high 90 lo 70 sunny and humid repeat of pics everglades

Great Egret
Must go to April 29th blog to see the text that goes with these pics.

 female Awhinga

 male Awhinga

 fishing

 nesting

 resting

 

 Great Blue Heron

 Wood Stork

 Everglade

 Alligator at night the small dot of light

 spoon bill

 great blue heron

 green heron




We are working on the RV trying to get it ready to paint to fix the accident that happened in Washington state.  Will post pics of the repairs. We have not been anywhere of late to post. 

High 89 Lo 65 Sunny Geocaching and lunch out

 We spent the morning geocaching and had a groupon for a small out of the way restaurant.  We picked 12 caches from the computer site and uploaded them to our small GPS for geocaching and also put the info into our RV GPS, never hurts to have backup.  The first one was an interesting hide.  You see Rog finding the exact (within 6 ft they say) location from the coordinates.  Then we must find the hidden cache.

 So you start turning over rocks, branches, leaves, fence post tops until you find the cache.

 Found it!

 Next you look inside and see if there are any little goodies you want and you can take or not,  you can also leave something or not.  There is a log book or paper in each one so you log in with your caching name, ours is sitingbear and the date found.

Rog has found another one.  The caches are labeled by size the first one found above is a small cache this is a micro.  This is so small all that fits is the log paper.

 This cache is also a micro.  Some are hidden really good or we just gave up too soon.  All we found here was this neat lizard (if you can find it) and the gopher tortoise below

 

 Here Rog has found another one in a tree.  We have found most of ours in trees. 



 This is the log paper just name and date is needed Next

 We like to go caching because it gets us outdoors and we get to see the area.  This was a very interesting place.  I thought the crossing sign was neat

 The cache is located below the sign by the electrical box

 There it is on the ground by the plant this is a small one

 We thought this lid was neat too.  The contents of the box was interesting .  The Forest Service set these caches up that is why Ricky Raccoon is here.

 

 We were told that a family moved in an old orange grove and found a nest of scrub jays so they decided to take down the orange trees plant native plants the jays liked and let it go back to nature and our government decided to help out.  So now it is a park area where you can go and see the jays and flowers and other birds and stuff.

 Not sure why the donkeys, but there are 3 of them.  It was very pretty here with all the flowers and butterflies

 Our next cache took us into the forest.  This was a fun cache once you found it, The green container in the group of 3 trees below Then you had to make it into the cache its self.

 

 This cache started this big and ended up, 6 jars later, a little bitty thing.  I had put the pic on the blog, but I guess I can have only so many pics at a time.  So imagine Rog's thumb nail and you have the size of the last container.  We could not believe how small it was.

We had a lot of fun and ate lunch at the Red Wing Restaurant.  We had a very tasty lunch for half off.  Looking forward to the next outing.

We brought Merry home from the vet the same day we left her for X-rays.  We were told she is old, yes 15 years old  we knew that. She has congestive heart disease and there is no cure.  So will enjoy her for as long as we have, which according to the vet could be years.

High 89 Lo 67 Sunny and warm niceSorry no everglade pics Sorry no pics later

I am sorry the pics did not download or upload anyway they did not load.  I will try to do this page again in a couple of days with pics so until later you can imagine what things  looked like LOL




 These pic are from the Everglades.  WOW a must see place.  We are planning to come back on our return trip to Fl.  The pics below are from a walk, man I wished I had done this when I took the pics.  I can not remember the name of the walk, but it was nicely done and great.  On some of the pics you will see just how close you are to the wildlife here.  The alligators are will feed and well rested.

Great Egret.  I added this pic after the text and can not put in correctly sorry.  Notice the beautiful flowing feathers on the tail.  My understanding is that the birds were killed back in the day when hats with feathers were in style.

 This is an Awhinga or snake bird.  This is a female because of the tan head.  The males are all black.  They are also called snake birds because when they are "floating" in the water their bodies are under water and their curvy neck and head is all you see and you think it is a snake.  I did not get a pic of one in the water, but when I first saw one in a lake "floating"  I thought something was very wrong with the "duck" that was sinking with a broken neck.  Tourists lol.

 This is the male Awhinga.  They spread their wings out like this to dry them.  There will be trees full of them with their wings all spread out. It is quite a sight to see. 

 This is a Cormorant  or Awhinga male feeding. I find it hard to tell them apart in the wild.   They spear their fish and then work them to the point of their beak, flip it and swallow them hole of course, no teeth and all.  It was very interesting to watch him doing this process.  Not once did the fish leave his beak. 

