Bonita Springs, FL -

I ended up with reservations in Bonita Springs, FL at Bonita Lake RV Resort. Probably 90% of the people there were snowbirds and the sites were small.  I typically don’t mind this, but I didn’t really like this park.  Nothing bad, just nothing great. 

Somehow I messed up in my planning.  I had thought I was going to be at Fort DeSoto during the huge RV show in Tampa, but it was not until the following week.  So I drove up to the show from Bonita Springs.  I wanted to talk to the folks at Nexxus RV again and visit the vendors.  I did go in a few other RVs, more out of curiosity than thinking I might purchase them at some point. 

The first picture is of the vendor area.  I am glad I got there early as the crowds were already starting to build.  The second picture is – I don’t know what to call her- I suppose street entertainment.  I don’t go to these type of things for entertainment but they have several people walking around entertaining folks and a few bands.  I guess for those that stay all day they need a break.  For me, I was in and out in a couple of hours.  

One of the reason that I choose Bonita Springs was it was in between Sanibel Island and the Everglades.  I had to visit some of my favorite spots.  A couple of days, I went to Sanibel and biked (one day 32 miles), bird watched and sat by the beach.

Below is a Hooded Merganser.  I had seen one before, but never as close as on this trip.

Reddish Egret

Tri-Color Heron

Below is a juvenile Black Crowned Night Heron.  I finally learned the difference between this and a Yellow Crowned Night Heron.  This bird has a yellowish lower mandible (lower part of his bill).  A Yellow Crowned Night Heron has a black lower mandible.  So it is the opposite of what their name is!

I don’t just bird watch, I like looking at most wildlife.  The photo above is a Black Mangrove Crab taken while at Ding Darling National Wildlife Refuge.

Another day I went to Corkscrew Swamp Sanctuary.  I love not only the wildlife but the scenery as well.

Swamp Lily – -

Red Shouldered Hawk above his nest -

Rainbow Bunting--

Of course I had to visit Shark Valley at the Everglades while I was in South Florida.  I went twice, one day riding the pathway twice (30 miles).  The picture below was taken about 10 feet from where I parked my bicycle to visit the lookout tower.  This is a spot where I have seen alligators every time I am there.

Purple Gallinule -

Spoonbill -

From Bonita Springs, I headed north to Lake Louisa State Park.   I’ll try to blog about that in a couple of days.  I am currently in Grayton Beach State Park and they are calling for rain the next few days.  I will try to catch up during that time!

Fort DeSoto Park, St Petersburg - 74

Before I blog about my time at Fort DeSoto, I wanted to comment on a question that “Pleinguy” asked on my last blog.  He asked why I didn't camp at Paynes Prairie.  Since Florida campgrounds fill up during the winter, I have learned to make reservations both at private and public campgrounds. For state and county parks, I typically make reservations as soon as they open them up.  Some places open up reservations 6 months beforehand, some 11 months…   This year, my first reservation was Fort DeSoto.  I wasn’t sure exactly when I would leave Georgia so I didn’t have a reservation for the first few days of 2015 so that’s why I ended up at Ocala RV North in Reddick 

Now to Fort DeSoto --  As many of you know I really like Fort DeSoto, so I made 2 reservations for this winter!  My first visit was Jan 4 – 11. 

One day I woke up and heard a lot of birds.  Below is a picture of my site, with some of the birds behind it.  And then a closer shot. 

 

On that same day,  I went to Celery Fields in Sarasota to do some bird watching. 

Spoonbill -

Sora – This is a bird I have never seen and most people at Celery Fields were excited to see it.  Green Heron --

I don’t have many pictures of what I did most while at Fort DeSoto.  That was biking and walking.  I biked from 10 – 28 miles and walked 3 – 5 miles most days. 

There is a lagoon that I went to several times as it is known as a good bird watching spot.  Many birdwatchers go there, some amateurs like me and others with more professional looking equipment. (and willing to do more to get better pictures than me – see below)

This trip, the birds stayed as far away from me as they could get, but it was still fun.  Above is a Great Blue Heron, Spoonbill and a Reddish Egret.

One day while sitting outside reading I happened to look up and saw some dolphins.  What fun, to be sitting beside your home (in my case, my RV) and having such great wildlife visit.

 

From Fort DeSoto, I headed south to Bonita Springs. 

Reddick, FL - 73

My first reservation for 2015 was for Fort DeSoto Park in St. Petersburg.  I had several days after I left North Georgia and decided to stop in Reddick (between Gainesville and Ocala) at Ocala North RV which I have used as an overnight stop before.  This trip I wanted to visit Paynes Prairie State Preserve.

Paynes Prairie has several different trails and I hiked 2 of them.  The first trail I walked was the Cone’s Dike Trail.  It was very foggy so I wasn’t sure what I would see.   The preserve has a herd of Bison, along with birds and alligators. 

