Through end of March into April...

Let me see… where are we at….

We saw another launch, this one at a more humane time of 7 o’clock at night.  We picked up a picnic dinner and took our lawn chairs to a waterside park to watch.  The launch was delayed and so while we waited, we caught glimpses of the Warbird Airshow that was happening that weekend.  A couple planes were doing their performance in the dark which looked very neat.  They had a huge firework and explosions happening at their airport that apparently had locals calling 911.  The NASA launch finally lifted off an hour late and turned into a successful mission of putting, yet another, satellite out there.

MASH chopper

The next day we went to the same airshow, and quite enjoyed it.  There were a heap of from the past war planes/helicopters to wander around and look at, including one like from M.A.S.H.  The airshow started with a remote-controlled plane dancing around in the sky.  It was amazing, what the operator could do, without crashing it into a little heap of bits and pieces.  There was supposed to be a second one with a baby jet engine, but it had difficulties before it could even get started.  There was a Cuban parachute team with a huge American flag while the national anthem was playing...to C-47 Tico Belle, B-25 ‘Killer B’, Tigers – and painted tiger colour, and P-40 Warhawk just to name a few, with the finale by the Aeroshell Aerobatic team. The Aeroshell team were amazing in how they performed many difficult maneuvers in very tight formations. 

They was even a re enactment of a mission into Viet Nam with a that 

tigers

era spotter plane, 2 bombing/gunning helicopters, and 2 choppers with personnel to grab an enemy soldier for questioning.  Including fake bombing and lots of gunfire and a narration over the loud speakers telling us what was happening.  Another interesting performer was what was called the Housewrecker.  It was a duelly pickup truck fitted with 3 jet engines in the back.  It races a plane down the runway – it on the ground of course and the plane in the air.  It still needed a parachute to slow it down at the end of the runway.  Man it was noisy!!  

House wrecker

Aeroshell Acrobatics team

Aeroshells

 We spent a day wandering around Daytona beach while we waited for some warranty work to be done on our trailer.  The tide was out so we walked the beach.  It is spring break… so there have been

 

kids around for several weeks playing in the sun and surf,  different places having their breaks at different times.  We had seafood gumbo at Joe’s crab house out on a pier into the water.  Nice spot.  There are designated areas on the beach where you can actually park your vehicle, during low tide.  The beach is flat and hard so it can be driven on.  We didn’t… we found free parking a couple streets up.  Its not free to park on the beach….

We’ve been out to our favourite beach quite a bit – I can never get tired of the view out there, waves, birds and walks along the shore.  Another time we went to a part of the Merritt Island National Wildlife refuge bird refuge that is a reserve for migratory and local birds and animals along side our beach. It's 140,000 acres and usually is teeming with all kinds of critters including alligators of course.

There was a dike that was built around a large area so they can control water levels for those birds and animals.  Its a five mile dike in circumference that we walked around.  It was beautiful away from everything, no buildings around, though you can see the VAB (Vehicle Assembly Building- NASA) and a high rise back in Titusville, but not much else.  Part of the walk is also along the edge of the Indian River that runs along between the mainland and Merritt Island

Little crab

Generally our days at our beach are calm, beautiful waves... lots of birds flying or wandering by.  My favourite little shore bird is called a Dunlin.  Its a shore bird that's a bit smaller than a robin and it ebbs and flows with the waves as it works its way along the beach picking up whatever it eats along the edge of the wave line as its receding.  It has the shortest little legs but runs along like a roadrunner to keep ahead of the water, rarely getting their feet caught in the waves. 

 Another favourite is the pelicans, they have a face only a mother could love I think, but to watch them soar along on the wind makes you wish you could fly too.

wind of the nor'easter

We had a crazy storm system roll through here last week, that they called a nor'easter.  Just south of us there was a bit of hail damage that missed us and our boat thankfully.  Not sure what some of the wind speeds were but I believe there were gusts upwards of 40 mph in places.  I had to go take some wave pictures, of course, just because.  The little birds were taking a break from eating, because the waves were quite big along with a high tide when we went out.  Some of the bigger shorebirds like the royal terns were more courageous.

