2/16/23. John Pennekamp again

We drove down to Key Largo and went to John Pennekamp park again. This time we were going to go snorkeling.   Unfortunately, the water was not super clear near the beach so we didn't see a whole lot.  I did see a couple of grunts and one parrot fish, but that was about it. We sat on the beach - Dave in the shade and I in the sun and read for a bit.  The water was 75 degrees so not bad at all.  We enjoyed our time, but would not bother again unless we took a boat ride out to the reef where the water is clearer.  I did catch a picture of an unknown songbird in a tree (maybe a vireo?). We saw another chuckwalla on the walkway near the restrooms.  This guy seems to have lost the end of his tail.  We got back to a late lunch and I did some laundry.  While sitting and reading and waiting for the laundry to be done, I noticed an iguana basking in the sun poolside.  We will go out to dinner tonight.

2/15/23. Biscayne National Park

We set out today for Biscayne National Park.  It is a very small park south of Miami.  Most of the activities are from the water.  We decided not to take a boat ride out to the islands as we had not brought jackets since it was quite warm in Florida City, but a bit breezier near the water.  Maybe another day?  We took the long walk near the water and saw a few things: a common cuckoo (flew too fast to get his pic taken), a pelican, a palm warbler and a chuckwalla on the ramp leading to the visitor's center.

The ranger had a few suggestions for walks in the area so we then headed (via many pot-holed back roads) to Black Point Park.  Here there was another path that went around the water with a marina at the end.  Here we saw tall pines loaded with coconuts and more pelicans.  When we came back to the marina we noticed a restaurant further along.  We stopped there for lunch on the deck near the water.  We were joined at our table by a lovely cat which sat next to our table and watched the fish jumping out of the water and the pelicans diving down to have their lunch.  They and she were very entertaining. On our way back we passed a capped dump site with about fifty vultures circling overhead.  It is supposed to be even warmer tomorrow so I think we will head back to John Pennekamp State Park and do some snorkeling.

 

2/14/23. Back to the Everglades

Happy Valentine's Day to all.  We decided to go back to the Anhinga Trail just inside the Everglades this morning.  Again, we were not disappointed.  The weather was a bit cool so we wore our jackets and shorts, but were able to take off the jackets halfway through the walk.  We met a couple from Warsaw, Poland just as we began the walk.  We took their pic with some alligators sunning below and they returned the favor.  The little girl in the photo is the younger of their two daughters.  We chatted for a bit and I asked them about the number of Ukrainian refugees in their area.  Their city has about 400,000 refugees from Ukraine.  They are hosting a grandmother and several grandchildren who were able to get out at the beginning of the war.  What they thought would be a relocation for a short time has turned into a year.  Today we saw many alligators, cormorants, anhingas, a Great Blue heron, purple gallinules walking on the lily pads, a least bittern, many gar, some large moth bass, and a golden orb spider. 

We then decided to visit the Nike Missile Site nearby in the park.  The site was built in 1962 just after the Cuban Missile Crisis.  The US always expected that the Soviet Union would deploy over the North Pole so were taken aback by the threat from Cuba.  Official use of the site was terminated in 1979.  We visited one of the missile barns.

We came back for lunch and after nap went to the local library to donate the books we have read down here.  This is not an ordinary library.  It is called the Cybrarium.  It is ultra modern and high tech.  Built in 2021, it has an industrial interior and boasts of virtual reality, laptops that can be checked out as easy as a book, 3-D printers, etc.  We had a look around and saw adults and children actively engaged in reading, playing games, and doing homework in pod cartels.  It was very interesting.

We will eat in tonight as I know from experience in the food industry that Valentine's Day and Mother's Day are the busiest days of any restaurant.

2/13/23 Big Cypress National Preserve

 We drove out the Tamiami Trail this morning to see Big Cypress.  There was a slough (water ditch) all along the road.  Dave saw many anhingas and egrets, a few blue herons and even some night herons.  I was driving so could only spot the anhingas which were perched on the tops of trees and the egrets whose whiteness caught my eye.  We stopped at a few boardwalk paths along the way.  At the Oasis Visitor Center we saw about a dozen gators sunning themselves and lots of gar in the water.  We then went to Kirby Starter Roadside park which had a mile long boardwalk that meandered through the cypress trees.  Many of the trees were covered in air plants.  These trees were much larger than ones we have seen before and so we got to see a number of cypress knees.  The boardwalk ended at a water hole where we saw an American egret and a Great Blue heron.  We then stopped at Williams Roadside park where there were many gators. The coolest things were a black rat snake molting in a bush right below the boardwalk and a nest of baby anhingas across the water. They were so fuzzy and cute!  We drove to Everglades City to have lunch.  We ended up at City Seafood where we had shrimp baskets.  Normally I don't care for fried food, but the shrimp were very lightly battered and very fresh.  We ate out at a picnic table and watched airboats going by across the water.  Two brown pelicans landed on the end of a dock near us.  The railing was full of great-tailed grackles that watched our every bite.  As we were leaving a gull also landed on the dock.  I assume he is immature as he has a gray head.  As we drove back to Florida City, we saw two unusual things.  A sign that said Panther Crossing had a blinking light on top.  According to our guide at Shark Valley that means that there is a tagged Florida panther nearby that is triggering the light.  The other thing is that as we got closer to making our turn toward home the sky was filled with smoke.  I thought it might be a grass fire, but we just turned on the news to discover that there was a fire in an energy facility that was causing the smoke.   