The first picture below is close to the start of the trail where there are several small ponds beside the trail. 

About 1.5 miles down the trail I thought about turning around, but decided to go just a little bit further and I am glad I did.  I saw the Bison.  They were a distance away, but since I was hiking that was fine by me.  In the second picture you can see 4 or 5 Bison.  I think there were 13 or 14 in the herd. 

After seeing the Bison I turned around and headed back.  By the time I got back to the swampy area a small gator had come out to warm up. 

And I saw this Tri-Color Heron nearby.

This is another shot of the trail. 

I went back to the visitor center to ask about the Bison.  They were excited that I had seen them as nobody had seen them that day yet.  I learned that Bison used to exist in Florida but were all killed off a long time ago.  These were reintroduced and have been doing well in this preserve.

From here, I headed to the northern part of the preserve.  I had read several good things about the LaChua Trail and wanted to hike it. 

I found the warning below interesting.  “This is NOT a zoo or theme park”!!  Of course I have seen people do crazy things around wildlife, so I guess some people need the warning. 

Part of the trail was on a board walk and the rest was just a sandy trail.  I had read that some times the Alligators are laying on the trail and you just have to wait for them to move. 

A gator not far from the trail and if you look closely across the water you can see 20 – 20 gators.  You can see that better in the 2nd picture below.

From here I headed down to Fort DeSoto, I ‘ll blog about that later.

In my last blog I mentioned that I would tell you guys some news and explain those numbers that appear in some of my blogs.  A couple of friends emailed me asking about it and I decided that I would let the world know (ok, maybe just the few folks who read this blog!)

Those who have met me know that I am very over weight.  I have lost weight and put it back on many times in my life.  Well, I have been on Weight Watchers since early April and have lost quite a bit of weight.  The number in the title is how much I have lost at the time I was at the location in the title  So for this blog, it says 73!  Yep I have lost 73 pounds!  (Actually a little more since I was in Reddick in early January).  I haven’t been doing very well for the last couple of weeks, but I will get my act together in a day or 2.  I still have a good bit to lose, but for a change I feel like I can do it this time.  I’m taking it slow and not letting the bad days (or in this case weeks) get to me!

I am still learning this new PC.  I can’t figure out why the cursor disappears or freezes or at least I can’t use it with the mouse pad.  It has done it again.  I think I must be hitting a key or sequence of keys that must freeze it.  I have learned that a reboot fixes it, but also since this is a touchscreen laptop I can do most things without moving the cursor with the mousepad.   

Georgia – Nov and Dec 2014 - 65

Yes, I am still alive and traveling in my RV.  I have just been very lazy about keeping the blog updated.  

I actually started writing this blog about a week ago, but I had a problem.  I had been having PC issues for a while and finally broke down and got a new laptop in early January. My old PC was about 7 years old – that’s an antique in the laptop world!!  All I had done with the new laptop was play with it.  So when I started to work on the blog I quickly realized that I needed to download some software.  And of course I was at a location where my aircard worked, but was very slow.   On top of that, the photo software that I used  came with MicroSoft Office and I had decided not to buy Office (I am going with OpenOffice instead for my word processor needs).  So I had to find and learn something else.  I ended up installing Windows Photo Gallery, which is part of the same suite as Windows Live Writer.  But it is not as convenient as my old software.  I will try to figure it out or find more software.  If anyone has any suggestions, I am basically looking for software to crop, rotate and/or resize photos.  Every once in a while I play with the color but not often enough for that to be a major  consideration in my choosing what I will use.  I can do all of the above with my new Windows Photo Gallery, but it took many more steps that I used to do!

On top of all of that I am having to learn Windows 8!  And today, my cursor disappeared so I had to figure that out!!

Anyway, I need to catch up on the end of 2014.  That will not be hard as most of what I did was the same thing as 2013, 2012…. 

At thanksgiving, my sister and her family came down from Wisconsin for a few days and we had a small family get together at my mom’s place.  My oldest nephew, Jim, and his family joined us for a BBQ lunch one day.

One day we visited Goats on the Roof, you can see why it is called that --

 

A rather large goat was watching everyone from above the Ice Cream and Fudge sign and it is a bit hard to see, but 2 goats are on the bridge.

Above Parker is sending up some food to a few goats, while Avery watches. 

For the month of November, I visited family, friends and doctors.

In December, I went to Jekyll Island for a couple of weeks.  While the campground is not one of my favorites I like the location and enjoyed walking the trail across from the campground and biking around the island.

Driftwood Beach is my favorite place on the island, below are several pictures from the 1.5 weeks I was there.

Below is the ramp that leads to the beach at St Andrews picnic area.  It was an extremely high tide on the day I took this photo.  This was about the 1/2 point for my bike ride around the island.

Just across from the campground is the road that leads to Clam Creek picnic area and the start of the trail that I walked most days.

