Travels with Gunther and Kara

Goodness; what a long travel day it was. Neil was pretty tired by the time we got here and setup so after a very short run and shower we ate some left over fried oysters and clam strips from our dinner on Thursday night and just watched TV until bedtime. We figure that 400 miles will be our limit for a normal travel day…both of us feel like we can expand that maybe another 50 or 60 miles if we absolutely have to and if it’s in the middle of a transit period where we’re essentially going to just park over night with no setup or unhitching and then head out again the next morning and if it’s mostly freeway travel. Of course; some of those transit periods might be through the middle of nowhere and hence we might be forced into more by lack of stopping places but we’ll do our best to stay out of those situations unless something comes up or we have a deadline we have to meet, luckily retired folks don’t have many deadlines:-)

We got up yesterday morning at 0530 and got a cup of coffee…Neil had set the pot to auto brew so it was waiting when we got up. After that and a leftover cinnamon roll from the day before’s breakfast we set about stowing the inside of the rig, finishing up the utility and hitch up testing, and hit the road about 0730 or so. The first 20 or so miles of the trip was up this really narrow highway (CR 345) to Chiefland, FL…it would have been about 10 miles farther to just go straight up CR 24 to US 19/98 and then west to Chiefland. We won’t make the mistake of going that way on our return back south. We had maybe an extra foot of clearance between the centerline stripes and the side of the road stripe, no pavement outside the side stripes at all and a narrow shoulder that was a ditch more than half the time. So we just mozy’ed along about 40 mile an hour and Neil drove in the middle of the road when feasible. Luckily the traffic was almost non existent. Once we got into Chiefland we turned onto 19/98 and stayed on it all the way to the intersection with I-10. We did have to slow down 4 or 5 times total for small towns but most of the way rolled along at 62 on cruise control. After stopping for lunch (fish sandwich from Burger King, we never had one before but they were pretty good) shortly after Perry, FL we turned west on I-10 for 220 miles and got off at US-90 Alt northwest of Pensacola. From there it was another 40 miles or so to the park, about half on two lane roads although thankfully wider than 345 was and the last 10 miles on a six lane but lots of traffic and traffic lights (it was 1600 on Friday afternoon by this time so we hit Gulf Shores rush hour) to the park. We checked in and pulled into site 193 shortly after 1630 after a total drive of 398.1 miles.

Site 193 is on the main road through Gulf State Park but it’s a cutout pull through and we quickly got positioned next to the utilities and were set up by 1730. Neil went on the aforementioned quick run through the park then we had dinner. Afterwards he did go out and get a couple of quick snapshots of the park.

Gulf State Park is really, really nice; we’re pretty much surrounded by trees but they’re low enough so that satellite TV works perfectly. The wifi is a little more intermittent though.

Here’s a shot from the front of site 193, Neil was almost up to the next site when he took this one so as you can see there’s really plenty of room between sites to spread out and not feel like you are right on top of somebody. As our friends Howard and Linda would say…this seems like one of those “it” spots.

a shot from across the road, notice the nice views we have out of our side windows

and finally a panorama of the off side view we have taken from right next to our steps under the awning. There are actually other RVs 50 yards or so away across the trees but nothing visible. There’s a little distortion in the picnic table from the pano operation but not much…it actually does sway down in the middle a bit.

We will be here until 1 April, the Monday after Easter…we have a few errands to run including finding a Navy Federal Credit Union branch to handle some money stuff we can’t do via ATM and a visit over to Mobile to see Neil’s parents grave; we haven’t been back since mom’s funeral. There’s the usual work to be handled and even Neil has some for this week…he’s gotta put together a couple of presentations on computers and electronics for the New Horizons rally next month. It’s supposed to rain a couple days this week so we’ll work those days and do fun stuff on the other days. Dinner tonight will be grilled pork tenderloin and he’s going to toss on a couple of marinated chicken breasts for tomorrow and Monday night; no sense letting perfectly good grilling coals go to waste. Don’t know what else he’s making yet though. Now it’s time for a hike and then a bike ride and/or walk around the park to get a looksee.

