January 3, 2006 - Lovers Key S.P

Added some links to a couple of websites belonging to a single woman who's a fulltime RV'er.  And the reason I did is that she appears to be somewhat less of a crash-and-burn sort of single woman striking out on her own.  I get the impression she's sometimes a bit timid about what she's up to, and I hope she's an inspiration to some other single women out there who would like to try the lifestyle, but are not the "gung ho" types.  Not that I don't think the braver women don't add something to this world, but there are (in my observation) lots of women who simply wish they were brave.  Like Malia, they have dreams they sometimes struggle with.  Check her out.  I think you'll enjoy her writing, regardless of your level of "braveness."

One day while working at clearing the trail ("trail maintenance" as it's known), we spotted this torn apart log, and these white things in it.  Snake eggs!  Barb put her tube of lip stuff down there to get some perspective of their size.  Several of the rangers told us they were probably black racer eggs.  They'd all hatched apparently (about a dozen of them), as they all had these little slits in them.  What fun!

In the past, when we're doing volunteer stuff, we will use the volunteer location as sort of a base camp.  When we're done "working" we usually take our time off and play tourist and go visiting the area.  We'll, we've been here since October 25th and we've left the park to play tourist only three times.  This place simply has everything we like to do right here.  Wildlife, beach, fishing, boating, bicycling, and space to lay around and enjoy the sunshine.  What else could a person ask for, eh? 

Yup, this is one of those days.  Barb can't say "Corkscrew Swamp" without tripping on her tongue, and I tease her unmercifully about it.  It comes out "Corkscrew Squamp" almost every time.

We got in for free because we're volunteers for the State Park system.  Pretty cool, eh?  All kinds of privileges besides just the free T-shirts and hat.

We were anticipating lots of birds, as the trail is all boardwalk through all kinds of terrain.  But we're not adverse to catching some large epiphytes (air plants) and cute flowers in the meantime.

Hurricane evidence was all over the place, but the trail had been nicely cleared.  We liked seeing the bird feeder and, since we're in an Audubon facility, it didn't surprise us.

What did surprise us was learning about why that stovepipe is on the cable holding the feeders.  Bears.  Yeah, there was a little black bear who learned that it could climb the tree, hook its teeth over the wire and slide down to the feeder and eat the seeds.  Now, that's just a nuisance, but with tourists some 20 feet away clicking away on their cameras, it became a safety issue, thus the pipe.  I can see a couple of dents in the pipe, so apparently the bear gave it a swat or two trying to get around it.

And then a more-or-less typical Florida swamp picture.  Stagnant water with plenty of vegetation with all the critters hiding from our view.

These tenacious ferns were growing all over the place, and some had made it up to the tree canopy as well.

When we saw this sign, we got excited about seeing something unusual.  The plume hunters nearly wiped out the egret population, along with some other birds as well.  There was a time when feathers were worth more money (by weight) than gold.  Amazing what power fashion has over some people.  Anyway, we were anxious to take this side trip to see their camp.

No, she's not shutting her eyes in disgust.  Just bad timing on my part.  But as you can see, there's no "Plume Hunter's Camp" here.  Just a rain shelter with that name.  Big sighs of disappointment.  But if it had been a rainy day, we'd have appreciated the break I'm sure.

Well, now, that's an interesting sign.  The English and Spanish are not unusual, but German too?  We'd noticed there is a very large contingent of German tourists to this area, and many have even bought condos and come for the season, but seeing a German language sign like this was a first for us.

I couldn't resist the speck of blue in here with all the greens and browns.  And so far, nary a bird in sight.

Bald cypress along with some black cypress are the predominant trees along the boardwalk.  That's a pair of borrowed binoculars I've got around my neck.  Seems I lost that expensive neat little pair of Leopold mini-binoculars that I liked so much.  Really bugs me, too.

In that first picture, Barb got a shot of some rather unusual cypress knees.  Usually they're much thinner or narrower than these.  Not sure what the story is on them, but unusual they are.  At least to us.

Now if you get the impression we're just taking pictures to be taking them, you'd be partially right.  We're really trying hard to not be bummed out by this place as we compare it to Lovers Key.  We'd come for the birds (after all it's an Audubon place) and while once in a while we might hear one, we hadn't seen any at all by this time.  Nice boardwalk, and a variety of terrain and that's all well and good, but where are all the birds?

Ah, Barb and her love of big trees.  Have you noticed we're both wearing long pants?  Yup, it's one of those rare days when it was just a tad too chilly for shorts and sandals.  Way up there on the highest branches of that tree is some of those ferns I was talking about earlier.  Tiny spindly vine produces all those ferns up there, giving the tree a fuzzy look.

Don't know why, exactly, but I really like symmetry and balance.  And this little fern sure has it.  Barb found another big tree, and I'm about to put my camera away.

OK, we've learned our lesson.  We didn't even go looking for any alligator den.  But it was a nice shelter.

So, when there's nothing really interesting to look at, you simply get more intense in looking.  And you find really tiny little flowers, and lots of lichen on the trees to look at.  That's Barb waaaay back there in the center of the picture.

AHA!!  There's some excitement!  A couple of coons messing around.  It's daytime, so they must be young ones.  Well, yeah, it was nice to see these flowers too.

The coons didn't last long.  They really didn't seem to notice the few of us who were applauding their presence, and off they went doing their coon thing.  And then a rather arch-typical Florida swamp picture.  Cypress with its knees, ferns, vines, and general entanglement of vegetation in the stagnant water.  Well, that's not entirely true.  The water isn't really stagnant.  It's always moving, flowing slowly in a generally southwest direction.

AHA!  Now this makes sense.  The sign and the surrounding area actually match.

Not sure I'd like it in my salad or on my sandwich, but if you want to call it lettuce, that's fine with me.  I'll admit it does have a resemblance.  And here we actually saw a bird.  And we couldn't identify it! And our book was no help either.  Eventually we came upon a volunteer, and then we learned that the little blue heron has a white stage it goes through as an adolescent.  Now the big vine isn't the fern vine.  Just that little skinny vine.  And I'm convinced that the fronds on the fern are where most it's nutrients come from.  Going way up in that tree, there's just no way the root system is providing much food for the leaves at all.

And we end the day by Barb admiring the sculpture of the storks on the porch.  Get it?  Stork on the porch?  Ah, what do you expect.  It was a tough day.......