Our next adventure was a bit calmer... our trailer did an over nighter with a service centre to get some warranty work done so we decided to go across the state to watch the Royal Lipizzan stallions train.  They're winter farm is in a town called Myakka City about 20 miles inland from Sarasota.  Not a fancy place like the Spanish School and stables in Austria, but it does them.  The horses are magnificent and very proud.  They knew when it was time to get geared up to go strut their stuff, I could feel their excitement as I walked through the barn.  (The public is invited to go through the barn before and after the training sessions).   Likely because they don't get outside much I don't think except for training.  Three days a week for a couple hours the public is invited to come and watch a pretty relaxed 'training' session.  They have an emcee, who is the daughter of the family patriarch who brought these horses over from Austria in the 50's I think it was.  She gives a narrative on the history of the horse how they are one of the oldest breeds starting in the 1580's when a stud farm was established in Lipizza near the Adriantic Sea.  During the renaissance riding as an art form was established and it became necessary for any nobleman to study this art .  During the 17th and 18th century the breed had standards developed that made the breed become distinct, like its iconic white coat, which best represented an imperial house and the roman nose with a slightly convex profile. This careful breeding created a horse that was beautiful to look at but also very strong and athletic. 

 During WW2 their existence was very nearly eradicated.  The stallions were performing still in Vienna during the war, even while under German control.  The German army needed pack horses, so the horses in the Austrian Spanish riding school were evicted but the head rider of the school managed to get the stallions to relative safety.  The remainder of the herd however, 350 of them nearly became supper for Russion soldiers in Houstau.  

The youngster

A German officer in the area who felt they were worth saving, surrendered to a US cavalry unit colonel who happened to be a dedicated horseman.  This colonel hatched a plan and with Colonel Pattons ok, the horses were put on a freight train and transported to a US occupied area of Bavaria.

Anyway - long story short, it was fun watching them perform, including the youngster - he's just 3 and is just beginning his training.  Hasn't had a rider on him yet, but all he wanted to do this day was roll in the dust.  They take quite a few years to get their white coat, 7 or so I think she said and are nearly 12 before they are fully developed.  The odd time one of the babies will not turn and will either remain black or brown.  They have a mom and daughter on this farm that didn't turn. 

They say its good luck to have a dark horse in the barn.  One of the dark horses, a mare also did a routine, they had to close the barn door to the stallions to keep things quiet there.  She has a beautiful gate. This troupe of horses do shows all over the U.S. and if you want you can even book them for a private event...

Our trailer was all fixed when we got back to Daytona to pick it up.  The GFI electric plugs in the trailer had ceased working when we were part way here.  Getting appointments to get trailer work done down here amidst gazzillions of snow birders it like pulling teeth but we found a great RV service centre who really have gone beyond the call of duty to get our issues sorted.   They found where some wires had gotten pinched causing the short... under the floor... so you can imagine fixing that wasn't going to be easy... but they did... and all under warranty - good day for us.  I will be able to plug in my heated mattress when we start heading to the chilly north and home....  soon...

Til next time....

Florida, finally...

The night before we hit Titusville, we stayed at a campground in Homosassa Springs on the west side of Florida a bit north of St Petersburg.  Along the road from the campground is a reserve area that caters mostly to Manatees, with hot springs that are maintained with constant temperatures, just for the mammals.  Manatees are protected here, and there are lots of rules and regulations to be followed when near them.  These, so ugly they're cute,

Manatee

Fox

sea cows are slow moving vegetarians that are often hurt or killed by boat propellers.  Thermal plants must maintain a constant temperature in their discharge water when the manatees are present because they can't handle the cold. They have a rather large assortment of other critters including the rare Florida Panther.

