Lovers Key

Today we walked almost 5 miles in Lovers Key State Park. The trails wind along the channels of waters adjacent to the Gulf, so there is always water nearby as well as abundant wildlife. The flat sandy trails remind me of the Riparian Preserve in Gilbert, AZ because of the foliage and the winding nature of the trail system. A really great place to walk.

We saw a gopher tortoise. From this photo it is hard to tell the size but it was at least 15 inches in diameter, and it was anything but afraid of us. It was chomping away at the leaves and grasses, and gradually mosied on down the path.

We also saw an Eastern screech owl, up in a dead tree, sleeping in a hole in the trunk of the tree. This is a photo from the iBird app. My camera is not up to getting this kind of photo.

I am not sure what the plants are here, but colors and juxtaposition of plants in the area was so pretty.

A really nice day.

Ft Myers, FL

We have been in Ft Myers for several days. We are staying at a lovely RV resort just south of the Caloosahatchee and Orange Rivers, on the north side of the Ft Myers area. We are having cool and lovely weather today. Several days ago a very strong storm system moved through this area with heavy rains and strong winds. Fortunately for us, the tornadoes were north of us, and they did cause damage.  The rain fell in buckets here for about an hour, and the lake, which we look out on, is quite high. There is standing water in the ditches and in the low areas everywhere. The El Niño has provided this wetness and also the strong storms.

The birds out our front window by the edge of the lake are great. Each morning we see grebes, herons, egrets, Wilson's snipe ( hadn't seen that one before), anhingas, killdeer, and loggerhead shrike. It is quite a show.

Gary has spent a large amount of time working to get our hard-wired Internet connection working. It is now working as well as it does for anyone in this park, but there are problems with speed and people are complaining. At least it works some of the time. Good because the cell signal is not that great either!

More coming up as we do some things in the area. 

Google Friend Connect: Following a blog

I have been wondering if Google Friend Connect works. It didn't seem to be, so I researched it and found the following information posted by Google, about how to follow blogs. Mine is a Blogger site. 

In case you are interested, here is a notice from Google:

In 2011, we announced the retirement of Google Friend Connect for all non-Blogger sites. We made an exception for Blogger to give readers an easy way to follow blogs using a variety of accounts. Yet over time, we’ve seen that most people sign into Friend Connect with a Google Account. So, in an effort to streamline, in the next few weeks we’ll be making some changes that will eventually require readers to have a Google Account to sign into Friend Connect and follow blogs.

As part of this plan, starting the week of January 11, we’ll remove the ability for people with Twitter, Yahoo, Orkut or other OpenID providers to sign in to Google Friend Connect and follow blogs. At the same time, we’ll remove non-Google Account profiles so you may see a decrease in your blog follower count.

We encourage you to tell affected readers (perhaps via a blog post), that if they use a non-Google Account to follow your blog, they need to sign up for a Google Account, and re-follow your blog. With a Google Account, they’ll get blogs added to their Reading List, making it easier for them to see the latest posts and activity of the blogs they follow.

We know how important followers are to all bloggers, but we believe this change will improve the experience for both you and your readers.

Kayaking on the Hillsborough River

Today we drove the short distance to Wilderness Park at the Hillsborough River. Wonderful kayaking on this quiet, dark, slow moving river. We paddled upstream a ways and then drifted back down. 

Gary got this wonderful photo of one of the seven alligators we saw along the way. This guy was the biggest of the bunch. We kept our distance. 

We saw many white ibis, turtles, fish of varying species, herons (blue and green), egrets, an osprey, and two limpkins.  A perfect place to kayak!

Lazy Days RV Campground and Sales

We are at Lazy Days in Seffner, FL, for three nights. We like coming here from time to time to kick tires and see what's new in the RV world. This is certainly THE place to do that! It is hard to describe: acres of new and pre-owned RV's on grounds that are shaded by gorgeous live oak trees dripping with Spanish moss. Lazy Days sells everything from huge 45 foot RV's to the tiniest travel trailer, from motor homes to trailers to 5th wheels to vans to motorhome and trailer toy haulers (i.e., space inside the back end for motorcycles or ATVs or even very small cars). We bought our third motorhome here in early 2007.

