We are at the Big Cypress National Preserve, which borders on the Everglades National Park. We’re parked at Trail Lakes Campground, which reminds me of old Florida. Here’s a shot out our back window, as dusk settled in.
Our side window looks right into the Everglades landscape. It’s basically a prairie growing in water.
We stopped at one of my favorite restaurants on our way, Joanie’s Blue Crab Café. Nothing fancy, but if they have blue crabs, it’s the best.
Steve says the crab cakes are great, too!
Birds are plentiful down here and one of the reasons we came back. This egret (I think) was at the rear of our campsite this morning.
Steve went on a photo safari this morning and came back with some good shots. The water was quite high, so heading under this bridge was an experience!
There are orchids in the everglades, but this is the only one in bloom that he saw:
A little fog created a great picture:
We remember these birds from our first trip to the Everglades: the anhinga.
And I think this is the female:
And the mighty osprey, once on the endangered species list with the bald eagle:
And the last wildlife sighting – a turtle (we haven’t figured out what he’s doing with his leg).
We left Plano January 5, after celebrating Maria’s third birthday.
We stopped several places on our way to Orlando, including Meaher State Park on Mobile Bay, where we caught this great sunset:
We were at Disney for over a week, helping Olga with Maria while Natasha attended a conference. It’s always fun to watch Maria interact with the characters.
After Disney, we spent a few days near the Villages, visiting with Steve’s Uncle Eep and our friends Joy and Sam.
We stayed on a horse farm that’s quite an operation. The centerpiece of the farm was a carriage museum. They do horse training and boarding and hold many various competitions and shows. I think they specialized in training carriage horses. They had a nice restaurant on site where we had lunch one day. The place changed hand in 2011 and I think the new owner is working on maximizing profits. They have a wedding venue and have recently installed RV spaces to accommodate event attendees. Since there were no events that weekend, we were able to get a place there. It’s sometimes difficult to get a place near the Villages.
From there, we headed for the LazyDays RV Park, near Tampa. The leader of the Alaska tour, Spike, holds a rally there each year for past and future tour attendees. About 12 people from our tour where there and it was fun to see them again.
LazyDays is a huge place, incorporating not only an RV park, but a large RV dealership. Luckily, they didn’t have anything that tempted us. They have 123 service bays and couldn’t fit us in until the end of February! We got the work done elsewhere.
I’ll close with two pictures I haven’t had a chance to post.
Like grandfather, like granddaughter. My two nerds:
And one of sweet Maria,
So long for now.
Deb
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