Summer in the Winter

Wednesday, February, 8, 2017

Those of us who come from up north think that the normal Florida winter climate is summer enough at this time of year, but it is winter to those who live here. It has been so hot and humid the last few days that even the park staff we've talked to think the weather is more like summer than winter.

We spent another hot and sticky night and were up before dawn to have coffee and sit out in the coolest part of the day before the sun came up. Just after dawn, which is just after 7 AM, we got out the binoculars and our spotting scope to walk along the shore at the tent campground and along the Guy Bradley Trail to the visitor center. We were intending to go on the morning ranger-led bird walk, but wanted to see if there were any wading birds or shorebirds along the beach. (It isn't actually a beach, but it is open shoreline.)

We managed a few herons and a lone Spotted Sandpiper (which seems to have been here in all the years that we've been coming back) but not much else. The most interesting birds were farther out on the flats of Florida Bay. With the scope we were able to make out a flock of American White Pelicans out on the reef. We could also see lots of birds on the flats off the visitor center but decided to wait for a better view when we got there. So we ambled up the trail looking for birds in the bushes and swatting swarms of mosquitoes. We did get a great view of two Bald Eagles back along the tree line inland from the campground.

We got to the visitor center just before 8 AM to meet with Ranger Christie, whom we have birded with on previous visits here. At first it looked like we were to be here only birders but a young German man showed up as well. It was so hot, we decided by mutual consensus that the walk would be short, only around the vistor center parking lots and the nearby road.

We started out by scoping the flats on the bay in front of the visitor center. They contained hundreds of Black Skimmers, one of our favorite birds, along with Royal Terns, Brown and White Pelicans, Cormorants and various gulls and herons. If there were any shore birds, they were too far away and too much into the sun to see them. Every once in while, the skimmers would take off as a great cloud of birds, wheel around and then resettle on the sandbars. They weren't skimming but just seemed to be readjusting themselves.

The walk around the heavily treed parking lots yielded a few woodpeckers and many Osprey. It seems like they are building nests in every other tree. Nice weather, many great nest sites and lots fish in the shallow bay, what's not to like for an Osprey. The highlight was a small flock of White-crowned Pigeons, a bird that only occurs here and on the Keys in the US. Here they are normally only seen at Nine Mile Pond, about 11 miles north of here.

After the walk, we trudged back to Speedy and headed to the showers in an attempt to feel a little less sticky. We spent the rest of the day in the shade of the screen house taking advantage of what little breeze there was. Ellen was finishing a Bill Bryson (The Road to Little Dibbling) and I was finishing another Bryson (The Mother Tongue about the English language).

Our gas (propane powered) refrigerator met its limit today and the temperature inside was much warmer than it should be. On this site, the refrigerator is on the south side of the van, the sunny side, and the temperature there was in the high 90s. The biggest drawback of absorption refrigerators is their inability to cool to a temperature much lower than about 40° less than the ambient temperature.

We struggled for several years with Old Speedy's refrigeration by adding cooling fans and trying to use outside reflective sheeting, etc. Nothing helped. The solution for us was to add solar panels and replace it with a compressor refrigerator, a pricey solution. The other benefit, for Old Speedy, was that we could have refrigeration when traveling. Its Dometic unit wouldn't cool on DC and the gas wouldn't stay lit while moving. Trips west were especially vexing as the refrigerator was on the south side of the van for thousands of miles as we went west.

We aren't ready to go the new fridge route yet for the new Speedy. The current unit is an odd size and I'm not sure anything would easily fit in the cabinet where it goes. What we are going to try is turning the van around every day so the left side of the van is facing north during the day. Of course that means that the entrance to the van is now on the sunny side, but it can be shaded by the awning. We will turn the van back around at night so we can have the back of the van open to the field, rather than the road, and have a private view.

We gave that a try and at least the awning worked. We only decided to do it in the late afternoon, so we don't yet know if it will be effective. By dinner time, we threw in the towel and drove Speedy over to the visitor center to get dinner at the Buttonwood Cafe. The plan was to park Speedy, run the generator (which needs to be "exercised" every now and then), turn on the air conditioner and have a takeout dinner in a cool van (Buttonwood is an outdoor restaurant). That worked perfectly. The van cooled off, inside at least, we had a comfortable dinner of fried grouper and a key lime pie for dessert.

We returned to our camp site, backed in and opened the back door. Although it was a pretty windless evening, it seems like it will be a bit more comfortable tonight. We could hear Barred Owls calling near our campsite but we both so worn from the heat and mosquitoes that we couldn't bring outselves to go "owling".