway piano.

Just 3 miles away (biking distance) is the Estero Bay Preserve. Above is a mocking bird (FL state bird) who sang to us as we began our walk and there was a gopher tortoise also (see slide show). The 3 mile walk was nice but much of the trail in the salt flats area was under water.

We were treated with a day visiting with our friends, Lynn and Forrest at their place in Naples. We toured Naples and Rookery Bay, and then topped the day off with a sunset tour of the Corkscrew Sanctuary. During that walk we had a juvenile barred owl fly in to the boardwalk calling for it’s parents. A few minutes later the parents called and he flew off to them where he was either soundly dressed down or enthusiastically greeted by them. ;-)

We move Sunday to Myakka Rive SP. Another park we enjoyed last year. No internet close to there but we will travel to some on the 17th because we must make our next reservation for 2011 that day.

Bahia Honda State Park, Keys

A storm coming at us from the bay side. Batten down the hatches. Actually, it looked worse than it was. We have had very little rain so far on this trip. I believe only 2 partial days of wet stuff. As you can see from Les’s tank top, it is tropical weather here now. Unfortunately, it has been too windy for us to put in the kayaks here, but the biking along the beach road is beautiful. And of course the beach walking for treasures is very good here. I purchased a book to educate us on what we are seeing. So interesting!

A trip to Key West was very interesting. We parked at a shopping center and rode our bikes into the old town. That was very nice. We toured the Mel Fisher treasure museum, a collection of salvaged treasure found recently. The trolley ride around the island gave us good information on the history and highlights. There was a key lime pie chef tempting us with his pie and the sponge monster gave me quite a fright. Then there was the jazz trumpet player outside entertaining the café customers. Nice day. Pictures of these on the slideshow.

We have been blessed with some super sunsets here at Bahia Honda SP. The portion of the orginal railroad bridge makes the pictures even more special. And, we were able to meet up with our new friends, Bob and Kathy, at a very nice restaurant in the Marathon area called Key Colony Inn.
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Here is the invasive iguana that is trying to take over Southern FL. These two were fighting on the road by the camper and the one on the slideshow was just at our camp site. They are pretty but should not be here. The iguana are eating up the foliage and hurting many other native species. Unfortunately there are not any predators for them so they are multiplying very fast.
We move Sunday, 31st, out of the Keys and to the West Coast. Our first stop is at Koreshan SHS for 2 weeks. We’ll have to find the WiFi around that park.

We are in Koreshan SHS now and have found a wonderful library here. It is rainy here and cool. That will force us to explore inside things to do for a few days. I will post another time next week on our stay here. God Bless!

Jan. 23, 2010

We spent some wonderful time in Long Key SP. This is a picture of a sunrise we woke to enjoy. Only one of course! What a blessing to have this opportunity. The only negative was the smell of the decaying fish from the cold snap. That is all along the beaches now. It should not last too much longer we hope.

A wonderful benefit to camping is the opportunity to meet and make good friends who share common interests. This is Bob and Kathy, a couple we met last year here in the Keys and we crossed paths here again this year. We did some wonderful paddling trips and some good nights. Bob actually made their kayaks!

The sunsets are also wonderful here. God sure did a wonder when he blessed us with sunsets like these.

We had an excellent dinner at the Barracuda Grill in Marathon. No we are not being eaten!

Jan. 16, 2010

This is a white heron, relative to the great blue heron. We were told this variety is only found in this area.

We are out of the freeze! At least for now. ;-)
Yes, the temp this morning was 70o and it is now 78o. Les is wearing his shorts and sandals which is the offical sign that warm temps are here.

Of course we had some excitement when Aaron called us to tell us of the earthquake in Eureka! So glad it was not harmful. But sure looks like it shook things up quite a bit.

We are preparing to move on soon. Leaving tomorrow or Monday if they have a spot here for us to extend one night. We checked for cancellations this week and found 3 days in a SP south of here called Long Key. It is the park where every site is on the beach. We booked Mon, Tu, Wed there and then we will finish out the week camping at Key West. We are excited that those dates opened up for us. The friends we made here in Pennekamp are going to be there and we will do some more kayaking with them if the weather permits. I believe there will definitely be a good meal for us to share one night.

I will post next when I can. WiFi is not going to be easy to get for at least a week.

Jan. 10, 2010

Yes, we are experiencing the deep freeze in the Florida Keys. This morning (Jan 9th) at 5am the temp was 59o, noon the temp is 48o and dropping with rain. Yesterday (Friday) was the best day we had so far with a high temp of 67o and sun. But we are not complaining. We have been able to do some walking, biking and kayaking so we are happy. Today we meet with friends, Sid Stepler and family, who are here on vacation for the weekend. Next week’s temps are to get warmer each day and forecast is for sun.

We read a book last year on a pioneer couple in these keys and they told of an unusually cold snap that killed the fish so that they could just go out and scoop them up. Well, we are experiencing that now. The shores are littered with dead and dying fish; along with weakened and dying ones in the shore waters. It is a shame but it gives us a chance to get an up close look at them. The fish eating birds are having a feast! It is interesting to see them sitting among the fish so full they can’t eat another one.


There is a remnant here in this park of one of the Keys biggest industries, an orchard. To plant these trees; guava, mangoes, avocado, and of course, key limes; they had to dynamite holes in the coral and ship in dirt. The bigger trees are original trees and small ones were replanted. Some of the trees were blooming and some had fruit.


Here is a barracuda that we found on the beach. Those teeth make me glad I’m not bite-size to them!


Waiter, I would like that one.

Winter Escape 2010

We are off again for a winter escape. The picture above is Brett and Emily getting in a load of wood after our big snow. That was a huge help along with helping us shovel out. The snow came early this year and made Les even more anxious to go south.


Even the welcome bear looked pretty cold. We stayed toasty with the woodstove and the snow melted enough for us to be able to get the camper up the driveway and head out on schedule Wednesday, Dec. 30th.

The drive south was uneventful, but chilly. Our furnace does a good job warming up our camper. We stopped again at my cousin Jan and Jerry’s and were treated to a wonderful day, New Year’s Day, with them and their family. A meal of pork and sauerkraut was prepared by Jan to usher in the new year properly. Of course seeing granddaughters, Stacia and Savannah was a wonderful treat.


We pulled into John Pennekamp SP, Key Largo, Jan. 3rd. The temps here are lows in the 40’s and highs in the 60’s. Chilly for this area, but OK by our standards. The radio said that this is the longest cold spell in 10 years. Think it is following us? Les is enjoying getting out to walk and ride the bike. We will wait for the temps to warm a bit before getting the kayaks down though. We are scheduled to stay here until the 17th. This park has WiFi and laundry along with the water and electric hookup, what more could we want?? Oh, I forgot the most important thing, hot showers! I should update the site next week.