crystalnews 2...Walkabout: wrap up

11-2-14

Road trip wrap up.

We had a good trip South. The fall color lasted into southern IN and the weather cleared once we crossed the Mason-Dixon line. With one minor glitch, the rig behaved well and it was a smooth trip and I had fun doing a bit of cross country, off the main highways, travel. I actually learned more of the basics in using a GPS and some of the finer points as to how it thinks.

We spent several days at our favorite FL state park, St. Joseph peninsula, near Port St. Joe on the panhandle. The park is situated on a narrow peninsula out in the gulf. White ,sugar sand, wonderful dunes, and a shallow near shore sand bottom. Visually it could be in the Caribbean. The marine life was quite a change for me. I'm not used to paddling with so much wildlife out on the water with me. Everything from sharks, to manta rays, to skates, porpoise, all manner of fishes, jelly fish and all manner of fishing birds. There was so much going on that it was hard to keep track of everything.

There is a nice dune between the campground and the beach and it was here that I ran into a phenomenon that I found interesting. Every evening, just before sunset, the area behind he dunes turned into a freeway for Westbound dragonflys. 50 or more per minute, all headed west. I know that they migrate, but don't know if that is what these were doing. This happened every night that we were there. We did run into some migrating Monarchs one day up in the FL panhandle. I as saddened at the numbers that I was collecting on the windshield of the RV.

We spent several days on inland lake and spring systems. Lots of waterfowl and turtles, both of which weren't be photo enthusiastic. The turtles were mostly different types of Cooters and they are shy. (We missed the American Cooter Festival by several days. Also the Mullet Festival .) The Rainbow River was well populated with Cormorants. I not fond of them because of the ones that come up into the Great Lakes, but that's my problem. I didn't know that there were so many different kind and sizes. One thing that took some getting used to was that when they are fishing and come to the surface, only their head and long neck is visible. My mind kept saying “snake”. They are excellent swimmers and don't float well. Didn't get to any swamps this trip, so no good alligator pics.

We are currently getting settled in, here in Davenport, and I start back at EPCOT next weekend.

We had our first cold snap last night and the pattern for the whole eastern half of the country looks exactly like last winter. Here we go again...