Happy Birthday Deb

Its was my sister Debbie's birthday on the 16th of January so I wanted to give a shout out and say how much I love her!!!
It was the 33rd anniversary of her 21st birthday.


Debbie!



Well we decided to take a trip to Everglades National Park.

It is about an hour and a half from our condo and it would be free because Bonnie has a golden parks pass. We packed some sandwiches and water into our small cooler and headed out for an adventure. We arrived at the park around noon and went into the visitors center. The park is 1.5 million acres and is the only everglades on this planet. Cool!

A map of the everglades..very convenient

What?? they have Jaguars here??

After a half hour in the visitors center, and armed with valuable information, we decided to make the 38 mile trek to the other side...the Gulf of Mexico...all via a small 2 lane road through the Everglades. We drove about 15 miles and decided to pull over in this recreation area and saw these Chinese girls kayaking with a guide...so we watched as they came in.

Chinese tourist  kayakers

After they were all in the guide started putting the kayaks back on the trailer, as soon as he drug the last one away, we noticed another observer.

catching a tan

can you believe that??

After the alligator experience (that was pretty cool) we resumed our trek towards the other side. an hour later, and a couple of stops, we arrived at the end of the road.

Ahoy capitan..Water ho

We noticed a tower with a nest at the top, so I utilized my 12 X optical and 24 X digital zoom and got this picture. We believe it is an Osprey. There were 2 adults in the nest when we arrived, but one flew off, I can only surmise it went for Chinese take out.

We hung out for an hour or so then started back, with a few stops for photo opps along the way...

Birds of the everglades

Laying in wait..

This guy was on the road..so I pulled over to say hi...

different gang of birds..I wonder if they are rivals of the other bunch???

miniature white cypress trees

Alligator bait

The park is pretty neat place to experience native wild life and plant life of Florida. On the way I saw a couple of signs that were cool to see for a native Iowa boy....

Pull over and get the snow chains on..



Once again I ask...They have Jaguars here??

 After that trip, we hadn't been doing to much, aside from enjoying the constant beautiful weather. Until today...the art fair was happening down on the beach, so we jumped in the car and headed over. We had to park across the inter coastal and walk because there were so many people sown there.

Walking to the art festival

Once we got over there the art was fascinating and expensive, so we did not buy any, but we did get lunch at Island Noodles food cart.
It was very good!

lots of people like art

sand sculpture

We wanted to get our walk time in so we walked the length of our beach (about a mile) and then back to the art fair.

these guys don't give a crap about art..they like sunshine

As we were walking back to our car..the traffic was horrible, we were crossing the street when to our horror, this kid (about 15) came flying around the corner on his bike right in front of a moving car! WACK!  CRASH! BANG! The car hits the bike, Kid goes flying (at which time I could not imagine the car avoiding running over the kid) the driver does some crash derby to avoid the kid, hitting two other cars, but narrowly avoids the tumbling kid!
We were only a few feet from this entire scenario, so Bonnie ran over to the young man to try to keep him from moving. but he got up, grabbed his crushed bike, and threw it angrily onto the sidewalk. then collapsed onto the street. There was a cop car a few places back, so he was there before I could dial 911. Traffic was stopped dead, and people were honking like mad, as they had no idea what we had just witnessed. The Ocean rescue is just across the street on the beach, so the ambulance was there in minutes.
We had to stay to give the officer our account of what happened.
Once that was done, we checked to see how the kid was, and he was sitting up in the ambulance. (Its a good thing he was young, cause if that car hit me, I would have been in big trouble...)
Then it was homeward bound..too much excitement for one day..
I gotta go to bed...........