Cyas.

Today was a beautiful day except for the breeze which was up around 15-20 knots all day. Nonetheless; we did the  things we needed to do…Connie worked a bit, Neil went out and gassed up the car and went on a run, and we did as much of the pre-travel preps as we can. We did take time out this morning to run across the street and grab some bird shots but Neil didn’t have time to process them yet as he was working on the HDR primer shots. I’ll put them up as soon as he’s done…which might be tonight if we don’t get too tired with dinner and pre-travel preps. 

Here are a couple of shots of the front of the Low Key Hideaway, the Tiki Bar, and the lounge area with the Adirondack chairs we sat in yesterday. The breeze typically blows from offshore here and the bushes you can see in front of the chairs direct the breeze up and over the chair area so it’s actually not windy there at all…although you can see the leaves 10 feet off the ground moving so it’s a very localized phenomenon.

Quite nice a place to sit and have a beer (or two or three).

Now…on to HDR Photography

HDR stands for High Dynamic Range photography. The basic problem with modern cameras as that they capture a much lower dynamic range (light to dark) than your eye can see…this means that a photo that is properly exposed for the highlights will have black shadows and one that is properly exposed for the shadows will have blown out, all white highlights. So…what you do is take a series of shots using a camera on a tripod at various exposure levels…typically you shoot properly exposed, 2 f-stops overexposed, and 2 f-stops underexposed. Then you process the 3 photos in an HDR application which magically grabs the highlights from the shot where they are properly exposed, the shadows from where they are properly exposed, and the mid tone areas from where they are properly exposed. After  the application does it’s thing you add in an additional step called Tone Mapping (still within the HDR application) and then perhaps do a little adjustment in Photoshop or Photoshop Elements if you really want to. The chief HDR apps are Photomatix Pro which is about $100 or so and HDRTist which is about $25 or so…HDRtist has much fewer controls for adjusting your photos but it’s a good start. Neil has it but decided to upgrade to Photomatix for the better fine tuning controls.

Once you are done with the HDR manipulation you end up with photos that look much more similar to what you actually saw with your eyes than what the camera saw due to it’s limited dynamic range…the computer (or printer if you are doing hard copy) is capable of showing a higher dynamic range than the DSLR can capture in a single frame.

All of these HDR shots came from the sunset the past couple of days here in Cedar Key. here is a straight out of the camera shot, it’s actually the “properly exposed” of the 3 shots Neil took for the HDR, although the bright sun fooled the exposure meter so even this one is probably actually underexposed. 

and here is the same sunset with the HDR process applied

As you can see in the HDR shot; the sun is much closer to the sunset orange you see with your eye and there is a bit more detail in the foreground islands and objects compared to the silhouettes in the unmodified shot. This one is a pretty subtle difference though.

Here’s another one…processed slightly differently with Photomatix. Again, the unmodified shot first

followed by the processed HDR

This one shows the contrast between the two shots much better…probably because he did a better job of processing it. To the eye the foreground water, islands, and shore grass was much brighter than it looks in the unprocessed shot…HDR brought it out more realistically. HDR isn’t necessarily better…in fact the unprocessed shot has some nice orange colors and reflections on the water…it’s just that the HDR looks more like what the eye saw. Lots of people overdue their HDR effects and make the colors super saturated and neon bright…which ruins the effect.

One other example…with this one Neil wanted to do a little more modification to the final image, in particular the second HDR one where he deliberately played up the dreamy aspect of the shot so it’s more artsy than realistic. Again, it’s a matter of taste and I like all of them…but they are different. First, the unmodified shot

Then the HDR one processed to be most realistic to what he remembered although it is a  little darker than it should be…I didn’t notice that until I went to post it.

and finally the super processed, dreamy version.

I actually like this final version the best for this particular shot…even though it goes beyond realistic with the foreground brightness and colors. It’s actually closer to reality than the one above although it’s on the other side of reality than it is. Still pretty cool though.

After we got home from dinner Neil processed today’s bird photos; We spied a whole group of Ring Necked Ducks, several flocks of Black Skimmers (a member of the tern family), a Great Egret, and a Laughing Gull.

