This Was a Bad Idea

 

Kissimmee Prairie Preserve State Park (high 75, low 50)

 

We didn’t get a very early start yesterday leaving Tampa.  We had been sitting in the same location for about 6 weeks, so we had really settled in.  It took a while to remember how to get ready to get on the road, and of course we had to wait for Baxter to do his morning business and poop out a rubber band!

We planned to top off our propane tank on the way out.  We wanted to be sure we had plenty of propane if it should be cold enough that we’d need to run our furnace.  We never quite believe the gauges telling us how empty or full the tank is and I don’t think we ever even checked the gauge.

Quail Run has a gated entrance where you have a garage door style clicker to open the gate.

They have a propane refill station right outside the entrance gate, but it’s on the wrong side….unless you go out the in gate.  There is a big oak tree that makes it difficult to exit the correct side and move left to the fill station.

We spoke to a lady at the office and asked if we could exit the entrance side.  She said ok but to let us know so that they could have someone to help us so that no one tried to enter the park when we were there.  After we hooked up, we called her and told her we were coming. Long story short, the automatic gate started closing before the motor home had gotten through.  I was standing outside and got the pleasure of watching the gate close into the side of the MH.  Ugh!!  I grabbed it trying to pull it away before it banged against it again.  About that time one of the owners came by and opened it again. 

This was not a good plan.

Fortunately, the gate hit the trim piece on the side that acts like body side molding on a car.  It left some white paint on that piece, but it didn’t do any other damage.  We may be able to rub it out.   All that trouble to find out we only needed 1.4 gallons!  

 

The rest of our 150 mile drive to Kissimmee Prairie Preserve State Park was uneventful.

I guess we got lucky, because the 5 mile campground road was nice and smooth.  Sherry and David had mentioned that it was in terrible shape when they were here a few weeks ago.  As it turned out, one of the camp hosts just re did it on Wednesday! 

We were here last June, and chose the same site.  It took our satellite dish a little while to lock on and for a while we didn’t think we would have satellite. It finally locked on and we have satellite, and even internet,  although it’s only 1x.  Other than being out of level, we’re good.  We’ll work on that today.

We couldn’t wait to get outside and explore, so we took a walk on a trail by the campground.

It didn’t take long until we started seeing wildlife, although so far not as much as we did in June.

This Red Shouldered Hawk seemed to want his picture taken as he kept flying right in front of us and landing.

I believe this next bird is an American Kestrel.  He was high up in the top of a tree and I had some trouble holding the camera still enough to zoom in enough.

We saw quite a few deer.

and of course, an alligator.

I believe this bird is a Savannah Sparrow.  Maybe Judy can verify.

Here in the prairie we have found the best place to see wildlife is along the 5 mile campground trail.   Last night right before sunset, we took a drive up the road in search of wildlife.  We saw some strange bird we couldn’t identify and some rabbits, but not much else.