May 9, 2006 - Thackerville, OK

We're parked in the "Quarterhorse Capitol of the World," and there's sure evidence of that.  Huge ranches, all cross-fenced with beautiful animals in them.  Plenty of big trailers and dually pickups all over the place.  The drawls are so thick we sometimes miss what was said.  Great fun!

Now, to do some catch up:

Before we left Lovers Key, Ron hosted a fish fry, and we were joined by volunteer Jack and his family, which included a daughter and granddaughter.  Jack isn't one of the RV volunteers, he has a place down here.  The fish was GREAT!  Ron has one of those "Frybaby" deep fat fryers he picked up at a garage sale, and does it ever do a good job.  He's got a secret recipe for the batter and we ate until we could hardly waddle.

Raymond and Josie are French Canadians, and parked across from Ron.  We didn't get to spend nearly enough time with this interesting couple, but sure enjoyed them.  This is their 3rd year volunteering at Lovers Key I think.

And then Christine, Matt's friend, got her fishing line tangled in the sable palm.  Matt climbed right up the tree to retrieve the line, then his brother Meredith came to the rescue, and finally I had to get into the act.  Ah, the wiles of a woman in distress!  We actually did finally get the line free without cutting it and starting over, which was my first impulse.

Ron just couldn't believe all the effort.  But then again, he has hook, line, and sinker all hanging from another tree over the canal, so what would you expect, eh?

A farewell dinner with Tod sitting next to me, Karole next to him, and Ken next to Barb.  We couldn't find John, or he'd have been here too.  These people comprised the small group bible study we enjoyed so much.  Great pizza, too!  We miss these folks.

OK, so my first attempt at stitching four photos together is something less than perfect.  Gives me something to work on, eh?  Anyway, this was taken on Easter Sunday, which is supposed to be the busiest day of the year for Lovers Key.  And it points out the fact that not many people know about this place yet.  Just look at all the vacant space on that beautiful beach!

And these are the photos that got stitched.

Even the tram had room for more people.

We hung around until after the mail came in on Tuesday, then left for the "Spirit Of The Suwannee Music Park" in northern FL on our way to Nacogdoches, TX, to get some work done on the coach.  This park is unusual in the world of RV'ing in that it has several venues for entertainment.  We left on Thursday as they were gearing up for a huge show on the weekend with plans of having all the RV sites and tent sites nearly full based on the setup we watched.  The park is on 700 acres with 180 full hook-ups, 610 partial, and 2000 primitive sites.  Entertainers like Alan Jackson, Wynona Judd, and a whole bunch of other mainliners come here on a somewhat regular basis.  That sign is a tribute to Stephen Foster, of course, who wrote the song.

The site they'd originally assigned us to had a beautiful tree canopy.....which means our satellite dishes were useless.  We drove around a little and discovered there were some sites over by the horse barn.  And they let us move.  These beautiful horses are Rocky Mountain horses and are real people pleasers.  See www.rmhorse.com for more information.  We got a real kick out of watching them being cared for by our RV neighbors.  That bucket and brush in front of the rig means we're going to try to scrape some of the effects of six months of salt air off the rig.

We chose to take the trip to Nacogdoches in a leisurely way, having been in one spot for as long as we had been.  That meant that we were in the Spirit Of The Suwannee for a couple of nights, and that gave us some time to poke around.  And nearby was ..... yup, another Florida State Park.  I'm looking at the reader board for the old sawmill that once stood here near the ferry landing and confluence of the Suwannee and the Withlacoochee rivers.

All kinds of history abounds in this area.  Civil War remnants along with this driveshaft from an old paddlewheel steamship.  That railroad bridge has been here for a very long time as well, and apparently rebuilt several times.

A couple of views of the two rivers coming together.

Suwannee has something to do with "black water" and it's easy to see what is meant by that when contrasted with the white limestone riverbank.  That lizard is called a blue tailed lizard.  Gee, I wonder why.  Lizards were all over the place, and there were lots of different kinds, colors, and sizes.

