Live Oaks, Spanish Moss, and Exotic Birds, Oh My

Things I like about Central Florida:

• Live oak trees dripping with Spanish Moss.

• Exotic birds




Sandhill Cranes





White Pelicans





Black and White Swans


• The Withlacoochee bike trail with lunch on the porch at the Mc Leod House in Inverness
• Visiting Mom and Dad,

$5.00 golf; who needs grass?

Disney

The Circle Bar B reserve

The Fort Frasier Bike Trail

Bok Tower



Alligators

Grapefruit, oranges, strawberries mmmmmmmmmmmm

Grapefruit league baseball

And, finally, summer in January, February, March, etc.

And that's what we have been up to lately.

Beaches and Birds

We are leaving the Everglades as I write and are headed for civilization and the luxury of a private campground for the next month or so. There is not a lot to do down here but what there is is exciting and fun.

Part of our reason for coming this far south and staying as long as we do is to spend time with dear friends from home staying in Naples. We dedicate one day to the beach where Ed and I take our traditional plunge into the chilly winter waters of the Gulf of Mexico. This is the Florida version of the Polar Bear Plunge which takes place in Lake Michigan each winter. We survived again and have convinced ourselves that it was not so cold as in previous years. We were not so good at convincing our respective spouses though who stood on the shore taking pictures and marveling at our idiocy. Tradition with friends is such a wonderful thing as it binds us together with so many fun shared memories.

Another tradition we cherish with this couple is the longest running pinochle marathon in history. We began this marathon in March of 2000 on a joint trip to Minneapolis to visit relatives and have been playing every month since. We have taken our game from Minneapolis to the southern edge of Florida and many places in between.

Thanks to Ed's meticulous bookkeeping, we have documented all the unusual places we have played and the results of each individual game. That is why we know for certain that we played our 1000th game in Naples. It took almost 12 years to get there. Which, by the way, the girls won. We celebrated quite appropriately with a good belly laugh the likes of which seems to erupt every time we play.

Our final Everglades experience was a bike ride through Ten Thousand Islands Bird Sanctuary. Florida has such stupendous birds it will make a birdwatcher out of anyone. Our special treat this year was in experinecing a whole flock of Roseate Spoonbills flying over our heads in an airborne sea of pink.

 The butterflies were equally amazing. We even threw in a few more alligator sightings just to balance out the day. What a wonderful and diverse world our God has given to us!



We managed to capture a couple of spoonbills still on the ground



Greetings from Camp Fit

I can't believe how active we have been since we hit Florida. I feel like I am attending Camp Fit and enjoying every bit of it.

First we were in Sanlan RV Park where we were able to golf a few times as well as hike the beautiful trails the 4 days we were there.

Then we moved on to one of our favorite State Parks, Oscar Sherer, in Osprey. There we attended exercise class three mornings a week, rode our bikes about 70 miles total, did a 12 mile hike and several smaller hikes.

Now we are in the Everglades staying at Collier Seminole State Park. We have had visitors from the North for the past few days which is always a welcome taste of home. Monday we rode our bikes on the 15 mile Shark Valley Loop trail at Everglades National Park amongst the alligators. And I mean that literally. The gators come right up to the trail to laze in the sun. We saw hundreds of them.

The bird life there is also amazing. We saw bunches of wood storks, a bird that is approaching the endangered species list and many great blue heron.

The Great Blue Heron.

Today we went canoeing among the mangroves along the Mud River which eventually empties into the gulf of Mexico round trip about 4 miles. Don and I are not exactly experts at boating. We have this habit of going in circles. Once we went over a rapids on the salmon river in a double duckie backwards. So understand when I say I am very proud of us making it the whole way with only about 3 Mangrove incidents early on. Luckily Mangrove trees are very soft when you crash into them.

My mother never realized she had raised such a high adventure daughter. Bring on the next one.