Welcome to our Adventure!

Al and I are thrilled that you have found your way to our blog. We hope you enjoy reading our journal and viewing our photographs of the natural wonder of our United States of America. Let's hit the road together!
Homer, Alaska

Friday, April 8, 2011

Answers, and Travel Day to High Falls S.P., Georgia

There's been a lot of questions in the comments section the past week, so first, here's some answers!

Ginny: no, the elephant wasn't in Florida! :-).

Anneke: no, I don't think the dog was faking just to rest in your bed :-).

Mr. Wainwright: I apologize for not getting in touch with you; we ended up being so busy those days in Florida we never got to the Homosassa area. The good news is we will be in Florida for at least 3 months next winter, and hopefully, if the house up here is sold, the rest of the family will be in that area and we'll be there much of the time!

Sherry: my screenroom is the Eureka breezeway, and I bought it a couple of years ago from Amazon. We love it, and it's so easy to put up and take down. Bless the individual who invented those breakaway poles!
The camphost job in Otter Springs is a volunteer position, and we receive our site and utilities in exchange for 30 hours of work a week between the 2 of us. It will generally be 10 hours a day ( 5 each) for 3 days. We work with the other volunteers to keep the campground in order, make sure the sites are neat and ready for incoming campers, escort guests to their site, cleaning the general use areas. No office work, unless needed and you want to. It's very laid back, and the manager was delightful.
Our electrical issues seem to be ok now. The connection between the outside cord and the trailer wasn't snug enough, so Al tightened everything up and we've had no problems since.

We did some errands Thursday morning, stocked the fridge for the next few days, finished off the laundry, filled the propane tanks; a typical errand morning. It was quite warm in the afternoon, and sunny, so we decided to take the boat out on the rainbow River. You can launch it right from the campground, and the ranger had told us we should go up river, to the headsprings, where the parkland's actual attraction entrance is. We had walked around there last winter on vacation, but it had been a cold, rainy day, and whereas it looked really nice then, I'm sure it's spectacular in the sunny springtime!

We have an inflatable SeaEagle Sport Runabout; it's a 10 1/2 foot boat with a small electric motor on it, sort of like the zodiacs the yacht owners in Sag Harbor use to get from their yachts moored in the harbor to the dock. We chose this model because we wanted to be able to go boating on the various waterways we come across, because it's inflatable we don't have a difficult time storing it, and the open wide floor enables the pups to come with us. I'll share some of the pictures we took from our boat ride:



The view upriver as we started out.

I think this might be a breeding common moorhen? Please correct me if I'm wrong, we're just beginning this birdwatching thing! :-)

Great white egret stalking his meal

The egret became annoyed with us as we floated in closer to see this little blue heron


I persevered however, and got his picture!


Chelsea and Casey seemed to be enjoying their boat ride :-)

The water in the springs is so clear!

This anahinga (snake bird) was posing for me as he dried his feathers

Turtles were everywhere


The headsprings area; you can see the buoy markers where swimming is allowed at the end, and up the grassy hill you can see the visitor center through the trees.

Again, I think this may be a female ring neck duck, but if not, please let me know what it is for sure! She also had a duckling behind the branch that we didn't see right away.


After our boat ride, we had my parents come up and we had dinner together before we leave. We had bought some Peconic Bay scallops in the winter during harvest, and put them away in the freezer to bring with us, knowing my parents loved them. And it was a fabulous dinner :-). After our good-byes, we packed up everything outside in preparation for departure this morning.

We left Rainbow Springs at 10am this morning (Friday), and had an uneventful drive to our next destination, a 2 night stay at High Falls S.P. in Georgia, on our way to the RV-Dreams Rally in Seviereville, TN. The park seems very nice, crowded and full to capacity for the weekend, but not too noisy. It will be fun to explore the park tomorrow before it gets too hot, and you'll receive a full report soon! Thanks for reading, and keep the comments coming, we love them!!

2 comments:

  1. Really cool pictures, Karen. We also see all these animals that you have photographed but have no idea what they are called. I guess I could get a book telling me what they are but haven't to date. Thanks for the info. I do, however, have a book on snakes. Little did it help me.....or did it???? Enjoy the rally in Seviereville, TN. I'm sure it will be jam packed with important info for you guys.

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  2. Loved all of your pictures. Thanks for sharing them. Looking forward to your post on the High Falls State Park.

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