Comparing Florida beaches

Our trip back from Orlando took us along the gulf coast of Florida.

Our goal was to compare Florida's beaches to our's in Texas.

And this is pretty much what the beaches along the Atlantic coast look like:

a pretty, golden color sand was present here.

But once you get to the northern coast of the Gulf side, 
it looks more like this:

sugar-like white sand.

This is at St. George Island State Park. 
And it's 8 mile form here to the edge of the park and to the nearest condominium.

Now, you might say, look at those tire tracks on the beach.
Wouldn't it be fun to take a beach buggy?
Well, no. Those are tire tracks from the State Park Ranger. 
You can't take your car on the beach.
You can't even take your dog to the beach.

On the other hand, that has some advantages.

There are no motor noises or pesky creature to bother you…
except perhaps the sea gulls if you are stupid enough to feed them.

Just imagine: 

relaxing on this sand, 
along the palm trees at Panama City Beach.

Or going for a walk along the edge of these blue waters:

Or, how about working on your sun tan?

Yes, there are lots of things to do on these great beaches. 
In addition, a lot closer and cheaper than the Caribbean.
We can see why people like it here.

What not to do while on vacation

May we give you the following advice:
Never listen to the local news while you are on vacation.

This is a little background:
After a pleasant drive form the north-east coast of Florida, 
we arrived in Orlando and checked into a condo. 
We had been over 1 1/2 weeks in the motor home and not getting any news.
We sat down in a comfortable sofa with cool air conditioning 
and turned on the local early night news.

Here are 3 reasons not to do this:

1.  We had seen a few fires which we knew where set to control the vegetation.

One looked larger than the others
Yes, the news informed us that it had crossed over a road and gotten out of hand.

2. We had crossed many rivers and commented on how nice they looked.

Here is one we camped at, as it approached the Atlantic.
They had canoes you could rent for a close-up view of river life.

But, the news informed us that they had found the body of a 20-30 y.o. female that day along one of those rivers we had just crossed. She had been missing since the Friday before.

3. Traffic along those beach cities had seemed a lot calmer 
and the communities appeared much more slow moving than we had expected.
The news informed us that a man and his son had been carjacked in one of those cities that day.
But the father purposefully wrecked the car into a tree and both he and the son escaped safely.
The car jacker had been apprehended.

(The car looked like "totaled". But apparently the father knew both he and the son in the back where safely seat-belted, while the car jacker was not.)

So the lesson we learned was: Avoid the news.
Ignorance is bliss.

Then there are some uncommon birds in the South.

Like this guy.
From the road we thought he has a large Texas cow bird.

But when we got a little closer,

we realized that he was big…and his face was not a thing of beauty.

Who would have thought that under all those white feathers, there'd be black with hints of green?

You know, for some reason, birds are starting to interest me.

And then we came upon this guy, staring at us form a tree.

His piercing yellow eyes remind us much of Kodiak's bald eagles, our national bird.

But the moment he turns his read, 
it is easy to see that's not what he is.

Nope. He is an Osprey.
Lots of them were nesting on the north side of St. Mark's Wildlife Reserve.
But not one to be seen near our San Antonio home.

This is what Wikipedia says about him:

"The osprey (Pandion haliaetus), sometimes known as the sea hawk, fish eagle, river hawk or fish hawk, is a diurnal, fish-eating bird of prey. It is a large raptor, reaching more than 60 cm (24 in) in length and 180 cm (71 in) across the wings. It is brown on the upperparts and predominantly greyish on the head and underparts.

The osprey tolerates a wide variety of habitats, nesting in any location near a body of water providing an adequate food supply. It is found on all continents except Antarctica, although in South America it occurs only as a non-breeding migrant.

As its other common name suggests, the osprey's diet consists almost exclusively of fish. It possesses specialised physical characteristics and exhibits unique behaviour to assist in hunting and catching prey. As a result of these unique characteristics, it has been given its own taxonomic genus, Pandion andfamily, Pandionidae. Four subspecies are usually recognized, one of which has recently been given full species status (see below). Despite its propensity to nest near water, the osprey is not classed as a sea-eagle."

Common birds of the South

There were  a lot of common (and some strange) birds on our recent thrip through the South.

I was happy to see that my college mascot was present at every single campsite.

Looks authoritative, doesn't he?

That's because it's Spring time: 
time to impress the local beauties!

Wouldn't any male put on some "airs" for such a girl?

Anyway, one day, after 4 miles on a bumpy road to a game reserve, 
were were disappointed to learn that it was closed for some unstated reason.

But, we found this guy just outside the gate

and thought it was really fortunate that he stayed around long enough 
for us to get out and take a few close-ups.

But when he started pecking at out tire, 
and eating the little thin protrusions that stick out of the sidewalls…

his beauty faded really fast.

There are a lot of Florida State Parks

Take a look at the number of State Parks along the northern east coast of the state:

And along the northern Gulf coast:

No wonder they have a sign at the estrange of each park talking about how they have been awarded "The Best State Parks" in the nation.

They have lots of them.

In fact, our goal had been to visit all of them along the coast.
But, heck if we did that, sometimes we would have travelled only 20 miles in one day!

We have to warn you though:
Floridians use their State Parks!
So be sure to make reservations early!

When you go to Florida in early May...

there are a few things you do expect.

Like humidity in the early morning.

But, to tell the truth, this only happened on the last day.
The rest of the trip was cool and dry (more about their rainstorms later).

Some things did surprise us.
Like this tiny frog in the shower. 

We've heard that colorful frogs can be poisonous.
But we got consolation in that this one was a single color.

And he stayed in the shower with us, without moving for 2 days.

Then there were the early morning spider webs.

We think they should have made the Spyderman costume more like this guy…
those orange spots on the face sure looked menacing!

And we were surprised that the mosquitoes were not bad.
But, we have to tell you: their tiny gnats sure do raise a skin wheal when they bite you!
And the itching last for days!

These little towel wipes sure saved many an outing!

It was really handy to have one in your pocket for when those bugs came out!

Last month we took a little trip

from TX to Florida.

Can't quite figure out how 1,400 miles one way turned into a 4,000 mile round trip.
However, that's what he odometer said.

Of course we took a lot of pictures of things tourists usually shoot...
like cars and planes and motorcycles too.

then saved them on the old computer every night.

So if you have nothing else to do….
check up on the upcoming blogs for sights along the way.

The Flowered land

The Spanish explorers called this land La Florida (or The Flowered) 
for a good reason.

Flowers are everywhere!