By the time we got set-up on Sunday there wasn't much time left to do anything other than socialize, fix dinner, and get in one game of cribbage. Our limit on cribbage is one game an evening. So far the men and beating up on the women. However, it is fun and friendly.
Monday Dee and Marty went to town to get laundry done. The laundromat was probably the most unusual they had ever visited. There were machines not working that had basically labeled as "not working" and now had snacks and other products stacked on top of them. The people there were friendly. One woman helped both of them with oddities of the machines. There was Wi-Fi and TV and the coverage on TV was the President's latest travel restrictions among other topics. As Dee and Marty were leaving he started blasting Trump calling him a liar, a fool, crazy. They had not expected this reaction at all.
The afternoon found us down on the Wekiwa River in our kayaks. The water flows from a spring that produces 43 million gallons of water each day. The river is possibly the clearest water we've paddled in Florida. There is a commercial canoe/kayak rental business run by the park so there are lots of folks on the water at any given time. Below are some of the photos taken while we paddled.
There were many turtles and of varying species. Below on the left is a turtle in a very strange position. All four legs were lifted up as though he was trying to catch some air and fly. Or maybe it was a yoga pose!
Even with all the people paddling by and some making lots of noise. We still saw birds. Not as many as we saw the first tie we visited this park, but enough to make it very interesting. Below is the one and only Great Blue Heron we saw and he was so tolerant of people that we passed within several feel of him and got no reaction/need to fly off. He sure made quite a presentation of elegance and color against the greens of leaves and Forrest behind him.
The Little Blue Heron above was one of three or four that we saw fishing along the river. This one has just caught a small fish. These birds are just so elegant and wonderful to watch. Again, we found that they were all quite used to people paddling by or stopping as close to them as we did that they often just ignored us.
The shot of the day, however, was getting this beautiful Green Heron as it was fishing. We saw this one also capture a small fish.
The most amusing thing we saw was a group of four paddling in a two-person inflatable kayak using two paddles but in sections. They were having fun but in our eyes, a disaster waiting to happen.
It was the fun they were having, but they did tell us that it was "hard work". We know, we've paddled those ourselves.
Tuesday we got out for a hike around the park. This is a huge park with 7,800 acres and within that one finds more than one type of environment. We walked through open fields with grass and few trees into tall forests with mixed vegetation. We saw lots of woodpeckers in one area and in other areas were aware of no birds, just the sound of wind in the trees.
Above are Dee, Paul and David early on our hike (over 3.5 miles) on mostly sandy trails as you can see.
The trail meandered through a wide variety of habitats including the type of forest you see above to nearly all palms or towering palms or trees widely spaced with beautiful yellow grass all around them.
We are impressed by UPS and Amazon. On Sunday we ordered solar panels for our campers. On Tuesday they arrived at the campground! One can get something delivered pretty much any place these days. David and Paul are not in the process of setting up the panels and doing the necessary connecting of wires and electrical cords. We will have our first opportunity to try these out back in DuPuis because when we checked on our next campground for which we had a FCFS (first-come-first-served) status that there was little chance we would be able to get in. Our backup plan is now to return to DuPuis where we won't be on the grid and so the panels will come in handy there for sure. And at the campground after that we will also need them as again we'll have no hookups. There is a small chance we'll be where we want to be on Friday night, but if not, we are covered.
Today Marty noticed that the little Carolina Wrens were picking up leaves and interesting things and flying up under Dee's kayak which is on the rack on the back of the truck. This was reported to Dee upon which she checked inside the kayak and pulled out nearly a football's size of leaves, grass, and nest building materials.
Two shots above of our very busy wren doing his nest building thing! Such fun to watch.
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