Sunday This campground is a really birdy place. Walked it. Drove the scenic loop. Figured out most of the birds. Lots of woodpeckers, robins, catbirds, mocking birds, tons and tons of bluebirds, warblers, pine siskins, a couple wrens, and a hermit thrush. This is an opportunity to see a red cockaded woodpecker, but they’ve left their roost trees for the day and won’t be back until dusk. We won’t stick around for that. We’ll save them for another trip. We’re on our way back to the beach. Headed for St George Island State Park. It’s on a Florida barrier island, like Padre Island in Texas. Saw that Florida sign about windshield wipers in the rain again. In all fairness, I should tell you the entire sign. They wanted to say something, and it would sound too stupid to just say just that one thing, so they had to expand the message. They wanted to remind you to turn on your headlights when it is raining, but can you imagine the lawsuits if they had just said that? All those people driving around in the rain, switching from high beams to low beams and still can’t see a thing? So they wrote the sign, “turn on headlights and wipers when it’s raining.” I can’t blame them. Here’s a question for you: Let’s say you’re sitting in the car by yourself, waiting for Judy to check us in to a State Park. There are birds all around, so your get out the binoculars to identify a few while you wait. You can even see birds in the outside rearview mirror. So here is the question: when you focus the binoculars on the birds in the mirror, are you focusing real close, on the image in the mirror, or are you focusing distant, the distance from you to the mirror, then back to the birds? Can you believe I’ve gone this long without even mentioning racquetball? I’m just demonstrating I can go this entire trip without thinking about, or talking about racquetball. My last session with Woody, the racquetball coach, was on December 19th. After an hour and a half or so, we always finish up with a game to eleven to conclude the lesson. That last game wasn’t going really well for me. I was trailing six to two when I thought to stop the game and ask if I had mentioned that it was my birthday that very day. Turns out, I hadn’t said anything before, and I got an enthusiastic “Happy Birthday” in response. Then something even better happened. Play resumed, I made a miracle comeback, and won that game. How amazing is that? Got to the island state park and got checked in. Being in this campground is like being in a giant bird cage. Everywhere you look, there are birds flying around. Not a lot of variety. They’re mostly mockingbirds, catbirds, robins, and yellow-rumped warblers, but it’s fun to be in the middle of so many. Good run. Not a power run, but I got to run on the beach. Low tide. Hard sand to run on. The shoes came off. I love to run on the beach. Fifty miles. Florida Panhandle. Birding. Driving. Birding again. Beach running. One new bird. No drugs. We’re still a long way from Denver. Tomorrow: time to leave and head for home.
Trip23
Monday. Getaway day. Time to leave for home… Tomorrow. We need to spend a little more time here. Honest. We’ll start for home tomorrow. Today we started with breakfast, a three hour birding walk, lunch, a walk through the dunes and down the beach, some secluded sunbathing, a barefoot run in the sand, a snack, a walk with the dog between the alligator ponds, and now it’s dark and time for dinner already. We reconfigured the car/motorhome setup so we’re all hooked up ready to go at first light tomorrow, even though we’re in a back-in site. Usually, in a back-in site, you disconnect the car, back the motorhome in, and park the car in front. Then you can come and go in the car as much as you want without disturbing the motorhome setup. We reversed that today so we wouldn’t have to mess around with hooking up the car while it’s cold and dark. I have scored shirts twice on this trip; both times by buying things for Judy. Once while at Turtle Kraals Restaurant in Key West, and once while out on the boat. Both times, Judy got chilled, and needed something to cover up with. Both times, they were out of small sweatshirts, or medium T-shirts. So each time, we picked out shirts in my size, in colors I like, and let Judy wear my shirts then to be comfortable. When we look up campgrounds in the Woodall’s book, they often show length limits. In the Florida State Parks guide, they show length limits. The length limit for this park is thirty feet. The Bounder is thirty-five feet. No problem. We called ahead to the campground, they said “Sure. We have some big spaces left.” No problem. Now we’re in the park. There are lots of sites large enough to accommodate this length. There are lots of motorhomes in this campground our size and larger. We can’t figure out what the length limit means. It was cold on the way to Florida. Then we got warm. Then we hit a cold snap. When it gets cold outside, the Bounder feels a little drafty. The heater vents only come halfway out into the living room, so the whole front half is a little cold. Now that the trip is almost over, we remembered the electric heater. It’s a nice little heater with a built in thermostat, so you can find the right setting, then it just turns on and off as necessary. It has a shut-off switch on the bottom, so if someone knocks it over, it turns