The Badlands Nat'l Park

The scenery here is amazing. Such beauty. We are being treated here at the Badland and on our drives but beautiful wildflowers. They really dress up the already spectacular views. The first day here was rainy, but that was fine as we were so tired from the 4 long driving days to get here. We enjoyed a day to nap!

We had a nice sunny day the second day of our Badlands stay. Les and I hiked a trail to an overlook. See the ladder that was part of our trial? My thighs are going to be talking to me the next couple days.

I then dropped Les off at a trailhead to walk another 2 1/2 miles on a different trail. He enjoyed that trail although it was getting hot by then.

We drove 10 1/2 hours today (Wednesday) to go to our next destination, Yellowstone. We stopped in the town of Grey Bull which is still about 3 hours from our first campground in Yellowstone! Things are so far apart here. But we are seeing some amazing sights. We plan 5 nights in Yellowstone in three differents areas of the park. I'm afraid that we will not have cell or wifi there so we will post again later.

Aug 28 Storm in South Dakota

This only shows a small bit of what we drove into today. It is strange to voluntarily enter a storm looking like that! Thank the good Lord, there was no hail in it. Just a session of strong winds. Once we drove through this front we were back to sunny skys and 80o temps.

We were hoping to camp in a Corp cg or a State park along the Missouri River tonight but most of them are still closed from the bad flooding they had this summer. So we are in a KOA.

Tomorrow we should be in The Badlands and camping in a Nat'l Park cg. We are looking forward to slowing down now and doing some exploring.

Glad to hear that the hurricane did not do what they had predicted to the east. Fair skies ahead for us all?

August 27th Iowa Rest Stop

Here we are at a rest stop in western Iowa. They have wifi and dumping facilities at there RA's. Wow! Little things please us. ;-)

We stopped last night in Elderidge to visit with our friends John and Geralyn Osen. They treated us to a wonderful meal, we then slept in the camper parked in front of their home (they offered their guest room but we declined) and then they fed us a wonderful breakfast before we headed west.

The weather is in the 80's and sunny here in the midwest. Hope there is not bad flooding in PA.

We will post again when we can.

Northwest Adventure

We are off for a fall trip in our new Itasca Navion purchased this summer for trips west. No we are not selling our Pegasus, it is perfect for our FL winters right now and allows us to take our "toys" (kayaks and bikes) in the bed of the truck. But this motorhome will be more compact and powerful for the terrain of the west.

We will try to blog our trip but that is dependent on the access of wifi. Check us out periodically to see if we were able to update.

Our plan: leave Aug 25th, drive to Seattle, WA to visit with Chris and Lori. While there we will join up with them to spend a week on Vancouver Island. Sept 11th head down RT 1 and the Oregon coast to visit with Aaron in Eureka, CA. After leaving Aaron we will continue in the Northwest to work our way home, hoping to hit Yellowstone if the weather there is OK and no snow?? We should return around Oct 10th.

The Good Lord sure has blessed us and I am grateful.

Myakka River State Park Arcadia, FL

What a lovely stay we have enjoyed here. We are more inland, about 15 miles from the coast, and in the largest of the state parks we have visited. With it’s large size, there is more wildlife here. There is also a wide variety of hiking and biking trails here.

Along with some good kayaking, above you see me paddling in the wilderness area where access is limited and therefore you see more wildlife. We saw a lot of alligators on this paddle, but they behaved themselves as did we!

We had two special birding treats while here. The picture shows sandhill cranes dancing for us at the lake. We were treated with this scene the first day here and haven’t seen them since. They are very large birds and quite stately.

Here is a Burrowing Owl. These little owls actually dig and live in shallow burrows in the sand. Can you see the sand flying out as the mate takes its turn digging? You will see pictures in the slideshow at the side of an owl that took a short cut and adopted a drain as its burrow. You will also see that these owls are “city dwellers”.

There is such beauty here. God’s artistic hand is so evident here. The weather has been so summerlike. Les is in seventh heaven! We move Saturday, March 5th, more inland to Highland Hammock SP. Some camping friends, Gerri and Leon, will be there as they are volunteers this year there. We spend a week there then move to a new park in the Tampa area.

Oscar Shearer State Park Osprey, FL

This is our second week here at Oscar Shearer SP. The first week was cold and rainy but we met and met up with camping friends to occupy our time along with hiking the trails here in the park. Valentines day brought more sunshine and some warmer temperatures. Above is the wonderful chicken kabobs Les made us for dinner, Yum.

The weather this week has brightened and is gradually warming. We have had the opportunity to go to the beach some and it is so nice to hunt shark’s teeth. Someone once told me that walking the beach was better than blood pressure medicine and I must agree.

We have met so many nice people while camping. Here we are enjoying a sunset with Dottie and Frank from NY. And tomorrow we go to visit Trish and Steve from RI to do some kayaking to shell.
We leave Saturday for two weeks at Myakka River SP. There is always some good wildlife there and I hope the kayaking is good this year.

Everglades National Park, FL

Oh my, we had such a good visit to the Everglades. Our theme for this stay was birds. We stayed in the most southern campground called Flamingo four days. Most of the sites are dry camping, no hook-ups, but they do have 41 sites with electric. After three days our battery was very low so we moved to an electric site to charge it. We will be researching solar panels for these situations.

There were many osprey nests in the Flamingo area and great sightings of osprey with fish. We also sighted a nest where the baby was up and getting fed. See the slideshow for pictures. It was amazing to have regular experiences with hawks sitting in low branches with their catches eating.

This red shouldered hawk fed off the grass beside our camper everyday. Wow, we would sit in our chairs and the hawk would pop down just feet from us feeding on grubs or worms in the grass. An eco pond just outside the campground had a great gathering of birds early in the morning: snowy egrets; great egrets; green herons; little blue herons; wood storks; roseate spoonbill; and red shouldered hawk. All those in one area of the pond chatting away. It was so neat to experience.

For our last day we moved about 38 miles north in the park (Everglades is a very big park) to a second campground available, Long Pine Key. Here there is no hook-ups at all. What we really enjoyed about these campgrounds is the silence. How nice. Here at Long Pine you are in more pine forested area and found the biking very nice.
A short drive to a trail titled, Anhinga Trail, gave us LOTS of great bird viewing. Baby Anhinga, purple granule, common moore hen, grebe, green heron, great blue heron, cormorant, white egret to mention a few. This cormorant bit off more than he could chew! I’m going to try to get my new slideshow on today but I may have to wait a few days to do it?
We moved to Oscar Shearer State Park Feb 5th. We will be here two weeks. I will post on this park next week. On Feb. 19th we then move to Myakka River State Park.