2/12/23 Redlands Farmer's/Flea Market

We drove out to the flea market today.  This place was HUGE!  I have to say that most of the items for sale reminded me of a giant yard sale.  There also was a lot of clothing.  None of the items had prices so I supposed one was to barter for the best price similar to what we saw in Mexico many years ago.  The farmer's market was interesting also - many varieties of fruit and veggies.  We bought some strtawberries hoping they are as good as the last ones we bought earlier in the week.

 

We had walked quite a bit through the market, but decided to find a nature park to walk.  We chose one and followed the GPS, but the street that it was supposed to be on dd not exist (again).  After going down a dirt road through fields of crops, we gave up and headed back to Florida City.  We sat out by the pool for a bit to enjoy the sun and read our books and then went back to the room for lunch and Dave's nap.  We found a chuckwalla sunning himself on one of the tables by the pool.

 We tried to go to a local seafood restaurant called Krab Kingz, but when we got there, we both decided it had the same flair as the one we went to in Philadelphia which was a big flop so we went back to the hotel and walked across the street the the Farmer's Market restaurant again.  Dave had broiled grouper and I had the turkey dinner.  We will be going to Big Cypress National Preserve tomorrow.

2/11/23 Homestead and Florida City

We decided to check out a few of the local nature trails this morning.  Unfortunately, most of them bombed.  Despite looking them up on Google, they were two of the five we tried to find were non-existent.  Another showed up just off the map, but the gravel road we were supposed to take to get to it was flooded and very sketchy. There was no way I would drive a rental car through there and the road was too wet to walk.  We did find two others though.  One was a small park in a neighborhood.  There we found two moorhens in one small pond and a bunch of white ibis in the other.  The gray looking ibis in the photo is a juvenile.  The last place we stopped was also in a neighborhood.  That is where we found the Muscovy duck.  He was obviously used to people as he came very close to us.  As we got back to the car, it started to sprinkle so we decided to call it a day.  We ate lunch out and will stay in for dinner tonight.  I have to say, there are not a lot of choices of restaurants in the area.  We may have better luck tomorrow as we are going further afield to a farm and flea market.  Will let you know how that goes.

 

2/10/23. John Pennekamp Coral Reef State Park Key Largo

 Brother Russ came through again.  The bird walking on the lily pads in yesterday's post was a purple gallinule.  I just didn't recognize it as such because of its muted colors.

We got on the road this morning and headed to Key Largo, the first in a serious of keys out to Key West, which is the end of Route 1.  The traffic going out was bumper to bumper for a good part of the trip.  There is only one road on and off the keys and everyone seemed to be traveling south.  We got to John Pennekamp and stopped at the visitor center.  They have a small aquarium there and a film about the different species of fish seen in the water.  Our first stop was at a Coast Guard holding station for some of the boats that immigrants (mostly from Cuba and Haiti) have traveled in.  They were quite small and I can't imagine how they made the trip safely.  We saw on the news last night that 108 Haitians had landed in another part of the keys.  There boat was so small - they must have been packed in with no room to move.  We then took a .3 miles walk on the Wild Tamarind Trail.  They had native trees identified all along the trail.  I took a picture of a wild coffee bush.  The walk was gravel and easy to walk on.  We then took the .8 mile Grove Trail, which was difficult to walk as there were many roots sticking up on the dirt path.  The highlight of this walk is that it ended in an old key lime tree grove.  When we first arrived at the grove we saw a young couple looking up in a tree.  They had seen an iguana running across the ground and up into the tree.  It took a bit of doing, but we finally spotted up way up high.  I was finally able to capture his picture.  We walked down to Cannon Beach and watched as people snorkeled around the reefs.  We will definitely come back another time to do the same.  We had lunch at the park and then headed back to town.  The ride was much faster on the way back.  We gassed up the car and stopped at the post office to send some mail.  I have laundry in the dryer so am just waiting for it to be done.  We haven't decided if we are eating in or out tonight.