off. It’s perfect for State Parks, like this, where we have electrical hookups. We just put the heater up front and plug it in. It keeps the front half warm and comfortable in the evenings. Today, we’re way out at one end of a barrier island, with a speed limit of twenty-five miles per hour. We’re a long slow way from any services. We’re running low on propane. So last night, we set both furnaces nice and low, set the electric heater in the front room, and went to sleep. The sleeping temperature was perfect and I never heard either furnace come on during the night. Today, we have the same small amount of propane left that we did yesterday. We’ll make it through tonight just fine. Tomorrow, we’ll be on the road again, and can stop along the way for propane. This has been a good place for us to bird. It has been a good place for rags to bird too. We come back from our birding walks, and Rags is right there in the window. Studying. While we are identifying birds by genus and species, based on identifying field marks, I suspect Rags uses a different system to categorize. I can just see that little brain sorting them all out by flavor. The mysterious RV sleeping sickness never struck this trip. We’ve had a few ten-hour nights, but mostly, it’s been less than that; more like eight hours or so. We were never struck by a twelve or thirteen hour night. I guess we’ve defeated the dreaded sleep monster. We’re sitting here listening to catbirds all around us. They’re a gray bird with a black racing stripe on the top of their heads. They have a rufous patch right under the base of their tail. In fact, I think we got mooned by one today. Anyway, there is a reason why they are called catbirds. Picture a little tiny kitten. Flat face. Staggering and stumbling when it walks. It looks at you and meows. That’s it. That’s exactly the sound a catbird makes. Sitting here, surrounded by meowing tiny kittens. It’s enough to make a person smile. No miles. Birding. Walking. Beaching. Sunbathing. Beach running. No new birds. Tomorrow. We actually leave.
Trip21
Saturday. Travel day. Got up cold and early, packed up, and headed over to the Manatee Sanctuary to check it out before we left. Spent a couple hours there. It was good. Manatees from above. Manatees from below. Beautiful grounds. Trails. Birds. Two kinds of woodpeckers, and wood ducks. Wood ducks! Paddling right out in the open where we could see them well. Remember how I described the painted bunting as looking like it was painted by a kindergartner? Wood ducks look like they were painted by McKee. Elegant. Exotic. Stopped for fuel. I have yet to stop at a gas station in Florida that had not disabled the handle clickers that let you start the gas flowing, then walk away. What is up with Florida? We have asked why this is several times, and we have gotten several rather elaborate answers, none of which make any sense to us at all. What they have done, is guarantee that you have to stand there with your hand on the handle, for an extended period with a motorhome, with your face right over the fumes. We stopped for a quick sixty gallons today. I did glance around to make sure there were no police watching and prop the handle open with the gas cap today. Can’t always get that to work, but it worked nicely today.Highway 19 got really nice today. It’s the kind of highway back road you want to travel. Good road. No traffic. Widely spaced towns. You slow down to pass through the town and look around, then right back up to sixty-five. Some towns don’t even have a single traffic light. Turned off that highway onto Highway 98 to go west through the Panhandle. Same thing so far. I know that will change though. We have been on this highway before between Pensacola and Panama City. I recall a lot of stop and go there. I had the greatest run today. The first ten or fifteen minutes were pretty slow and normal. But then the energy kicked in. I hit that zone where the pace picks up, the energy picks up, and it gets effortless. I feel like I could just run like that forever. I had a power run. It was brief, but it was there. Passed an antique store called the Plunder House. Now, how good can you feel about buying something from the Plunder House? How do you suppose they get their stuff? I have the same problem with a particular motorhome. OK. There have been a lot of motorhomes. And they all need names. Ours is a Bounder. We had a Jamboree. We had an El Dorado. Maybe we’re running out of names for motorhomes. But how much did the public relations wizard make for coming up with the name “Intruder”? I can see driving a Warrior, or an Explorer, but who would want to drive an Intruder? “Look out everybody! I know you don’t want me here, but here I come anyway. I’m the Intruder!” Annie found a friend tonight. She and Twitcher, a rat terrier kind of dog, ran each other in circles until they couldn’t run anymore. We have a very tired dirty dog with us tonight. Rags is still clean. He had to watch from the window. Bumper sticker of the day: “I had sex, unprotected, with the IRS.” Stopped for the night at Ochlockonee River State Park. Pine flatwood forest. Two hundred mile day. Florida Panhandle now. Birding. Manateeing. Ducking. Cat drugging. Driving. No new birds. Manatees. Dead opossom. Grazing armadillo. Sixteen wood ducks. Sixteen! Tomorrow. St George Island State Park.
