February 27, 2007 - Lovers Key
Lot has happened in the last month that made for some good picture taking. No change in our status here. We're still putting in our volunteer hours and running around having a good time. Of course, for most this past month it's been a bit cooler than we're used to here in Florida, so not quite as much outside stuff.
Good thing Raini isn't here anymore or she'd have my head for publishing this picture of her with her mouth open. I think they're up on the panhandle at Topsail State Park, but I'm not positive. She'd found that perfectly preserved little seahorse on the beach and brought it over to Barb to talk about how to preserve it without having it stink them out of house and home. Pretty cool little critters, eh? We sure miss these guys--Dave's fishing buddy and Raini's stories about the Northgate fee collections.
Some shots of that talented lady that lets me live with her. We'd been for a short (100 mile) drive to top off the fuel tank and "exercise" the coach a bit. When we got home before I connected the utilities, we decided to wash it good. To keep water spots from forming, Barb likes to dry the coach. And believe me, she's serious about drying it! Scares me to have her standing up there hanging on to the rain gutter like that. What's she think, that if the ladder lets go she's going to hang there until somebody rescues her? I have no idea, I'm just happy to have a spotless rig!
New grandbaby due this week, and Barb put together a blanket for he/she (we don't know). She seems to enjoy doing this kind of thing, even if she does mutter about it once in a while. Something about a dropped stitch. If I offer to help look for it, she can get downright testy, so I usually pretend my hearing aids need new batteries and ignore the whole thing.
I love the way Barb blended the colors in. She was using double yarn in the process. That's me all ready for war. Or at least waxing the roof! See, it's like this-- the roof is slightly domed so the water will run off, right? Well, with my plastic knee pads on, they try real hard to haul me off the dome as well. I don't much like being up there in the first place, so the fact that I'm slipping and sliding around all the time only adds to the stress. So.....
Barb suggested I try using some of the non-skid rubber stuff she uses to keep things in place when we travel. So I pinned some on and, hot dang, it worked like a charm! No more slipping and sliding. As long as I stay on my prayer bones anyway. When I stand up, it's another issue. Staying at the top of the dome or in the center of the roof, I feel somewhat safer.
Yesterday when I was in the shower, Barb got a call from Elmer. Seems the electric cart quit. About in the middle of when he and Ann were giving a tour of the park to some friends of theirs who had come to visit. They were at least a mile and a half from home and hadn't even been to the beach yet. I chuckled and went after them.
No blood, no foul. Kevin and Cindy, the guests, seemed to enjoy the variation in the schedule as well. And, no, that's not a smirk on my face, it really isn't! I'm just smiling for the camera. Yeah, right! I'm going to get some mileage out of this little caper you can bet!! Ann looks a lot happier than I think she really is, but then both she and Elmer are usually smiling. Fun folks for us to work with, I'll tell you that.
Off to the shop it goes. Elmer discovered there was hardly any water in the batteries, and we hope that's all it was.
Barb is fascinated by sea grape trees and their leaves for some reason. The difference between the new and old growth caught her eye here.
The tender little leaves look almost edible don't they. Kinda like lettuce, don't you think?
The DataStorm dish on the roof that connects us to the internet via satellite has a user group on the internet. One of the features of that group is the mapping program. If you click on "For our current location...." on our main page, you'll see right where we're parked. Orren and Judy Brownson also have a DataStorm, and when they were parked up in Ft. Myers they found us. A few messages later, they came to visit us. And like a dummy, I forgot all about my camera as we showed them around the park. But Orren had his, and took this shot of us. That's the umpteenth time we've had the joy of meeting new friends because of that dish on the roof. Is this a great lifestyle or what??
The first three shots here are of the Upsidedown Jellyfish (yes, that's its name cause it lives that way), but at different angles. Not your typical jellyfish are they. Barb spotted them on one of our morning walks, and while they're under a couple of feet of water, you can still sort of get the idea of what they look like. They both seemed to be feeding on the bottom grass, algae, and whatever else might be down there.
The last picture is of a Lightning Whelk egg case. Each little "pocket" on that string is a separate egg case and each will have from 20 to 100 eggs in it. Usually, only one will survive to emerge, as it will eat the others in the pocket. When one emerges from the pocket, it will begin to eat the others like a cannibal as well. YIKES! Even if we did fight among ourselves, my brothers and I weren't that bad! When they hatch, they're about the size of a pin head, by the way.
