December 5, 2003 - Ocklawaha, FL
We left Quitman and spent some time in Clermont, FL, at the TTN park. While there we went to San Antonio, FL, about 70 miles away to get some work done on the motorhome. I'd managed to ignore the weather report while we were in NH and a "rain storm" turned out to be a "RAIN STORM," and the 4" drop I had at one end of the awning wasn't enough. Should have been a 6" drop. About 2 a.m. Barb got up to peek out the windows to "watch it rain." Sheese, what nuisance. Who wants to watch it rain at 2 a.m.? C'mon, silly woman, come back to bed so we can get some sleep. Well, a few moments later, she was hollering like something important deserved my attention. Yup. BIG belly in the awning (bad news). There's a couple of grommets that are placed in a strategic location by the center of the roller rod, and they were doing their best to drain the water, but it wasn't enough. Pulled on some shorts and my "duck shoes" and grabbed the stepstool and began to push the belly up to get the water sloshed out of the awning enough to lower it. Must have been 20 gallons of water on that poor awning. End result, bent rod. Zip Dee has a pretty good owners manual, and in it they explain (and show with stick figures) that for a bent rod, you get two people to hold the rod on their shoulders while somebody else swings from the center where the bend is, and that will get rid of the bend. Yeah, right! I called them. And the very helpful service people told me the same thing--to get a couple of husky friends, put the rod on their shoulders.............yeah, right. Well, we'd tried it with friends, tried it with some of the park's husky maintenance people, and finally tried it at the shop when we went in to get some other stuff taken care of. End result, we'll be going back next Friday to get a new rod. Lesson learned.
Eric, the Service Advisor at Foretravel here in San Antonio (far right), has some orange trees. Well, he has 35 citrus trees on his acreage. This in addition to his side business of cabinet making for mostly Foretravel customers. And in the parking lot RV park at the store was another couple who liked citrus--Katie & Gary, far left (Gary had a obvious distinct advantage in picking the oranges). On his break, Eric drove home and let us pick all the fruit we wanted. Now, I don't think you'll find a lot of other dealerships with that kind of service! Got the chance to meet his lovely wife Marie (or was it Mary) and really cute little daughter Abigail in the process.
Ah, for crying out loud! Today is December the 21st! Been too busy working, running errands, goofing off and napping to do any website updating. Oh, yeah, that and a new computer that needed to be set up. Finally broke down and got a desktop that will run Windoze XP which means that I can use this newer version of Windoze FrontPage for building this little rascal of a website.
We're not the sort that will just stand around while the motorhome is being worked on, so we took off to go see if we could find some manatees. Homosassa Springs, here we come. And TA-DAA! A State Wildlife Park is sitting there waiting for us. $6 or $7 to get in, and that included the boat ride down this cute little canal to the main entrance.
And there's what looks like a soft-shelled turtle flipping us off. Well, maybe not, but it's sure flipping a foot at us. My guess is (and I really don't know for a scientific fact) that it does that to absorb more sunlight so it can get warmer.
Half the fun of being anyplace in our book is the getting there, and this little state park is no different. There's an Osprey nest near the top of that tree, and then in the picture on the right is a wood duck nesting box. The shield below it is to keep the snakes from eating all the eggs. And don't ask about those little purple boxes near the top of the pictures. I'm not supposed to use profanity. The story is, that somehow the wonderful Photo Suite Platinum program I was using to play with these pictures before posting them went south on me. I thought it was just that it didn't like XP, but turns out it wasn't working with 98 either, and would occasionally give me blue (or in this case purple) boxes here and there. Anyway, it died and now I'm using Paint Shop Pro..... and it has a pretty steep learning curve, so cut me some slack here for a bit, OK?
AHA! There's another nasty turtle making rude gestures. Or getting warm. When we got to where the manatees were supposed to be, all we saw was fish jumping like crazy. Now, anybody who's tried to take a picture of a fish jumping out of water has got to appreciate the advantages of this camera I got from friend John. Looky there. Caught it!
And just to quiet you skeptics, I caught another one going the other direction. And no, I didn't just turn the picture over. Actually, it was a bit of a challenge. This camera will take pretty quick shots in succession, and I'd just cruise the water firing away hoping to catch a fish. And you wonder why we sold the Porta-Boat? When this is all the fishing I do? And then finally a manatee.