And some ran faster than others, like this little green guy.  I'm standing by the butterfly garden in front of the park office.  Looks like it needs a dedicated volunteer like the garden at Lovers Key has.  The garden was laid out in the shape of a butterfly which was neat, and that readerboard made it easy to identify which plants were where, which larva liked to eat which plants, and what kind of butterfly would eventually crawl out of the chrysalis.  Might be fun to build a similar display at Lovers Key if/when we go back and have some spare time.  We got to meet the park manager and several of his staff and volunteers while we were there.  Neat bunch of people.  Barb and I really like the Florida State Park system and the people associated with it.

The building behind me houses all the offices for the park, as well as some vending machines.  There's no concessionaire here, and the park is pretty low key.  Can't say as we've ever walked on a known stage coach road, so that's a gotta do.

Off we go, and Barb spots a flower we've not met yet. One of the park staff said is was in the "pea" family and, sure enough, our Audubon "Field Guide to Florida" identifies it as a climbing butterfly pea.  It is a vine that climbs or trails, and blooms year-round.  It was hot and humid, and the smell of the pine trees was pungent and pleasant. 

Speaking of flowers we've not met yet.  Remember that pretty flower in the nursery that we started the last page with?  Well, Maria Lightner, the volunteer coordinator at Lovers Key, wrote to tell us it's the Texas Rose.  We've heard of the Yellow Rose of Texas, but never the Texas Rose.  Thanks, Maria!

What's the fascination with cemeteries?  The fact that we're not there yet?  The mystery of who's who, and what happened?  I sure don't know, but I do know both Barb and I are drawn to them, particularly the unusual ones and the old ones that are surrounded by essentially nothing.  At one time this was a thriving city, lots of commerce, a school, jail, stores, and houses.  And today, just some rusted relics and this cemetery.

Evidence of Florida fire throughout this area, like this hollowed out tree that was still very much alive.  We hear on the news these past few days that Florida is experiencing more serious fires.  Sad, but not surprising--it's often hot and dry.

Well, that "...seasonally filled spring run." was flowing nicely.  First we'd seen bald cypress and black cypress growing alongside a river.  All we've seen before this was in swamps and lakes.

This lizard and turtle posed a question for me.  You know we do a lot of hiking and walking and poking around in the woods, swamps, and whatever.  So, how often are we observed by nature that we're unaware of?  We happened to spot these guys watching us, and as we drew closer to them, they left.  Well, that particular turtle didn't, but a bunch of his buddies did.  And here we think we're observing nature when, in fact, I suspect it might be the other way around.

As we stood there admiring the cypress and oaks, another turtle climbed onto the limb.  That oak I'm standing by is hollowed out from fire, further up than I am tall, and yet full of green leaves.

Barb said, "Stand over there, I want to get a picture of those knees", so I accommodated her.  Only it wasn't my knees she was interested in (drat!), it was the cypress knees.  Particularly that tall one I'm holding on to.  Our trail is leading through the woods on the right, following this slow moving stream that seems to be standing still right here.

Turtles and reflections were the name of the game today.  Plenty of both.

Reflections are fun!  I'm staring down into water that has to be 20' deep--and crystal clear.  I can see the bottom as clearly as if there was no water there at all.  And then just a little further out, it drops off and must go to the center of the earth because it's just solid black it's so deep.

Heading back we're a little more careful to be quiet so as to not scare the turtles quite so much.  And sure enough, now there are three on the limb.  Well, almost three.  Don't know when we've seen so many turtles in one place.

And then "poof" the stream disappears.  Right into the ground under that tree.  That explains why we were climbing uphill most the way, going against the current, and then it slowed to almost no flow at all, and then appeared to flow backwards.  Not uphill, but in the opposite direction as before.  The spring must be in the middle, with some flowing into this limestone fissure, and the rest flowing into the Suwannee river.  Never did really get the story straight, so I'm just guessing based on what we could see.

And now it's flowing into the river again.  And once at the river, we spotted this pole with the colored bands that had numbers written on them.  All the way to the top!

I was standing maybe 15 feet above the current level of the river and it was hard to imagine that when I was 8 years old (1948), the river level was waaayyyyy up there!  Or that the year we sold our last house (1998), it was up to there too.

The park manager wanted us to make sure we saw his new rental "cabins" before we left.  "Cabins" indeed!  We've seen smaller more humble houses!  What a beautiful park this is.