The Egret came up with a fish but it wasn’t visible in his bill when he did so I picked the best of the action shots. I passed on posting some flight/landing shots of the Egret as he flew over to the bank and landed near a Little Blue Heron…the focus wasn’t all that great on the Egret so I left them out.

Cyas.

Yesterday (Neil was wiped yesterday evening and didn’t process the photos for me until today) it again remained windy all day. The temp got up into the upper 60’s by late afternoon and as long as you were in the sun and out of the wind (we sat in the Adirondack chairs at the Tiki bar instead of inside last evening) it was pleasantly warm. Out in the breeze though was ‘nuther thing entirely…one didn’t want to remain out there too long.

We lazed around in the morning and Neil finished up the 30,000 foot level plan for our trip around the Northwest and then the transit back to Fort Myers…we made a return reservation here at Low Key for the last week in October to sort of ease into the Florida attitude on the way to Seminole Campground in Fort Myers.

After a quick lunch of leftover white pizza with 3 cheeses, fresh basil, and lots of garlic we headed out for our last major activity here in Cedar Key. Connie found a 9 mile long Nature Drive through the Lower Suwannee River State Park so we headed up there. We had found a couple of hikes that would have been nice if the water was a little higher but after our…lack of water at the pond the other day let’s call it…decided that dry ponds would be pretty boring so we skipped them until our return in the fall (the water may be too high then for lots of wading birds but that’s the way it goes; a few is better than none).

Much like our hike the other day; it was a nice drive but the wildlife was pretty scarce. Pretty much the only thing we saw moving about (other than butter flies) were Turkey Vultures…it pains me to post a picture of one of those ugly creatures but ya gotta do what ya gotta do and sometimes the birds just don’t cooperate.

Other than that we saw a large number of butterflies and got some nice pictures of them as well as a picture Connie got of some sort of tulip/lilly and one Neil got of her behind as she got the flower shot.

Neil got this artsy/fartsy picture of the sun shining through a tree

and then another one of Pond 8 with reflections on the surface.

There was also this pair of butterflies on a flower next to this pond

and then it was time to head home. We stopped by a local fishmonger and got a couple of grouper filets for dinner then headed over to the Tiki bar for a beer in the Adirondack chairs (I’ll grab a picture of those today for you as well as a couple more shots of the Hideaway itself). Coming back in; Neil baked the grouper with shallots, lemon zest, panko bread crumbs, some Emeril’s Essence (sort of an Old Bay seasoning equivalent) and olive oil. Connie whipped up a salad to go with them and dinner was pretty good. Afterwards Neil ran out and got some bracketed exposures of the sunset to make HDR photos out of…once he processes them I’ll have him talk about how/why/what in a primer on what HDR is for you. I did grab this one frame from him to post ahead of time though.

Today we are going to walk across the highway and see what sort of birds populate the marsh over there; we keep seeing cars stop so there must be something to see. Afterwards we gotta hitch up BAT to the house and break down all the outside stuff…normally we leave that until the morning of travel but with almost 400 miles to go tomorrow we gotta get an early start…so we’re going to dump tanks and do everything but water/power connections this afternoon. Then it will be dinner downtown somewhere and watch sunset on the bay one last time before we head out for Gulf Shores tomorrow.

Cyas.

Today was a pretty crummy day. It rained most of the morning and even after the showers stopped it remained pretty windy until well past sundown. As a result…we pretty much did nothing today. Connie worked and Neil worked on some planning for our time up in the Pacific Northwest. He had previously picked out a bunch of waterfalls, national parks, state parks, mountains, capes, and other cool stuff they want to see and placed all of them on a custom google map. Today he too our schedule with arrival in Seattle on June 28 after our time in British Columbia and picked out a total of 6 stops…five on coastal Washington and Oregon and the last inland a bit in northern California. Stopping at these areas takes us up to the end of August. We’re then heading east across northern Nevada and into Utah to visit another group of national parks and other areas there which will take us into early October at which point we’ll start heading east and south into Texas and then across Louisiana and the Gulf states to arrive back in Cedar Key for the last week in October and then down to Fort Myers on 1 Nov.

