Beginning the return journey

On January 31st, as my cousin Greg and his wife Linda were leaving for their Australia trip, we too headed off on our return journey to Seattle.  Our car and RV have been worked over and refitted, and our itinerary is generally laid out.  We expect to travel about 5,500 RV miles, arriving in Seattle about the 4th of July.  The map of our itinerary is laid out on a page on this blog which you can look up if you want.  We will be moving along the Gulf Coast for quite awhile, then moving inland up through the Southwest.  Back by the summer.

On the first stage of our trip, we made a short stop at the Corkscrew Swamp Preserve, one of the original Audubon sites set up many years ago.  It was spectacular birding, with a very long boardwalk providing some of the best birding sites we've seen, as well as a visitor center with information on the history of the site and its importance.  

Our first camping stop was the Kissimmee Prairie Preserve State Park, a little gem in central Florida about halfway up the peninsula.  It turns out that Florida used to be largely prairie, about three million acres of it.  Almost all of that prairie is gone, converted to agriculture, but this park preserves many acres of the original ecology.  It is home to unusual birds and wildlife, and is very isolated, so far from the cities that it attracts a lot of amateur astronomers, who come there for the clear view of the night sky and the lack of city lights.  The few campers who stop here are very quiet and low-impact folks, and it is one of the quietest and most serene parks we have ever stayed at - definitely a favorite of ours.

Activities there are simple - hiking, birding, biking, and star-gazing.  That suited us very well.  Ivy did some painting and we both took bike rides and hikes.  The main roads are quite passable, but the further out ones can be quite challenging on a bike.  I traveled down one that was flooded a foot deep for over half a mile and then had soft sand for several more miles.  That was not fun and in the heat - did I mention that it was about 80 degrees during the day - and I got quite exhausted before I got back.  But the country is stunning.  Besides the prairie there are local islands of trees - hammocks, they call them - with some of the biggest and most lovely old live oaks that we have seen so far.

Leaving Kissimmee, we headed off to visit my step-mother Alice again on the way out of the state.  We had a great time there, as always, eating and visiting and getting in a little last-minute shopping.  Ivy created her very first chocolate souffle in honor of our visit.  Then it was off to Blue Spring State Park, a large manatee sanctuary north of Orlando.

 The park is very popular and the sites are really lovely.  And there were plenty of manatees.  In the winter they seek out warm springs to keep from freezing, and they stay at these spots for long periods and in large numbers.   They are not very lively, and often hard to see as they rest at the bottom of the warm springs. And pictures don't do them justice much.  But it is great to know that Florida is taking good care of them and providing refuges for their winter survival.  The area near Blue Spring is quite gorgeous, there is a good miles-long bike trail, and a river.  And nearby was the pleasant town of Deland, where we spent a short time looking around.

Next, we will be heading west across the Florida panhandle and on through the Alabama and Mississippi gulf coasts.  We expect to be in New Orleans for part of Mardi Gras, and then off through the Texas Birding Trails.