Georgia

As I said previously, before we explored Florida, we spent a couple of days (unfortunately pretty rainy) in Savannah. The live oaks dripping with Spanish moss kept grabbing my attention…

… as did the beautiful squares…

… and streets lined with stately homes.

I was dismayed to find that we arrived after azalea season (in late March), but I did find one bush still blooming!

Down at the Savannah River, I loved this juxtaposition -

The sun came out the morning we left (of course!), so we made a quick detour back through Forsyth Park…

… which is Savannah’s version of Central Park. The fountain in the center is understandably the most photographed fountain in the city…

… and serves as the background to many an engagement or wedding photo.

On our way out of town, we headed to the Bonaventure Cemetery.

I wasn’t interested in any of the “famous” people resting there - I just wanted to stroll along the lanes, and take in the peaceful ambiance.

The family plots were interesting, with their raised concrete borders…

… and labelled entryways -

Some interesting statuary -

They sure can set a mood -

We did a quick drive-by of the entrance to Wormsloe Historic site…

… and I found out later that there are over 400 live oaks lining the 1.5 mile entrance drive.

Now, jumping forward in time, to the end of our road trip, we came back into GA to visit Okefenokee Swamp. Longleaf pines and saw palmetto were the predominant plants we saw…

… but there were also what I consider the eponymous watery areas of a swamp -

As I was taking that picture above, Steve said, “oh yeah, nice ‘gator”…

… and I almost literally jumped back from the edge of the water, because I hadn’t even seen it, as I was focusing on the waterway!

From this tower…

… we had a bird’s eye view of the swamp…

… and got a neat angle looking down on cypress and some water below -

As we were driving out, there was a snake in the road…

… and I found out by research later, that it was a Pygmy Rattlesnake! I loved the red highlights along its back.

We then visited some of the barrier islands along the south GA coast, and it was on Jekyll Island that we found Driftwood Beach -

What was once a maritime forest is now haunted by skeletons (some purported to be 500 years old) -

It was really windy when we were there - (open this email in your browser by clicking the link at the bottom of the post to see and hear the video) -

I’ve never seen sea foam bounce and fly like that!

I captured this pair right across the road from the beach -

Tri-colored Heron and Snowy Egret

Besides the Spanish moss, check out all the greenery growing on the branches -

Our last stop on this road trip was spending a few days with friends on Little St. Simon’s Island. Overall, it was like “summer camp for adults”. We definitely didn’t have to sleep in tents or on bunk beds, but we did get to go on lots of guided excursions, and even bike rides on our own. My first big surprise was seeing this fella as we neared the beach -

I had never gotten to see a wild armadillo before, and certainly didn’t expect it on a lush island in south GA! The beach was huge and deserted…

… other than for the multiple dozens of Terns and other shore birds -

I loved their swept-back hairdos. :)

Royal Terns, and one Forster’s Tern in the foreground

I know y’all aren’t crazy birders like me, but I just have to share some gorgeous species with you. We visited a pond, where quite a few were nesting.

This is a Great Egret posturing for a mate…

… while I bet you can see where the Roseate Spoonbill gets its name.

I loved the show this Snowy Egret put on -

I can tell your eyes are getting glassy from too many birds, so I’ll switch to snakes!

Grass snake

I’ll close with this shot of sand on the beach, made intricate by the wind -

Even as this blog is posted, we’re on our way to our next adventure… far, far away! ;)

Florida (part 2)

So, after the Everglades, we headed down the Overseas Highway (US 1) from Key Largo to Key West. It is 110 miles, and actually had much less driving over ocean than we thought. We thought there was going to be a lot of this -

… when in fact, there was a lot of this -

We were really surprised by how much land is present on individual keys, and there is an amazing number of them.

Most of the time driving we were enclosed on both sides of the road in scrub and some palms. We stopped about halfway down the road at Marathon Key to walk along the Seven Mile Bridge. I took pictures of the sign and thought I’d just post those, so you can read the information for yourselves. I found it interesting.

And this was on the back…

We only walked about 1/2 mile on the bridge, so that I could get a different perspective than what we had been seeing by car…

… but of course I had to get a zoom shot -

This next one doesn’t look very appetizing, does it? I liked that you could see some far off keys at the horizon -

As we got closer to Key West, the land we saw seemed much more arid, and there were new clusters of mangroves everywhere (probably going to become their own keys in a few hundred (or thousand) years) -

Key West was beautiful. Between interesting homes with manicured plantings…

… to those where you could barely make out a house…

… we loved wandering the streets and ogling enormous banyan trees…

… and admiring all the orchids that were blooming profusely from pots just tied to tree trunks…

THE big thing to do on Key West is to watch the sunset (with several hundred of your closest friends) from Mallory Square -

… so of course we did.

And I must include a picture of some of the more colorful denizens of the island (they are everywhere!) -

After bidding adieu to this bright and hot island, we headed back north on the Atlantic side to Palm Beach. There is a unique diving opportunity at Blue Heron Bridge where you can see many weird and wonderful fish and creatures. This was a really big Hermit Crab that ambled by - (usual reminder: open this email in your browser by clicking the link at the bottom of the email, to view the videos)

This dive was on a really boring sand flat in no more than 20 feet of water. However, the unique creatures we saw just blew us away! This is a 1 minute long video that Steve shot, following a cool fish called a Flying Gurnard, that we had never seen before (in over 500 dives!) -

The next is a Molly Miller Blenny playing peek-a-boo. (you’ll probably need to enlarge the center of the screen to fully appreciate it) :)

Ok. Enough diving pictures. Just know that we were underwater for nearly 2 hours, and that’s a record for us. We could last that long on one tank of air because we were so shallow.