After that…we went over to the Tiki bar for a beer and then drove down to Island Pizzaria to get dinner…then it was time for TV. We’re watching Dual Survival on National  Geographic channel and I don’t know what Connie has picked out for the rest of the evening. 

After dinner we noticed that the skies had mostly cleared although the breeze is still up there…but Neil did get a couple decent photos of the sunset.

Ah, just another day in paradise.

Cyas.

Today was a typical day for our RV life. We woke up and it was a bit windy but was projected to warm up by noon or so. After coffee and breakfast Connie worked awhile while Neil did some minor coach maintenance items…changed a dead bulbs, taped up the wires for the failed pendant light over our island (it will get replaced in early May when we’re at New Horizons), plotted our our route to our next destination on the GPS, and changed he batteries in our smoke and CO detectors (this gets done when Daylight Savings Time happens twice a year).

After that it was lunch and then we headed off to the  Goethe State Forest for a couple of hikes. First, though…Neil snapped a picture of the mini RV parked next to us…can you believe 2 people and a pretty big dog live in something this size? They aren’t full time but really like “camping” so this is just sort of a waterproof tent I guess.

We then headed off to our first hike which was at Buck Island Pond. Here’s a picture of the pond right after we started the hike.

Notice anything missing there…like maybe the pond. This whole area is (acording to the map and signs) the pond itself. Wait a minute though, here it is. This little wet spot maybe 20 feet square is all that remains.

Close to the “pond” here is the sum total of wildlife we were able to get a picture of today…a striped turtle.

Continuing on around on our 2 mile hike around the “pond” we happened across this area which is full of pitcher plants…can’t you see them???

Neither can we.

That was about it for the first hike…essentially a bust…so it was off to the second hike. We continued on the highway through the park, down the unpaved Cow Creek Road for about 5 miles and finally found the second of our hikes…a boardwalk out to the giant Cypress tree. This tree is about 9 feet in diameter, 150 feet or so tall, and over 900 years old (I guess they counted the candles on it’s birthday cake or somethin’).

Anyway, here’s a picture of the base of the tree and one with Connie and the boardwalk so you can get a sense of the size…it was really huge for a tree that wasn’t a Redwood or Giant Sequoia.

After that it was another 30 or so mile drive back to home, showers, then off to the Tiki bar for beer o’clock. While we were there Connie called Bryan to wish him happy birthday as he turns 29 today…here’s an action shot of her talking to him on the phone.

After a couple of beers…we’ve been drinking this really good brown ale from the Cigar City Brewing Company named Maduro this week…it’s got a lot of chocolate and espresso flavor and is really good; we’re going to see if we can pick up a case before we leave the area…we ran back to the house (all of 40 feet or so, I’ll take a picture tomorrow showing the rig and the Tiki bar proximity) for a dinner of steak, left over mashed taters from the other night, and dinner rolls then it was back to the Tiki for another beer and a couple of shots of the group inside having a good time.

The bar is about 22 or 24 feet square, has like 10 or 11 chairs around the bar and another dozen around the outer walls. It’s got walls made out of empty beer bottles, I’ll take a picture of those tomorrow as well. The group was playing some dice game called Ship, Captain, Crew…with quite complicated rules involving getting a 6, 5, and 4 in order then adding some other dice together…but if you’re a woman and have a pink bra on then the rules all change (or something like that, it was way too complicated for a novice to play). We did discover that the bar seats for the first visit today were occupied by all of the RV site occupiers in order so we drank to that.

Afterwards we came home and turned on TV to watch Holmes on Homes. We’ll have some ice cream later and then off to bed. Tomorrow it’s going to rain in the morning so we’re just planning on hanging around the house and working. Connie has some more fun stuff figured out for Wed then Thursday we’ll do a lot of the getting ready to move stuff. Our drive on Friday is almost 400 miles so we’re going to hitch up Thursday afternoon and take down all the outside stuff to get a quick getaway Friday morning…otherwise we’ll end up setting up in the dark once we get to Gulf State Park and that’s no fun at all.