Reality
Tough stuff, this reality. It keeps intruding on our lives.
We’re getting slapped with a lot of reality this trip. Just before we left, our next door neighbor, Duane, had a heart attack and ended up in the hospital. We visited him in intensive care before we left. We got a few progress reports, but haven’t heard anything lately. Diann had a stroke and went into a coma. We’ve kept in touch, mostly through Jon and Amy about her. We got the call from Cousin Ed. Cousin Tom died in his sleep. Tonight we find that Diann has died. We feel for everyone, and will miss Diann.
Tough stuff.
We’re getting slapped with a lot of reality this trip. Just before we left, our next door neighbor, Duane, had a heart attack and ended up in the hospital. We visited him in intensive care before we left. We got a few progress reports, but haven’t heard anything lately. Diann had a stroke and went into a coma. We’ve kept in touch, mostly through Jon and Amy about her. We got the call from Cousin Ed. Cousin Tom died in his sleep. Tonight we find that Diann has died. We feel for everyone, and will miss Diann.
Tough stuff.
Trip20
Friday. The Manatee Assault. Today. The day we board a Marine Assault Craft: an outboard powered inflatable, to prowl the river for manatees. It dawned cold and windy. We were not deterred. The boat was primitive. We put on wetsuits, layers of fleece, and still froze our asses off in the wind on the ride over. We persevered. We reached the drop zone. We dropped anchor, donned snorkel gear, and dropped over the side. We located the savage beasts and lay in wait on the surface. When the manatees came up to us, we stared danger in the face and did not blink. We conquered the wild manatee. Actually, we rubbed their bellies and giggled. Judy had a three-foot calf with a face the size of Annie’s, staring into her eyes from twelve inches away while she rubbed its belly. The adults are up to 3,500 pounds and are imposing but not dangerous. The calves are a curious delight. The rules require that you not chase these critters down to engage them, but wait for them to come to you. If they come to you and want their bellies rubbed, you don’t have to decline. Sometimes they just swim around and you can snorkel above them and watch. The water is clear. Sometimes you can find a couple sleeping on the bottom and just wait for them to come up. Mothers and calves. If they get tired of you, a couple flips of that giant tail flipper, and they’re gone. We spent a couple hours in the water with them. It was like paddling in British Columbia. Cold and uncomfortable, but that didn’t matter. They are gracious gentle giants. It was a thrill. Normally, wild manatees are to be left alone, but there are a few places that allow regulated contact. The place we found happens to be right outside a manatee park, and has a guy paddling around in a kayak, making sure no-one one is being unreasonable. There is a very limited area that people are allowed in. There are lots of places for the manatees to retreat to if they’re not in the mood for company. They are here because there is a warm water spring that feeds fresh water out into the river, and the river flows another ten miles out to the sea. During relatively cold weather like this. The manatees feed in the Gulf, then come up the river to get warm in the constant seventy-two degree water from this spring. They don’t have a tolerance for cold water, so there are a lot of manatees congregating here. Several different places run boats out there to drop people into the water to see these sea cows. We were the only two people out on our boat and got to stay in the water as long as we wanted. The RV crisis. The bad 12-volt outlets. Got the mobile RV guy to stop by and look at them today. He pulled the first bad one out, the one that hasn’t worked for months, and messed with it and it worked without a flicker for him, so he put it back in place and it was fixed. The next one was more difficult. He actually had to bend a piece of metal, that was apparently misshapen at the factory, back into place, and now it works flawlessly. An anticlimactic resolution, considering all the contortions we had gone through trying to bypass the problems. Now we can cheer on our Raiders in front-room comfort. No miles on the motorhome. West coast of Florida. I can now pronounce the name of the town we stopped in. It’s pronounced Homosassa, just like it’s spelled. It’s right down the road from Chassahowitzka and Withlacoochee. No birding. No swamping. No cat drugging. No driving. No new birds. One bobcat. Eight new manatees. Tomorrow. North.