Sleep in and Miss This?

 

Kissimmee Prairie Preserve State Park, Okeechobee, Florida  (high 71, low 38)

Our run of hot weather is over (thank goodness).  We’ve had afternoon temperatures in the mid 80’s for the past few days, and that makes it a bit too warm for afternoon hikes. 

A cold front came through last night, bringing a little rain, and now we’re going to get back to high temps in the 70’s.  Much better!  Of course it’s also going to bring in some cold night time temps, so we’ll have to have a little heat at night.

Our pattern while on the prairie always  start out with us getting in the truck before sunrise and driving the main road in search of wildlife.

We always see deer.  In fact we saw some sleeping yesterday right in the campground.   No pictures since it was pretty dark.

We love watching the sun rise over the prairie.  Some mornings are better than others.  This one was one of the best.

The full moon is waning, but still very pretty.

 

If you sleep in, you miss this!

 

After the sun rose, we went on to discover a few more interesting things.

These deer were huge and probably the biggest deer we’ve seen in Florida.  It was a bit foggy, so the picture wasn’t great.

The Eastern Meadowlark really are active in the mornings.  There were a lot of them out nearby the road, and each one singing.  It’s quite lovely with the early morning sun and hearing  many, many  Meadowlark, all  singing their own little song. 

Here is the infamous Ms. Hawk waiting in the exact same place for her man!   She seems to know me and doesn’t even bother to fly away.

A turkey vulture posing nicely.

After our morning sunrise drives, we usually take a morning hike on the prairie.

Lots of pretty flowers.

The past two nights we’ve had happy hour with fellow bloggers Tricia and Dan from Down the Road with T & D.  They are staying here for a few days before heading over to Jonathan Dickenson State Park.

It was nice to get to know you two!   See you down the road.

 

Our two weeks here are going by much too quickly.  We both love it here and will hate to leave……except that we have a trip to the Keys to look forward to!

 

and to borrow a phrase from Judy.

 

The end.

 

Tricia and Dan just stopped to say good-bye on their way out and said they saw the missile launch.  Cape Canaveral is not that far and with the dark prairie skies, it was very visible.  Bummer…we missed it.  They said it was incredible!   Oh, well.