Cyas.

During which we didn’t do much of anything.

We headed off to Mass at St John’s up in Chiefland, Florida about 25 miles away. The people in this really small town church were friendly, the priest was a great speaker, and after mass we stopped by a local joint named BBQ Bill’s for breakfast. We picked it because as we were driving around town looking for breakfast after Mass we noticed it had a lot of cars in front…this almost always means it’s a good place in small towns. Sure enough…it was pretty good except for the bacon Connie had which was very heavily salted when it was cured.

After that we came home and pretty much just lazed away the afternoon. Connie took a nap since after we sprung forward last night she was kinda tired After she woke up we started talking about dinner while Neil made them a wine cooler. Dinner ended up being Fettucini ala Oleo and Lardons (that’s French for bacon and garlic). Here’s a picture of the ingredients after Neil got down chopping them…nice pile of garlic for two people he thought. That’s the garlic on the right and a shallot he added on the lower left.

After dinner we ran out to the pier to watch the sunset. Here’s Connie assuming the position.

And a couple of shots of the sun going down and then in the post sundown glow.

What a nice view…although a couple of clouds to make the sky colors bette would have been cool. Still though; it was about 70 degrees out on the pier with a nice breeze so it was pretty good.

Another rig pulled in next to us today; I’ll grab a picture of it tomorrow. This thing is really tiny; the young couple that owns it says it weighs only 900 pounds and they’re pulling it with a VW Jetta. The inside is just large floor space for a queen size mattress which covers the entire floor. On the front there are a couple cabinets to store clothes in (I guess they keep a suitcase in the trunk with more clothes), a small TV over the top of the dresser, and a kitchen that you have to get out and go around the back. It’s built kind of like the chuck wagon they used to use on cattle drives with a single burner stove, a few pots, and they have to cook everything outside. Way too small for us but they said it’s great for weekend and short trips to see places. We’re too used to our creature comforts to be able to fit into something that tiny though.

Tomorrow we’re going hiking again and Connie has a little work to do…Tuesday it’s supposed to rain so we’ll just stay around here and drink at the Tiki bar between showers I guess.

Cyas.

Today was supposed to be a nice day so after coffee, breakfast, and the bike race we took a look at things to do. We pretty quickly decided that a hike in the Shell Mound area of the Lower Suwannee NWR fit the bill perfectly so we had lunch sitting out on the dock here at Low Key Hideaway and then headed off; grabbing a shot of the entrance to the Low Key Hideaway on the way…this distance marker shows the distances to various places around the world from here. Our favorite is Tiki Bar – 50 feet.

The Shell Mound area is an archeological dig area that is essentially a very early version of a land fill. It encompasses over 5 acres and is 28 feet tall and is composed entirely of oyster shells and deer bones that were the trash from hundreds of years of the Indians living here. They piled all of their empty shells in the same place near their villages and the result was what is now known as the Shell Mound. It took over 3500 years to build up and hosted numerous indigenous tribes collectively known as the Shell People from about 2500 BC to about 1000 AD

Our first hike was about a 1/2 mile loop around the mound itself known as the Shell Mound Trail. Heading out, here is the view from the top of the mound itself out towards the Gulf of Mexico.

While out at the south end of the mound we spotted a whole line of seagulls lined up on a sandbar a bit offshore. There were at least 3 or 4 species in there that we could identify.

Out second hike started at the same parking area but went northeast rather than south towards the Gulf; this was the Dennis Creek Trail. Shortly after the hike started we crossed a little area of grasslands

We then stopped at a little pond area where we scared up a Tricolor Heron

and some sort of duck…we eventually decided on Northern Pintail although we weren’t sure.

Shortly after the pond Connie spotted this Osprey sitting in a tree a couple hundred yards out.

and then we spotted the extremely rare Stump Bird. We came around this corner in the trail and spotted the silhouette of what we were sure (originally) was a bird but then realized it was just a bit of limb stump that resembled the tail feathers of a bird.