We then continued north to St. Augustine, because Steve was interested in seeing the area, after having read a lot of the history of the “oldest city in the US”. It was established by the Spanish in 1565, 55 yrs before the Pilgrims landed at Plymouth Rock. It was a cloudy, windy day when we were wandering around, so forgive the drab appearing pictures.

The sharply angled walls of the Castillo de San Marcos were quite striking -

Its walls were made of coquina, which is rock made up of millions of compressed coquina clam shells. This is found in very few places in the world, and no other building used this material before the fort was made in 1672. They didn’t know how it would hold up (it’s done very well for 350 years so far!), and were happily surprised when cannonballs either bounced off or stuck in the stone only a few inches, due to the stone’s compressibility in absorbing the shock of the hit.

There were some gorgeous buildings (built in the 1880’s)…

… that we admired from the outside as we wandered, because we didn’t have enough time to check out any museums during our short stay.

I’ll close with a sunset shot from Key Largo. I forgot to mention that we stayed there on our way north out of the Keys, but we didn’t sightsee there - just spent the late afternoon at the beach and relaxed.

Florida (part 1)

We had never really explored the state, so we set out to do so over about 2 weeks. I’m actually going to tell this story out of sequence because we visited Savannah for a couple of days before actually entering FL. I’ll cover Savannah in my Georgia post.

Our first stop was to be Kennedy Space Center, but we had a little detour first. Heading down I-95, our trusty little Honda Fit (with only 180,000 miles on it) suddenly had a loud bang! under the hood, we smelled something burning, and the car started shaking and running really rough. Steve was able to get us safely off to the shoulder, and we proceeded to call AAA. Unfortunately, they estimated that they’d have a tow truck to us in 3 hours (we had miles to go before we slept), so a repair shop recommended we call PepBoys. “Only” 1 1/2 hours later (sitting on a piece of cardboard in the shade as semis roared by) the tow truck arrived and delivered us and the Fit to a repair shop in Jacksonville.

Amazingly, in all of our travels, we had never had a car break down! So add that now to our life experiences. :)

We had already bought tickets for the Space Center for the next day, so we rented a car at the airport and drove on down to Cocoa Village, just across the “Indian River” from the barrier island that Cape Canaveral is on. It surprised us that Orlando was only about an hour’s drive west of us.

The Kennedy Space Center is 3 miles away from the launch site on Cape Canaveral. The picture above was taken without any zoom.

I wanted to go to the Space Center to be up close to rockets and such, to get a personal feel for the magnitude of these things.

Above is a mock-up of the rockets that took the Space Shuttles into orbit. One of the actual Space Shuttles -

We did the “Shuttle Experience” (or some such name) that apparently does a very good job of allowing you to see what it feels & sounds like to be in the Shuttle for a launch. It’s really loud and amazingly bumpy.

I just liked the contrast of all the bright colors -

After retrieving the car (only 2 days after dropping it off), we were back on our scheduled itinerary over to Crystal River on the Gulf side, to snorkel with manatees! In all of our years diving, this was one creature we’d never gotten to see.

There are springs near Crystal River that are a constant 72 degrees year round, so in the winter, the manatees come in from the Gulf to stay warm. Even though they don't look it, they have very little fat under their hides. Our snorkel trip was at 0730 and it turned out that we were the only ones on the boat. I was expecting a ride out to the springs along the coast, but we ended up motoring about 100 ft off the dock and anchored in 3 feet of water where there were several “sea cows” enjoying grazing on the sea grass. The water was pretty murky, especially after the manatees passed by, stirring up the fine silt on the bottom -

Steve’s new GoPro got some great videos (as usual, make sure you have opened this post in your browser to be able to see these) -

And this one showed how close we were to the dock and shore -

They are truly “sea cows”, and we could see how easily they could be injured by boat propellers, given the shallowness of the waters in which they feed, as well as their need to surface to breathe. We spent 1 1/2 hours and got our fill, so I then came up and sat in the sun for quite awhile to finally stop shaking and shivering!

We then headed down to the Everglades, to explore that unique national park. Apparently there is no other place like it on earth. Soon after we entered the park on the 40 mile road through it, we stopped at a short (less than 1 mile) trail with awesome wildlife spottings.

This Anhinga was drying his feathers in the sun. Despite being a water bird, and hunting fish underwater, their feathers aren’t waterproof, so they have to dry them before they can fly.

There was no shortage of alligators to be seen, and this one was enjoying the sun, with his buddy, the Great Blue Heron. These were just off the main path we were walking along!

This was a common scene as we were driving along - all that grass is probably hiding large areas of water several inches deep…

… and then we’d see areas like this -

This was one of my favorite birds, the Purple Gallinule…

… check out her toes!

There were some very different pockets of plant life…

… depending on elevation (even if it’s just a few feet). Dry land ridges let these pines take root, and this species of palm thrives around them.

A few miles down the road, we found this…

… as a feeding area for Great Egrets…

… and White Ibis…

… as well as a nursery for alligators -

A common scene, as we drove along…

… until we reached the next unique stand of trees - this time, Mahogany -

At the end of the road, Flamingo is the post that signals you’ve reached (probably) the southernmost point of the “continental” US (not counting the Keys). Here we found an interesting cast of characters - Osprey in a huge nest, right in the harbor -

… Manatees to be seen from above…

… and a Crocodile!

The Everglades is the only place in the world where both alligators and crocodiles coexist. Alligators live in fresh water, but crocodiles prefer brackish or salt water.

This one was a young one, but we saw an adult in a pool on an another trail. Upon researching, we learned that if you can see bottom teeth, it’s a crocodile (alligators have an overbite and cover their lower jaw when the mouth is closed) -

I’ll continue this state’s coverage in the next post.

Watchu lookin’ at?