On the grounds, in addition to the sales lots, are a Cracker Barrel restaurant, a huge sales building with a restaurant where complimentary meals are served to customers who have purchased here, a huge service facility where people bring their RV's in for service and where sold RV's are prepped for delivery, a special parking area where people take delivery and can park their old vehicle next to the new one to transfer household goods, an RV accessories store, an RV park where we are staying, and a special club house for people who have purchased a motorhome with a larger price tag (not us!)

I snapped a few photos to show the place. We walked around today and went inside many vehicles. The nice thing about Lazy Days is that you can wander around and go into vehicles without a sales person constantly bothering you. They just leave you alone unless you ask for help.

 Bottom line: We still like our RV.

Kayaking in the Lower Suwannee River National Wildlife Refuge

Yesterday we had a very pretty kayak trip in the Lower Suwannee River National Wildlife Refuge. We had a bit of a hard time finding the public access ramp (not very well marked), and then once we were in the river, we had to guess (correctly, as it turned out), which way to turn off the main channel into the minor channels and into the Refuge. But we did find the marked canoe trail with the help of a map that Gary had downloaded on his iPhone. We have had no cell service virtually the entire time we have been in this area, so location via a Google map was not possible.

We paddled up into the channels for awhile, watching for wildlife and for whatever else we might see. It is a beautiful cypress swamp area and as noted previously, there are flowers in bloom. Everything is wet and green. We saw two small alligators slide into the river to hide from us, several large turtles, a heron and an egret. Not a lot, but for a cooler day, not too bad. No wildlife photos, but I took some photos as samples of what is in the area.

Launch ramp

Manatee Springs State Park

Yesterday we had a great time at Manatee Springs State Park. The park protects the area surrounding this spring which bubbles up adjacent to the Suwanee River. The Florida manatee can frequently be found here, hanging out at the springs.

I thought this sign provided some interesting information about the springs in this area. Hopefully readers of this blog can expand the photo to read it.

We had initially thought we would put our kayak in so that we could search for the manatees but that proved to be unnecessary and even not worth it. The manatees were hanging out right at the spring where the water is the warmest. Kayaks and canoes are not allowed in this area, in order to protect the manatees from unnecessary noise and intrusion. The lovely board walk goes right up to the spring, and the manatees were clearly visible from the edge of the walkway.

If you look closely, you can see 5 manatees hanging out at the end of the slightly submerged concrete walkway. No one was using this walkway because regulations require swimmers and waders to maintain 50 feet of distance from the manatees.

We walked the length of the board walk which is just about as pretty as any mangrove area to be found anywhere. We had been here before, but I had not seen the submerged flowers in bloom. In general, Florida looks great right now. There seems to have been sufficient rain that things look wet, green and fresh. This often is not true at this time of the year. We have seen it very dry with lots of wild fires and dusty soil.

We continued our lovely time in the park by walking close to 5 miles on a scenic loop trail. It was a beautiful day yesterday, and the daytime hours are now getting into the high 60's, very comfortable. Didn't take a lot of photos, but I got this photo near the end of our walk. 

Gary snapped this photo which is our view from our RV, taken last night at sunset.

Suwannee River

We drove to a lovely campground on the Suwannee River near Old Town, Florida, yesterday. Our campsite is right on the river, and these are the views as we look out our front window.

We will kayak on the river in the next week, and hope to see some manatees if they are here. It has been cold (35 degrees this morning), and manatees like warm waters. That is why they normally hang out at Manatee Springs which is across the river from us. The spring water is often warmer than the river. But if it isn't warm enough, they go further south. So we will see. We have kayaked among them before and it is really fun!

I took a couple of photos prior to departure at Pensacola Beach. The sunshine belies the temperature and seeming comfort of being there - winds of 20-30 miles an hour from the north, and in the low 50's. Hence, there were not a lot of beach goers. But these beaches are among the prettiest anywhere in Florida.  Miles and miles of white sand on the protected land of the National Seashore.

Pensacola Beach, Florida

We "achieved" Florida two nights ago. Once we left Cape Girardeau, we got out of the snow about 50 miles south. The rest of the drive was windy and cool, but sunny at last and no snow!