Florida Panther

Finally in Titusville, we have booked ourselves booked into the KOA in Mims, just north of where our boat is, for the month, works out pretty cheap per day.  We tried to get in at a few other places that were a bit nicer, but they were all booked up.  KOA was the last spot.  From here we can take side trips, whether a couple days or more and know we have a spot to come back to.  We spent quite a bit of time the first few days cleaning Needfull Things up, she wasn't too bad this time, they didn't get any hurricane weather here over the summer so she just had some green slimy stuff on the outside instead of lots.  I also found a chicken bone and a bean, kept looking for the rice to go with it...We run a dehumidifier inside which really makes her stay dry.  No leaks, no catastrophes, all good, well... except that I burned the tops of my feet, first time out in the sun while cleaning the topside - what was I thinking, ...not to put sunscreen on my feet......I did wear a hat and long sleeves...

All shiny and clean again

Of course a trip to Florida wouldn't be complete without viewing a rocket launch.  This one was at 2 am... yes, we're a bit weird, but we did get up and go see it.  It was the SpaceX one that was unmanned and made it to the ISS and back safely.  The testing is for the upcoming resumption of manned flights leaving from Florida.  It is always amazing to watch them.

Jenna, what is it??

There is lovely little park not far from our trailer, that has a couple small lakes with trails around them, as well on one side of the park is probably 6 or 7 fields with 4 ball diamonds in each, all professionally kept, lines, red infields... some small fields, some large.  There was a womens' college fastball game going on that we watched about half of.  They were very good.

Small black blob in the water is an alligator

said alligator

Couldn't wait to get back out to our favourite beach to walk - the Canaveral National Seashore.  We can never tire of being out there, the waves, the birds, I could take a million photos of waves and birds.... well I think I'm getting close to that...

Never get tired of this view

Next up is the Daytona Bike week, we didn't participate, but there were a lot of bikes around for the week.   We are less than an hours drive from Daytona. Some times it sounded like a rocket going up as hordes of bikes would ride through town on routes that would be a circle from where they started or ended at a bar... There is a huge schedule of events during the week, mostly sponsored by Harley Davidson, though I think some folks do some of the events, then just go riding.  We met people from Ontario that mostly come down this week to do just that and get out of the snow. The Daytona 500 was over before we got here this year, though not sure if we'd have gone to it.

Flamingo

We did go for a few days to the Everglades National Park.  There are only two roads in the park, with a few trails or canoe trails off of these two roads.  The first road we went on goes from a town called Homestead, west of Miami into the park and kind of dissects the park down to the southern tip of Florida at Flamingo and the visitors centre there.  We stayed in a campground not far from the entrance which was very nice, had a pine trees all around very well space out spots - (see the blog photo at the top).  You could hardly see you're neighbour.  Of course, we have picked the two hottest days so far in Florida this year to be there - in a water invested area.  Bugs weren't too bad at our campground, but in other places in the evening that wasn't the case.  The first night was a walk with the ranger after dark at a near by trail.  There were young alligators about 2 months old, calling for their momma, large alligators becoming very active, as that's when they hunt, and its also the beginning of mating season.  There was lots of activity that's for sure.  I didn't take my camera - but with all the flashlights I could have, darn it.

coastal prairie trail

Next morning we went down to Flamingo and walked along the coastal prairie trail - rightly named.  Not 100 feet from the coast it was like walking out on the prairies somewhere, then along the coast was beautiful mangroves, spiders and bugs.

view through the mangroves

The visitor centre here was pretty beat up by Hurricane Irma, but is in the process of being restored, portable trailers are being used as the centre for now.  There was also houseboat rentals, small fishing boat rentals available and a large tour boat taking folks out into the glades.  Oh, and a resident alligator.

posing for me

To get to the rest of the park you have to go out at Homestead head north then turn left onto another highway that goes from Miami over to Naples along the northern edge of the park.