There she is. My Mudflat Mamma, doing her thing....looking for shells. Any time we're near water, if she's not looking for alligators, it's shells or birds. Got sharp eyes too, and I'll be showing some of what she's found later.
The wildlife around here is amazing. All you have to do is keep your eyes open, and it'll be watching you like this little lizard between the roof and the wall of a kiosk. Or not, as in the case with this dolphin. But it's still there for our enjoyment.
The first picture is kind of obvious. It's a very old cactus that I spotted one day when we were driving around distributing flyers to the hotels and some other businesses in the area. But on the right, it may not be so obvious. It's a Lightning Whelk with its "foot" out and it's operculum turned up (the oval-shaped thing on the right). The operculum is the "door" it slams shut when frightened/threatened and withdraws into its shell. It's about half out of the water, and the reflection of the bushes overhead makes it more difficult to see it clearly, but we wanted to include it here because while the whelk is common, to see its foot like this isn't common. At least not to us.
Are these both the same kind of bird? We think so because, in winter, the adult's breeding plumage sports a black "hood," but we are hard pressed to explain why, in this case, one has the hood and the other doesn't. We're pretty sure they're Laughing Gulls (an appropriate name as their call sounds like ha ha ha haah haah ha ha--no joke!) as we have lots of them around here.
Nope, that's not a great big squashed strawberry even if it does look like it. Sea Pork somebody told Barb. We didn't taste it, so can't say for sure just what it is. You know? Drop us a line, OK?
The Gulfo de Mexico is one of the calmest bodies of water either of us (Barb from New England, me from California) have seen. So when it kicked up full of white caps like this with these huge breaking waves, we had to take a picture of it. Normal wave action is about a foot high.
During lunch one day when we were off duty, I got a call from Matt, the assistant park manager. He asked if I'd help out down on the boat ramp for a bit and could I bring Elmer and Ron with me. I'm leading the pack, with Elmer behind me followed by Matt, and finally Ron. The guy in the dive suit will be explained in a minute.
Seems that one of the piers is tipping to one side so much that it's broken its connection to the dock, and Matt was there with some other rangers trying to get things loosened up a bit so everything would level. He wisely thought that with the added weight of us retirees, it would help if we jumped up and down on it. So we did. Only it didn't help. Anytime you get a bunch of old duffers like us together and present us with a problem, we'll come up with all kinds of solutions. Some better than others. After much discussion it was decided that perhaps something had gotten under one side of the pier and was preventing it from coming down as the tide went out. Then we came up with all kinds of ways to find out if that was right, and all of them entailed somebody else getting in the water! And since there were no volunteers, we started to head out. Until a boat load of divers came up! Ron got to talking to them and asked them if one of them would mind taking a look under our pier for us. They had been checking out the bridges around here for the Department of Transportation, and a couple of them still had their wetsuits on (what timing!). One guy got out of the boat, found a long stick and ran it along under the pier the entire length determining that nothing was under there.
That means that (as near as we could tell) one or several of the floats is leaking, or has leaked, and isn't floating very well anymore. And that's the story on the guy up there in the black wetsuit.
A bit after I'd left home, Barb finished her lunch, hopped on her bike and rode over with her camera to see what was going on. Got there just as we were leaving, so she decided to take some pelican shots. Thus, the pelican gliding overhead.
And if one pelican is fun, more pelicans is more fun!
Barb had a ball with the birds! Got 'em coming and going. That last guy must have been having a bad hair day, eh?
Yup, time to spruce up. Can you imagine a mouth that big taking each little feather and straightening it out?
Not sure if she took this picture of the boat so I could drool some more or if it was just more pelicans. Now tell me, do they recognize that particular boat as being a good one for catching fish (and thus tossing the carcasses to them) or do they have an interest in all the boats?
The snowy egret always wears his galoshes, have you noticed? This one is beginning to show signs of his breeding plumage.
I've included a slide show of more birds here if you're interested.
That's it for today. Got a bunch more pictures already sorted and another slide show of Barb's shell club event for next issue.
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