Shortly after that we ended our hike and headed home. Before getting a shower and easing over to the Tiki bar for beer o’clock we decided to sit out on the pier for a bit to see what sort of bird life might wander by. Pretty quickly we were rewarded by the sighting of a pair of Ospreys…we decided they are nesting in this pine tree a couple of hundred yards from the park. One of the pair posed quite nicely on the cabin of an abandoned boat right off of the pier

while the other soared overhead…clearly both were fishing for dinner.

Here is the abandoned boat without the Osprey

and here is the soaring one in a hover while we hoped he would stoop for his dinner…unfortunately he changed his mind and flew off.

Next a Ring Billed Gull flew by

and then it was  time for showers, beer and dinner which was seared Pork Tenderloin with green beans, cheesy corn, and mashed taters. After dinner it was TV, email/web browsing, and bedtime.

Cyas.

After coffee and breakfast this morning we set about breaking camp. Connie did the inside as usual while Neil handled outside stuff. Once all that was done we fixed us a sandwich to take in the cooler for lunch, hitched up and disconnected our utilities and hit the road about 1100. We stopped for lunch at a rest stop and at a Flying J for fuel for BAT but other than that had a pretty uneventful trip and arrived at Low Key Hideaway in Cedar Key about 1530. We were assisted in backing in by Pat the owner who blocked traffic on the road while we pulled across it and into site 4 (or maybe it’s site 1, we don’t know for sure). By 1700 we were setup, Neil had gone on a short bike ride, Connie had swept and swiffered the floor and we headed over to the Hideaway Tikibar for beer o’clock.

We had this really good medium dark beer named Maduro which is brewed by a local brewer in Tampa…an outstanding brew with a hint of chocolate and expresso and caramel. Connie had a second and Neil had a vodka martini with onions…he had the bartender just wave the vermouth bottle near the martini glass and decided that was close enough. One of the other RV park residents brought over a plate of roasted garlic in olive oil and french bread so we had a couple tastes of that…Neil will have to remember that roasted garlic in olive oil and french bread makes a great contribution for our next pot luck.

We took some nice photos of our site and the sunset. Three of the processed shots below are followed by the straight out of the iPhone shot so you can appreciate why it’s necessary to post process your shots if possible before posting them. Neil’s next iPad will be able to run a more powerful photo editing program and hence he can do some basic processing for quick posts.  All but the sunset are pretty dramatically improved by the processing. First a shot of our site #1 here at the Low Key Hideaway.

Here’s a picture of me and Kara sitting in the swing right outside our back window. Ahh, what a life…sittin’ and watchin’ the sun go down. All I need is my six string and a pitcher of those frozen concoctions that help me hang on as Jimmy Buffet would say. 

and here’s a view of the back of the rig (Neil was standing about 5 feet from the Gulf of Mexico when he took this shot). My swing above is immediately to the left of the red chair.

and finally a shot of the sunset from right outside our back window after the aforementioned beers and martini.

For dinner we got a recommendation from Bill at the bar for a place called The Deck Bar and grill…so we went there. Connie had a fried oyster dinner and Neil had fried grouper…and we had a couple more really dark beers called Midnight Oil. This was really, really dark, about the color of used oil from your car and had a distinctive expresso taste. One was fine but it was too heavy to really drink a lot of it.

We really like it here at Low Key so far…it’s much more our kind of place than Sun N Fun was…the latter was just too busy and crowded for us; we’re more laid back kind of folks and Connie has already suggested staying here a couple of weeks on our way back south in October. We did really like getting together with Sparky and Eldo while at Sun N Fun…but there was just too much hustle and bustle due to being a large feature rich resort for our needs; Connie’s part time job keeps her busy enough while she’s working that when she isn’t just lazing away in the swing or recliner in the sun is our style.

P.S. Edited this early Saturday morning to add the processed photos above…we didn’t have the file server up before so Neil couldn’t do any of the processing work that he does with Aperture.

Cyas.

We woke up today and it was a really great looking day from the weather forecast. Connie has maxed out her work hours for this week…which means no more work until at least Friday…which means fun stuff is on the agenda.