The trail below is part of the trail I walked.  I rode my bike one day on this trail, but it was a bit rough so I stuck to the main bike trail when riding.  While most of the main trail is paved, there are a few board walks. The biking and walking paths are the reason that I like Jekyll so much!!  Plus you can bird watch while doing both. 

Then I went back to the North Georgia mountains for the last couple of weeks of the year. 

From Georgia I headed down to Florida for the rest of the Winter.  I will slowly catch up with this blog over the next couple of weeks (if I can figure out the photo editor software!) and in my next entry I am going to reveal some good news and an explanation of the numbers that have appeared at the end of some of the titles during the last several months!! 

Wisconsin to Georgia

I’m very late in this blog, I know!! This content in this blog is from Sept 15 to Oct. 18.

I headed to Madison, WI Sept. 15.  The main reason for this stop was to get my RV washed and waxed.  I usually pay someone to do this about once a year and do it myself once a year. 

I left Madison and headed to Illini State Park in Illinois.  I was there just for a few days and had hoped to do some walking and biking.  I did bike to the Marseilles locks, which are just a short distance through the park.  It was fun watching a barge (actually 9 barges tied together) going through the locks.

Below are the 9 barges starting into the locks--

One of the barges before they started letting the water out--

I could not see too much as they 9 barges took up all of the room in the locks.  Below is a picture looking over the tops of the barges after they let out the water and just before it headed out of the locks.

From Illini State Park, I headed to Shipshewana, IN.  The main reason for stopping here was I had an appointment at the Onan repair shop in Elkhart, IN to work on my generator.  A few months before I could not get my generator to start and had about a half a tank of gas (the generator will not work with less than 1/4 tank of gas).  After filling up with gas, the generator started up so the mechanic said that it sounded like the rod that goes into the tank had broken off and would now only work with more gas in the tank.  I had to decide if that was ok or if I wanted to get it fixed.  I decided to get it fixed, so I made the appointment for September.  Once they got in there, they found it was not a broken rod, but I had an extremely dirty fuel line to the generator.  They said it may have been that I got some dirty gas that didn’t bother how the RV ran, but gummed up the generator line.  I hate when mechanics really don’t know, but the generator has worked since then!  While in Shipshewana I rode the same bike trail that I blogged about when I was there in the Spring. 

From here, I headed to Cave City, KY for a couple of days.  I did a bit of hiking on one of the trails in Mammoth Cave National Park, but didn’t go down in any of the caves since I did that not too long ago.

Then I headed to Cloudland Canyon State Park in Georgia where the SouthEast Lazy Daze group had a get together.  It’s always fun to see so many Lazy Daze RVs in one place. I think we had 12 or 13 RVs.

 

Every morning I walked 3 – 5 miles with some of that on the paved trail at the rim of the Canyon.  We had rain a couple of days so we saw waterfalls that don’t always run. 

From here I headed to Mountain City, GA for a week and then down to Fort Yargo State Park.  I will blog about that later.

Wisconsin

In my last post about Iron River, I forgot one thing.  One morning while walking the trail I saw something that I have never seen before in the wild.  Well I have seen them dead, but never alive and it was a bit scary.  I saw a skunk!!  He was about 10 feet away from me and when I saw him his tail started moving up.  I immediately starting thinking about what you have to do if sprayed by a skunk.  I kept walking and then he turned and went the other way.  Interesting, but one of those things I don’t really want to see again!!!  And no, I did not stop to take his picture. 

While in Wisconsin in early September, I stayed at 2 state parks about 30 minutes apart.  The first was Brunett Island State Park and the second was Lake Wissota State Park.  Both are fairly close to my sister and both were close to a bike path.  I typically stay at Lake Wissota when I visit my sister and her family, but I ended up with an extra week and decided to try Brunett Island.  It is a nice state park on an island in a river and the Old Abe state trail starts (or ends) at this park!

I ended up riding the trail from this end only twice, but really enjoyed it.  It rides through some woods, next to a river and farms.

I went with my sister’s family to Superior, Minnesota and on up to Gooseberry Falls State Park.  We had a great day walking around Superior and then hiking to the falls and lake.

My sister, Amy and her family at the lake shore in Superior --

One of the falls at Gooseberry Falls -

The kids in front of the falls (Summer, Parker and Avery) -

Avery taking the easy way --

Tom made it to the top of one of the rocks and of course Parker had to figure out how to get there --

He made it there and back with a little help --

I also went to some sporting events.  I went to see Summer play volleyball.  The rules of volleyball have changed quite a bit since I used to play back in my twenties. The picture is not that good, but Summer is on the other side of the net in the middle – number 5.  They played 2 matches and won all 6 games!!

I also went to one of Parker’s flag football games. That was a first for me and was fun except for the bugs. Parker is in the very middle. 

From here I headed down to Madison, Wisconsin where I got my RV washed and waxed.  From here I headed south.