Another two day journal entry. Ellen looks at more birds. Steve turns the van around. We learn about Crocodiles and Stars. Harry and Sally arrive. We stop at all the ponds and look at more birds (and alligators). Time for laundry. The owl is late. Our new neighbors run their generator incessantly.
Thursday started relatively late for us. Ellen had just enough time to get to the morning bird walk where she collected the now usual two pages of birds sighted. The walk ranger was the young woman who did the manatee talk on Wednesday and she was evidently just as nervous leading the bird walk. Fortunately there were several very good birders along to help her out.
I, on the other hand, was quite lazy and didn't take a morning bike ride. What I did instead was turn Speedy around. Our site backs up to a field and it is quite private in the back. This means that if we are backed into the site, we can leave the back window open at night with a view of the field and sky. But the site is situated such that the driver's side is facing south. This means the refrigerator is on the south side.
It seems that my refrigerator modifications did not do much and it is not keeping things particularly cool. So we decided to turn Speedy around during the day to see if we could keep the temperature below 50 by putting it on the shady side. It sort of worked.
The rest of the day was equally easy going. We rode over to the visitor center to learn a bit about crocodiles—with live props today. The talk was held on the bridge over the canal where the big crocs hang out.
Later in the afternoon our friends, Harry and Sally (and Nina the dog) arrived from Kissimmee Prairie State Park. They'd left home a few days after us and finally caught up with us here (even with my slow cycling days). We spend some time catching up and having dinner together.
We finished off the day with the evening ranger talk about stars and constellations. It was outside at the amphitheater and after a short talk about the apparent movement of the stars using a star chart program, all the lights were turned off and the ranger used the real thing, the clear night sky. It was an interesting talk, weaving in myth (the origins of the constellations) and science (star distances and sizes and supernovas and dark matter and dark energy).
After collapsing early, we arose early this morning. We wanted to get an early start as it was laundry day and it's 50 miles to the nearest laundromat. The early start gave use the chance to stop at all of the ponds along the road out of the park to see the morning animal life.
Mrazek Pond and West Lake I'd seen before on my morning rides, but Ellen had not. Mrazek did not disappoint and West still has large rafts of coots. We also stopped at Nine-mile Pond, where there was a Caspian Tern and lots of vultures along with the usual collection of herons, egrets and ducks. Paurotis Pond the tree line at the far side of the pond was covered in Wood Storks. And between the two ponds we saw a flock of White-crowned Pigeons in a tree along the road. These are a species found only in the Everglades and Florida Keys.
Out final stop was the Royal Palm area near the park entrance for a walk down the Anhinga Trail. This is one of the most popular areas in the park and it is easy to see why (aside from the flock of vultures that eat the rubber off of cars). The Anhinga trail runs along a canal and over a boardwalk into the swamp. It is packed full of birds and alligators. The Anhinga, cormorants and black vultures crowd along the railing beside the canal, virtually on the path. All the herons and egrets were there, Great Blue, Little Blue, and Green Herons, Great White and Snowy Egrets. We even saw two American Bitterns and a nest full of Anhinga chicks.. Did I mention lots of alligators, both lazily swimming along and a mudflat with dozens of them lying around.
After that show it was off to Homestead to find a laundromat. We also wanted to do some grocery shopping, so we had the GPS point us to the nearest Publix supermarket and then searched for nearby laundromats. The nearest was small, crowded and hot, so we tried the next. It was large clean and mostly empty with a friendly attendant. It also had a taqueria next door, a good spot for lunch while the laundry was drying.
It also gave us a chance to download email and upload journal entries as we were back in the land or wireless access. This was done while sitting in the comfort of Speedy's air conditioning while we ran the generator. It also gave us our last new bird of the day—the Common Myna. This one landed right outside of the van.
Finally a stop at the Publix for groceries and at "Robert Is Here", a farm stand on the way back to the park, for vegetables and a Key Lime milkshake and then the 50 mile drive back to Flamingo. We got there in time for showers.then snacks and dinner with Harry and Sally.
They came to our campsite to have dinner and watch the evening Barn Owl fly-by. It was quite late in coming by this evening, coming after sunset, but after a long wait we were glad to see it.
The only downside to the evening were the new campers in the site across from ours who ran their generator for two hours, all through dinner, right up to 8 PM. I hope that it is just a Friday night thing. Even here, 50 miles from the nearest town, they are pouring in well after dark. Two separate groups tried to park directly across from us in the dark on a spot that isn't even a campsite.
Time to close up and turn down the lights ad hope it allis calm for the rest of the night.
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