The raccoons returned to the scene of their crime (robbing our bird feeder) after dark one night. Tom was cooking hot dogs over the fire, and two of them waltzed over to his lawn chair and proceeded to growl at him. I think they were griping about not having the bird feeder anymore and wanted to lodge a complaint. They backed off when he hollered at them, but returned later to loudly raid the garbage cans.
There are 'blond' squirrels here in the National Forest that range in color from yellow to strawberry blond, as well as big fat gray squirrels. The gray squirrels are even fatter now. They chewed the perches off the bird feeder and helped themselves to the goodies during broad daylight. The critters here are very resourceful!
There are about 1,500 Florida black bears remaining. Many of them are in the Ocala National Forest. We think they also got in the garbage the other night, but we haven't seen one yet.
The deer are plentiful around here. We saw 21 of them on our return trip from the Orlando airport. We saw almost that many on our way down. They seem smarter than their northern cousins. They don't have a tendency to jump out in front of your vehicle, and they're busy eating clover (not pawing through snow or eating pine trees for dinner).
The evening sky here is something to behold. It looks like the angels have sprinkled the heavens with galactic glitter. That is one of the nice things about being so far away from any city lights. There is a real sense of peace here which is filling us back up.
On Thursday we headed over to the Atlantic coast to scout out other camping areas and do some sightseeing. We walked on the beach, smelled the salty air and watched some fishermen catch a few small fish. The pelicans and gulls were fishing, too. We found a great state park that's right on the ocean. We made reservations for Feb. 2-9. It'll be great to have a home on the ocean for only $18 a day! Can't beat that!
Tom had never been to Daytona Beach before, so we had to do it up right. I told him to turn at the 'Beach Ramp' sign. Next thing you know, Big Red was tooling down Daytona Beach. It's really fun to drive on the sandy beach for miles and enjoy the sounds, sights and smells of the ocean. It's so much fun it felt illegal. (Come to think of it, we were illegal. Tom said Big Red can hardly be kept to the 10 mph limit even when idling!)
Daytona Beach is not too far from Oak Hill, FL where my cousins, Jack & Bobbie Kalstad, live. We called them up and headed down for a visit. We had an evening of laughter and catching up. They're living in a 5th wheel while their new home is being built. We had a delightful evening, and we will be seeing them next week again. My brother, Irwin, will be down for the Daytona races, and will be renting a place a couple blocks from Jack & Bobbie. We plan to all get together for a boat ride and maybe even some shrimping or fishing.
Our experiment in dry camping didn't work very well as we surfaced some lingering problems with our solar/inverter/battery setup. After the first three days at Juniper Springs, we basically had no electricity/12V power (e.g., no lights, furnace, radio, computer, etc.) The solar panels couldn't seem to recharge the batteries. Even when we had 12V in the evening and had nothing on, we'd wake up to only 10V in the morning. We think we may still have one bad battery, so Tom disconnected the suspect. While one or two nights of candlelight followed by cuddling under the covers to stay warm might seem romantic, seven nights was pushing it. So, as much as we loved the National Forest, we needed to head to a campground with electric hookups where we could fully recharge our battery bank.
On Friday, we moved to the Silver Springs Campers Garden right across from the entrance to the big Silver Springs attraction. It's a lovely park with trees, flowers, a pool, shuffleboard, clean showers and a playground. We have electric and water hookups again. It's amazing what a treat it is to run the microwave, computer, lights, TV and furnace again!
On Sunday we went to the Silver Springs attraction. The Glass Bottom Boat Ride took us over several of the 130 springs in the area. Each day 850 million gallons flow from these springs. The main spring produces 550 million gallons daily all by itself. That is enough to overflow an Olympic size pool within 2 minutes. The water is 99.8% pure and is at a constant 72 degrees. The Tarzan movies, Sea Hunt series, and many other movies and TV episodes were filmed here because of the incredible clarity of the water.
We saw lots of animals and birds on the Jeep Safari, Jungle Cruise, and Lost River Voyage. They have a large exhibit called the World of Bears. We got some great pictures of the grizzlies playing.
We saw "Big Al" (a 13'9" alligator who weighs 1700 lbs.) and a rare albino alligator. We also saw a red tail hawk that was being rehabilitated, along with a golden eagle and bald eagle.
Have you ever seen a giraffe's tongue? It's purple colored and 12-16 inches long. We watched several people feeding them. However, the smell eventually drove us away. What a stench!
On Monday (2/2) we will move to the Gamble Rogers State Park near Flagler, FL and stay there for a week. It is located directly on the Atlantic Ocean. I'll be flying to Ft. Lauderdale to do another class (2/4-2/6), but Tom will have interesting areas to explore and photograph. We look forward to seeing Irwin at the end of the week.
Now that we're both feeling frisky again, we're really enjoying our new lifestyle. We look forward to exploring and meeting more friends along the way.
Kay & Tom