Up there we went for a ride on one of those cool airboats, like the one in the picture.  Since Gentle Ben days, I thought that would be a fun thing to do.  We went flying out just like in the shows, swerving back and forth along the open spaces between the sawgrass.  On our way back, he slowed and talked about how the everglades work - that a river flows from Lake Okeechobee that's 60 miles wide by 100 miles long to the ocean at the south of Florida.  Its slow moving, maybe about 1 mile an hour, but ever flowing and that is what keeps the everglades alive.  Keeps Miamians alive with water too, as they have discovered over time, that this slow water flow also fills the aquifer that supplies the cities.  The slow flowing water filters through the limestone and fills the aquifer that the everglades sits on. They are now doing billions of dollars worth of remediation work to get more water flowing down this sheet.  This work is helping as they are seeing an increase in the flora, fauna and reptiles, bugs, bees that inhabit the park. 
On our return to the dock, the tour guide was talking about as it was so hot today the alligators were staying out of the excessive heat so that's why we weren't seeing any.  Then this fellow just swims out of the grass and towards us, then along side us and turns and watches us go.... almost robotic like...hmmm

 

robotic???

The next day we moved on to the other side of the park but not before going back along the trail we had walked in the dark.  What a difference - there were lots of birds living creatures that we hadn't seen in the dark, including a honey bee landing on a lily pad flower.  Saw an egret nest with chicks in it too. 

We drove over to Chocoloskee Island just south of Everglades City and found a campsite for the night.  We listened to another park ranger talk about the park, interesting fellow.  Also talked about a the Marsh Trail to go to at 7 pm where birds come in for the sunset.  Off we go to explore some of the area, and stopped at Big Cypress Boardwalk to see what we can see.  The neat thing about this park is that everywhere we have stopped has a different ecosystem.  From prairies, to swamp areas, to tree groves, to coastal mangroves.  This boardwalk, which most of the trails are boardwalks, is different again.  An alligator sits in the ditch by the side of the road, right behind where we park.  He was still there when we got back...

Big Cypress 

A claw??

Along the walk we would see big cypress trees growing out of water, it felt like walking through a rain forest.  One cypress had a strangler fig around it that made it look like the tree was being picked up by something with huge claws... At the end of the walk was a small pond closed in around the edges with shrubbery, trees and whatnot.  An Anhinga had just caught a fish and was beating it on the branch it was sitting on, over and over and over again. 

It must be dead by now...

From there we went to Marco Island for a quick dinner to make sure that we would be back in time for the bird show at Marsh Trail.  Marco Island is a busy place, and mostly high end.  The island was once like the rest of the everglades, but they decided to build it up and put in hotels and homes.  They had to build up the island with dirt/sand to get it high enough above sea level and in doing so I think everyone has a canal out back of their place.  A lot of Florida was built this way.

We got back to Marsh Trail in plenty of time.  What is to happen is that thousands of egrets come here every night as the sun goes down to roost in a specific set of trees.  This rookery has been here for many a year and we were not disappointed.  The marsh around the lookout tower we were on filled with all types of water birds, but only the egrets swarmed to the trees as the sun was going down.  It was a beautiful sight, and noisy with bird chatter, they were likely talking about where the best fishing was that day, or who had the biggest fish, egrets running in to others they hadn't seen in ages.....  Just as the sun set, hundreds more flew in from all directions until the trees were white with birds.  Amazing...

Egret rookery

The next day we headed north a bit to try and find some cooler than 32 degree weather and found it at a place called Frostproof, Florida.  Friends we had met in the sailing world, now also land yachting, have a place there in ... you guessed it... a 55+ community.  We stayed there for a night to visit with them.  Really nice place, can see why they got hooked.  We spent the rest of the afternoon at the pool, then had a lovely dinner with them at their spot. 

There is a resident Sandhill Crane that walks the campground regularly, they aren't sure why, whether looking for his long lost mate or just likes campgrounds.

We returned to our campsite in Mims the next day, just as the weather is starting to cool abit, thankfully.  The day after we spent the afternoon at our favourite beach... can't tire of the views...

Til next time...... happy Spring