Nesting

Alligators resting  and stretching their  jaws 

 Great Blue Heron

 Bird of some sort

 Wood stork

 The second stop in the Everglades National Park   Night time in the Everglades. The small light in the pic is the reflection of our flashlight on the eyes of an alligator.  There were fire flies there too, but very hard to get a pic of them. 

 After traveling the Rockys in Canada and Alaska all summer we thought this sign was so funny

 This is a lake in the Everglades and on the other side is the nesting area for many of the larger water foul of the area including the Roseate Spoonbill.  This is the closest that we got to them this trip.  They are so beautiful. 

 Great Blue Heron in flight

 We have been lazing around using the pool and all.  I will be, as the cowboy song goes  "brown as a berry" soon.  We have added another stop on our way to Branson, MO and that is Bristol NC.  If you are a racing fan you will know this spot.  We are stopping to see a truck race this time. 

High 81 Lo 56 Sunny continuing Spanish moss lesson, Merry, rig, swimming

 This is a continuing lesson on the Spanish Moss.  While I was reading up for the blog I learned that the moss blooms in May - June ish and that the flowers were very tiny as well as the seeds as you might imagine.  So I was on the hunt for blossoms.  I found them.  The first pic has the blossom out of focus because my camera wanted to focus on the reference (my finger).  But this lets you see how small the flowers are.

 This is the flower in focus.   This is like the poinsettia in that the flower is the very small thing in the middle of the green leaves.

 The beginning of the seed pod.

 This is the very beginning of the seed pod.  I'm still learning how to place the pics in order and I am a slow learner.

 This is after the seed pod has literary sprung open.  Remember this is on a very small scale.  That said it is interesting how much bigger the seed pod is than the flower.  But after thinking about it, in most all plants the flower is much smaller that the seed container as it were.

 Blue Jay's back

 Blue Jay's front

We have moved to Clermont, Fl.  We will be staying here for 3 weeks.  We need to have the RV and car checked out, oil change etc.  This ALWAYS means big bucks.  The RV takes around 20 quarts of oil etc.  Everything is big with the rig.  Then we will be ready for our trip up the east coast for the summer months.  We are only going as far east as Virginia this year because we had a later start getting out of Fl. 

Merry, our dog, has developed a cough so we have been taking her to the vet.  Well we thought we had it solved, but not so much.  She is at the vet now  for X-rays, heart and lungs, and  blood tests for other infections and other vet stuff.  She was not happy when we got there and less happy when we left her there. This too will set us back, but what can you do when a member of the family gets sick. 

We went up to the pool yesterday  and had a great swim.  Almost all of the winter guests have gone home, up north, and so the pool was almost empty.   I am not one for bobbing in the pool with a colorful noodles like most of the people.  I am there to swim and so it is great to get the bobbers out of my way. 

High 79 Lo 61 Windy (20 - 25 mph) most of the day

 This morning I took a walk along the Peace River and saw many interesting things.  As I am walking I am amazed at how many colors of green there are in this world.  It is also too bad I can not send you the sounds of the river.  The birds are singing and some are just yelling, I'm sorry but I have to tell it like I hear it.  The cicadas are out and buzz-humming like they do, the hawk is out screeching.  The pic above it the hawk.  I tried to look him up, but there are just to many and I was not close enough to him.  This shot was taken into the morning sun.  The camera has a sports setting so I can push down and hold and it take a pic every nth of a second until I let up so the next shot was great.

 

 This bunny was on the ground below the hawk ..hummmmmm.  I watched him for a while then looked up toward the sound of the hawk, looked back and he was gone. 

 This is Steve's other brother Steve by the river.

 A flock of ducks.  I also tried to look them up, but I'm not sure.  As my baby bro would say, oh it's just another ugly "brown" bird".  He's right there are a lot of them brown things flying around.

 This is a White Ibis I had pics of him before with very red legs and bill, not so red to day must not be mating season now.

 Notice that long long bill of his.

 When I first came upon this guy I thought young Ibis, but upon looking in "the book"  They say there are no Ibis brown with white spots and streaks.  This guy is a Limpkin

 This guy was out in the middle of the river sunny.  I watched for a time and soon his head went in and he just rested.

 Saturday we went to the gulf coast side of the state to meet with friends have lunch and played cards.  We met them years ago in N.C. at a RV resort.  They are going to be in N.C. again this summer and we will be able to meet them again there for more lunches and cards I am sure. 

Rog and I have been working on the body of the RV trying to repair the little mishap that happened in Washington last year coming down from Alaska.  I will show you the whole process when we get it completed.