After coffee, breakfast, and the bike race stages were finished we headed off. Our destination was Longboat Key and Anna Maria Islands right off the coast of Sarasota. We headed west on the main road right outside the Sun N Fun resort until it got to the coast, headed south about a half mile then west across the bridge to the south end of Longboat Key. Both Longboat and Anna Maria are your typical long, narrow, low barrier islands much like Hatteras and the other islands up off the North Carolina coast. Our plans were to find a nice place on the beach for lunch…but almost the only thing we found were condos, gated resorts, gated residential communities, and luxury real estate sales offices. We did stop briefly by Coquina Beach where Neil got a couple of nice iPhone photos to have something for the blog. Connie tweeted one of them to her followers…she has had an ongoing series of tweets since we went on the road entitled My View of the Day…several of her followers who are bike racers in England thought that these presented a much better weather situation than they were currently undergoing…it was apparently pouring in England today. Anyway; first is looking south and then looking north on the beach. Nice wide, white sand beaches typical of the Gulf coast.

It was in the upper 60’s by the time we took these but was pretty windy on the beach so we were glad we had jeans and long sleeves. We continued up the coast as we were hungry and about 5 miles on found this place called the Gulf Coast Cafe. We stopped in, sat on the veranda, watched the waves roll in and had a couple of iced teas and lunch…a pretty decent burger for Neil and salad and a bowl of clam chowder for Connie. Afterwards we pressed on, crossing over onto Anna Maria Island and driving around it to see what there was to see…it was a pretty sleepy place.

We headed back across the north bridge towards the freeway, stopped for gas…and then headed to Walmart for groceries. We were originally going to hit I-75 about 3 exits north of where we are parked and would have to go 1 exit south of there to get to the Walmart. Luckily; as we were waiting to turn out of the gas station a Walmart delivery truck pulled out of the shopping center next door. We figured this meant it had a Walmart in it and quickly decided that one we were passing was better than one we had to go out of our way to get to. Forty minutes later grocery shopping was done…we headed home, unloaded the car and Connie went out to get her nails done. Afterwards we had Captain Morgan’s Black Spiced Rum and OJ and baked a pizza we picked up at Walmart.

Tomorrow we’re up early to pack, rig for travel, and break down all the inside and outside stuff…we have about a 190 mile drive ahead of us to our next stop at the Low Key Hideaway in Cedar Key. We’re looking forward to parking right on the ocean for a week.

Cyas.

Warning; this is a really photo intensive post…we really hit the mother lode yesterday not only on new and rare species but also had really great photography conditions at relatively close range. That would have been bad enough but we also caught a great flight sequence of a Red Shouldered Hawk and a fishing sequence of an Osprey. The shots were so great Neil decided he had to include them even though they will get this post pretty large. C’est la vie.

After about a 15 minute drive or so and paying our entrance fee into the park we stopped by our first stop which was the Nature Walk and Canopy Walk. The nature walk was pretty nice although the noisy groups of people that came behind us pretty much scared off anything to see the last half of the walk…and the Canopy Walk (a boardwalk through the tree canopy) was pretty much worthless. In the first place it was only about 20 yards long and in the second place the noisy tourists had descended onto it like locusts and there was essentially zero to see. Nonetheless; we did get a few decent shots during the walk. First up was this pair of female wild turkeys; there was also a male with them and a nearby wood stork but none of the shots with those turned out worth posting.

This is a view of the forest hammock we were hiking through and a really strange palm tree of some sort that attracted Neil’s interest.

Our second stop was out at the visitor center where we ate lunch but nothing worth photographing was there; so we headed on over to the Birdwalk out into the marsh.

Connie got this nice Iris right next to where we parked the car.

and Neil got some nice closeups of a Palm Warbler and three Turkey Vultures eating something dead (a muskrat we thought but they didn’t pick it up long enough to really get a decent shot so that we could really identify it.)

We got out to the overlook and Neil got a nice shot of a Snowy Egret coming in for a landing and then one of it’s gorgeous breeding plumage; that’s the fuzzy stuff on the back of his head. there is usually more that drapes down from the body but it doesn’t look like it’s fully developed yet. Doesn’t he have really pretty yellow feet? He twitches them along the bottom while feeding and the bright color scares prey into motion so he can stab down with his beak and eat it.