And the naturalist or whatever her title is, is tossing carrots (big enough for more than one salad!) to the manatees to encourage them to come over for a photo. She was full of information about the animals, and had a good sense of humor besides, and we all enjoyed the show. She had them named, although I'm not sure they knew it. Hairy nose, eh? On the manatee, silly!
And there's a few coming and going. And you're supposed to eat the carrots, not smoke them, you silly animal. Actually, that's the way they all ate them. They'd take a bite out of it, go pick it up and bite another piece off. Kinda cool to watch them.
Ho! There's a manatee named Barb! And a feature of these springs is an underground/underwater viewing place. And I think these are the fish that were jumping. Sure were a lot of them, whatever they were.
And more fish, and different fish. Pretty neat, knowing they were free to leave the area any time they wanted. This is a natural setting, not an aquarium. Used to be a privately owned facility, sort of like a theme park. Had exotic animals and all. Monkey's on some of the islands in the canal we came in on and stuff like that.
And don't talk about freeing Willy, either. These manatees are in permanent rehab from injuries of one sort or another. And the owl (Great Horned Owl) too. He had a busted wing. Well, actually it was mostly missing. This park takes in wounded animals and birds that are indigenous to Florida, and the ones that can't be rehabilitated and turned back into the wild are used for study and exhibits like this. There was a volunteer that told about the owls' habits and stuff like that. Timed programs at different places in the park where we could go and learn about the animals.
Uh, are hippos indigenous to Florida? Well, no, not really. But see, this guy (Lou is his name) was really a hit with the local people having been there a long time, particularly the kids. And when the state was about to throw him out, they set up a hue and cry and the governor of the state heard about it. So, the gov and his folks came down and they held this ceremony and made Lou an honorary citizen of Florida. Maybe all the kids like him because hippos have this disgusting habit of marking their territory by releasing their very loose bowels while spinning their tails at propeller speed, and splattering used hippo food all over anything within range. The "Splatter Zone" was clearly marked for those who wished to stay clear of flying hippo poop. These alligators are digesting their dinner. Wanna know how? Well, it seems that alligators are night hunters for the most part, but can't digest their food unless their bodies reach at least 80 degrees. So they haul out and lay in the sun waiting for their digestive juices to kick in.
This walkway separates the hippo from the alligators. Probably a good idea. The most dangerous animal in Africa, the hippo's home, is not the lion or any of those big cats or even the big elephants. It's the hippo! They're really territorial and will charge anything or anybody who intrudes, and it turns out they kill more people than any other animal. Kind of strange, when you consider this pudgy roly-poly animal that mostly likes to stay in the water.
OK, so this bunch of alligators are laying in the sun dozing, and another one lumbers up to join them. Only a couple of the others didn't like him much. They opened their mouths and gave low alligator growls when the new guy (or maybe it was a girl.... I couldn't tell!) intruded.
Lou was being fed melons. And frankly, his manners left something to be desired. He'd just swallow them without hardly chewing. But given his dentures, I couldn't blame him. And then a cute little (are they any other kind?) burrowing owl. The gopher tortoise digs dens and when they're abandoned, these little owls move in. But this isn't an abandoned gopher turtle burrow, it's man-made. The turtles are round, not square!☺
Here's a couple of the most elegant residents in the park. The Great Egret and the Grey Fox.
OK, so the grey fox doesn't look all that elegant when it's sleeping. Flamingos and storks. The flamingos are those plastic pink birds that old people in Florida like to stick in their yards. Them and Marc and Claudia, some of our other full time RV friends.
Isn't this bird elegant? Slightly smaller than it's cousin, the great blue heron, it's often found in the same area. It's a stalking bird, meaning that it'll hold stone still until it's dinner (small fish, frogs, etc.) gets within range and then it'll stab & grab. Nearly hunted to extinction because of it's beautiful feathers, now quite plentiful.
Well, regardless of the urging, we still enjoyed turkey for Thanksgiving. These wild turkeys are really smart and beautiful, and I'm not sure Benjamin Franklin was off base wanting to have the turkey as our national bird.
Good surroundings for our national bird, isn't it? There were several injured bald eagles in here, most walking around watching us watch them. And then the prettiest duck (in our opinion) around. The wood duck. The ducks were freeloaders, as were many of the other birds. They come in for the free food, but fly away when they want to.