Winter Plans

The Christmas holiday is over and it is time to escape the cold. Her is the short version of our plan.

While Florida is not our favorite destination, it does have the advantage of sunshine and warmth (at least most if the time)—and we do have a fondness for the Everglades.

We are going to start off with a mini-repeat of our last Florida trip, a multi-day bicycle ride for me with Ellen driving the sag wagon—Speedy. Rather than going inland like last time, we are going to work our way down the Florida east coast from Amelia Island at the Georgia border to nearly Cape Canaveral, alternating riding days with sight-seeing/birding days. That will take us about a week.

(Actually, we will probably start with a few days at Buck Island near Charleston on the way down, but that is weather dependent.)

After that point there are few overnight options that are both pleasant and within a day's ride, so we will put the bike back on Speedy and make a couple of extra stops to look for birds before ending up at Flamingo campground at the end of the road in Everglades National Park. We'll spend a couple of weeks there.

The it will be off to the west coast, with a few days visiting our friends, Rod and Ellen, who have moved to Marco island and Ellen's cousin Kathy and her husband, Paul, who live in Naples. Paul rescued Speedy on our last trip to Florida when we limped into his yard with a dying water pump.

After that it will be a quick trip up the west coast and over to Gulf Islands National Seashore near Pensacola for another two weeks. This will bring us to the beginning of March and we will start home, stopping along the way.

Oh yeah—the current plan is to leave here on New Year's day. Not much time left, today we start packing and getting the house ready.