After this we headed back to our final hike of the day; a hike about a mile out and back right along the Myakka River. We met a nice British couple who were as excited by the numbers of wildlife as we were…apparently bird watching in England is a whole lot more waiting and a whole lot less species identification as they don’t come as fast and furious as they do here in Florida.

Our first catch was the mandatory gator (it is Florida after all says Neil).

followed by noticing immediately to his right about 10 yards further downstream what we initially assumed was a Great White Heron. Upon further review after deciding it really didn’t look right we did more research with Petersons and concluded it was a Reddish Egret White Morph (strange name I know…but even stranger is something called a Reddish Egret that is actually white.)

Both of these were taken standing on the bridge over the river…we started to head back across the river to head out on the hike and noticed an Osprey overhead. By the time Neil had him in the viewfinder he was into his fishing stoop and we got this great sequence of him crashing into the water and then leaving with its lunch firmly clutched in a talon.

Wow, Neil is really happy with how those came out and was impressed with being able to get it. The Osprey continued on right past us but the auto focus on the camera wasn’t able to keep up so these are the best shots of the flyby.

Next up as we headed up river was a Tricolor Heron (or Louisiana Heron in some circles). This is very similar to a Great Blue in size but has different coloration.

followed by the other version of a Reddish Egret, the dark morph that is more typically seen.

This turtle was sunning himself

and shortly afterwards we met the aforementioned British couple. They were 20 yards or so ahead of us on the path and almost walked on top of a Red Shouldered Hawk. It flew back towards us then out over the river…they came running back to see it as seeing hawks up close is difficult in England. It got away before we got a picture though. We hiked more or less together the remaining distance out to the turn around in the trail and headed back. On the way back we heard a Barred Owl and after 10 minutes of the 4 of us looking for it the Brit scared it up, it flew right over our heads and into the deeper forest. Again, too quick for pictures since we never saw it until about 2 seconds before it flew but we were all impressed with the sighting anyway.

Continuing on back downriver we happened across what we first thought was a Night Heron but after a second look turned out to be a  Least Bittern with another one right nearby. The first flew to our side of the river and posed nicely about 10 yards from Neil while the second was more shy and remained in the tree across the river but we got a nice shot anyway.

It’s always funny how Bitterns stand on one leg if the perch is secure enough rather than on two legs.

Our next find another 50 yards downstream was a Black Crowned Night heron and a Little Blue Heron in pretty close proximity.

After watching these for a few minutes we continued and came to an open area in the river with a small island. On the far side of the island a young couple were seining for fish completely unaware of a Red Shouldered Hawk almost overhead. We took a few pictures from afar in case it flew off then closed for some closeups. Neil got another really great flight sequence as it took off from a tree about 20 yards away, flew almost overhead, and landed in a tree about 20 feet from Neil.

Our last major find of the day was this Greater Yellowlegs Sandpiper which was just a hundred yards or so from the parking lot.

RIght as we headed up the bank to the parking lot we got one more shot as this bald eagle went by.

and with that our day of hiking and birding was done…we had to leave to get ready for our dinner with Sparky and Eldo that I talked about last night and Neil ran out of storage space on the camera memory cards anyway.

Tonight we have plans to return to the Elks Club here in Sarasota again…we were there for beers on Monday and today they have hot dogs and bingo (and beers) so we are headed over there for dinner and entertainment.

Tomorrow we have another short excursion planned (time and Connie’s work load permitting) to the local botanical garden and then a stop at Walmart for groceries…our next stop is in Cedar Key which is pretty unpopulated as far as anything but bars and restaurants go with no decent grocery stores very close so we’re going to make sure we have enough to last for a week until we head for Gulf Shores.

Friday we’re off another 180 miles northward along the west coast of Florida to Cedar Key for a week’s stay at the Low Key Hideaway. Four campsites and a tiki bar right over looking the water and the weather is supposed to be warm enough for the kayaking sites Connie has picked out for us.

Cyas.