It is not warm here in Pensacola. While it will maybe be in the mid 60's today, nights are still getting down into the 40's and coming up is another cool air mass. But that aside, as one friend observed, it is better than being in the polar vortex now firmly in place in Minnesota. 

We each did a nice run yesterday along the Pensacola Beach Trail - Ft. Pickens Road, and I am planning a walk there today. It is SO nice to be able to run without tons of warm clothing required!

This is a screen shot of a Google map of where we are. The blue dot is the RV park where we are staying through tonight.

This morning

View from our front window this morning. In Cape Girardeau. Fine now. Almost at the Tennessee border on I-55. 

Cape Girardeau, Missouri

We spent our first night in Mt. Pleasant, Iowa, and then the second night in Cape Girardeau, Missouri. Happy to say that we left the snow behind in Iowa City. So you don't have to go much further south from Minneapolis to cross the snow line.

The drive has been uneventful so far. What has been unexpected are the temperatures for last night, today (Monday) and most definitely for tonight. It will be in the high teens tonight. Today we had a few snow flurries and lots of wind which caused us to lay over a day here at the Cape. It was a good day, nonetheless, and I'm glad we did it. We used the day to see this area.

Cape Girardeau is the site of a Civil War battle, and we decided to do the drive, right in town, that is a tour of battlefield sites. This is a very hilly town which is not surprising because it is on the banks of the Mississippi River. The Union Army held much of the high ground, on the east side of the battlefield. The Confederate Army seemed to have been at a disadvantage on lower terrain. In any event, the Union Army captured Cape Girardeau and its strategic site on the Mississippi as the result of the battle on April 26, 1863. The Union held this area through the end of the war.

As Civil War battlefields go, there is very little to see because the town has been built on the sites. There are a few plaques, and one or two historic buildings. Nothing like Gettysburg or Antietam or Shiloh or others we have visited.

Along the line of the battle. This area was held by the Union Army.

The Minton House, used during the war as a smallpox hospital. Near here is the cemetery where a number of Civil War soldiers are buried, many in unmarked graves.

There were several forts in this area. This one, Fort D, is the only one where visitors can see the restored earthworks and the terrain as it might have looked. This fort was not involved in any battle.  In 1936 the site was purchased by the American Legion post, and this small stone building was built on what was probably the site of the powder house. It was cold and windy so we didn't venture around much. Yes, my Minnesota friends, it was really COLD - very bone chilling wind!

Cape Girardeau was recently the scene of flooding, but we didn't see any damage. We did see this huge wall along the river that is supposed to protect the old town which is right at river level. 

The wall. There is a very large gate that can be closed to keep out the water.

View of the river, looking at the bridge that goes over to East Cape Girardeau, IL. 

We braved the wind and walked around the campus of Southeastern Missouri University. Very pretty campus and some interesting old buildings on the original campus.

Campus photos.

From the old downtown, you can see the old courthouse, called the Common Pleas Courthouse. Built in 1854, it housed the headquarters of the Union Army, and the basement served as a dungeon for Confederate soldiers. Grant commanded the army.

We continued our drive by crossing the bridge over into Illinois, and drove down to Cairo. I have no photos. I had no idea what to expect. This town sits at the confluence of the Ohio and the Mississippi, and would have been an extremely strategic location in former days. Wikipedia says that it was a once prosperous town. However, the town is now in a very sorry state, due to a steady decline. There are empty buildings and crumbling neighborhoods everywhere. The historic downtown has been largely abandoned. There are a couple of noteworthy old buildings that look to be in pretty good shape, but there isn't much else. We drove on a few miles south of town to Fort Defiance, which is right at the confluence of the rivers. We wanted to get to a viewpoint, but access was closed due to the residual flooding of the area. So we headed on back. I need to read the entire Wikipedia article about Cairo, IL.

Being in an RV is not necessarily the warmest place one can be in cold weather. We have heaters and the furnaces running and are staying pretty warm. We head out tomorrow traveling further south. Maybe we will find some warmer weather soon, but probably not for another few days!! 

Departure day!

Cool start. Florida here we come!