Visitors, then Travel Day

Friday we finally had some nice weather! The sun was streaming through our window as it rose over the ocean, and it would warm up to the 60's. There was a brisk wind blowing, however, which made it feel cooler. As long as you sat in the sunshine, it felt good!

While waiting for Al's cousins to arrive for the day, we did a few things around the trailer, and I had some paperwork to get printed and prepared for mailing. Some frustration ensued as we tried to get the wireless printer to be "wireless", but we ended up having to connect it to the laptop to get my papers printed. We had elected to go with the WiFi Ranger system, and we are finding it it definitely has some issues with it. It needs a firmware update, so on Monday when we are at my parent;s house and will have a land line connection, we'll try to get those issues worked out.

Bill and Denise arrived at lunchtime, bearing baskets of food :-). We had a lovely afternoon, sitting at the campsite, chatting away and hearing lots of stories of their travels, and ideas of making things a little easier for us. Any and all tips are gratefully received! Denise was a little nervous, though, because the wind was blowing so hard that the tall pines surrounding us kept dropping these huge pine cones, and they were quite sharp! No-one was hit, though, but one did land right in front of Chelsea, which she promptly started chewing on. After lunch, we took a walk through the campground, ad along the beachfront. It's really very nice, and Bill wants to come back and stay in his motorhome. As we travel back and forth to Florida each winter, I'm sure we're going to have plenty of opportunities to stay here. It's very nice!

After the good-byes, we took the dogs for their afternoon walk, deciding to go down to the Marsh Boardwalk Trail. The sun was starting to go down, so it created some nice light. Here's a few pictures from our walk:

The boardwalk started from the roadway, stretching into the marshland. There were portions of the walk on solid land, on little islands, but mostly boardwalks.

It was almost low tide; had just turned to coming in. As you can see, the mudflats were quite expansive.

Al and the pups headed down the boardwalk.

One of the small island areas.

The lagoon winding through the marshes.

The sun was making Casey look quite red!

Mussels hanging onto the grasses, waiting for the water level to come back up.

As we drove back to the campground, through the dense brush I caught site of this roosting area for these birds. It was very hard to get a good shot, the brush was so dense to shoot through. There were signs saying the area was restricted, so I couldn't find a path through for a clearer shot. I believe this is a colony of Great Egrets, as they are fairly tall, and have the black legs rather than the yellow legs. I forgot my bird book at home, so if you read this Ginny, please put the book in the box! :-).This was by far the largest colony of Great Egrets I have ever seen, and I wished I could have gotten a better picture.



After dinner,we packed up a few things as that was to be our last night at Hunting Island. Having no satellite TV here, we watched a DVD before turning in for the night.

Saturday morning was pack up time. I had hoped to be on the road by 10am; I have learned we need to pick up the pace a bit! After packing up, hitching up (a minor issue there, but all's well that end's well, right?) making some VERY tight turns getting out of the campground, and attending to business at the dump station, it was more like 11:30am by the time we got on the road to Rainbow Springs. I had it calculated as a 5 hour drive, with a 30 minute lunch/fuel stop added. I have also learned to increase that 30 minutes to an hour; by the time the pups are walked around, lunch is eaten and the truck is fueled up, it's definitely an hour. We are also learning that the GPS does not always match the Streets and Trips mapping, and we are having to make some judgement calls there as to which we are going to listen to. It's all an experience!

We arrived at Rainbow Springs shortly before 6pm, and quickly set up on site 8.

We stayed here last winter in our pop-up, and it's a very nice state park. All sites are roomy, plenty of privacy between sites, level and an asphalt drive leads to a crushed stone pad and patio area. We have full hook-ups here, and it's quite warm...in the 80's when we arrived!

After set-up, a trip to the grocery was in order, some pizza for dinner, and an early night to bed. We have several visitors arriving tomorrow afternoon, and it should be great fun!