Sex on the Prairie…part two

 

Kissimmee Prairie Preserve State Park, Okeechobee, Florida

Tuesday, we decided to head out early for a hike.  Of course, before the hike, we had our sunrise drive along the road. That gives us a chance to wake up, drink some coffee, and for the temperature to warm up a bit.

We went to the trail along the pond area where the gators hang out.

It was a beautiful hike.  Clear blue skies, and lots of bird activity. 

If you look carefully on this Eastern Meadowlark, you can even see his little tongue.  His mouth is open because he is singing.  They sing ALL the time.

Although it was bright and sunny, you could still see a trace of the moon.

This particular trail leads you beside some little ponds.  It’s lined with trees, and is a good place to spot wildlife.

You always see gators, herons and Egrets.

We kept coming upon a bunch of birds that obviously were not happy to see us.  They would storm off and would make a squawking sound that sounded kind of like a dog.

We kept trying to get a better look at them.  Al with his binoculars and me with my camera, but they kept flying off.

I finally was able to get a not very good picture of one of them.   I believe it is some sort of Tern.  This was the best picture I could get, and I had to work for this one.

We saw lots of other small birds, most of them were Palm Warblers.

On the way back, we came across these two gators sunning themselves right by our trail.  They are usually in the water and further away from the trail. Al wasn’t concerned, but I’d prefer not have to walk by a gator facing right at me, if I can avoid it.

Not to fear, soon a white truck came by and we knew if we waited for him, he would scare the gators back into the water. 

Sure enough, at the sight of the truck, they splashed back into the water, allowing us to pass.  They kept their eyes on us though.   Vehicles are not allowed on this trail, however I believe these guys were allowed since it leads to their property.  My hero’s!

 

We had such a nice walk in the morning, we decided to go back to the same trail before sunset. 

After we had finished our hike and were back at the parking lot, we kept hearing loud squawking noises and rustling of the palm trees.  We were curious as to what was making this sound, as we had never heard it before.

I searched the palms with my camera and saw a Caracara feeding on something.

They were a LONG way away and it was getting towards dusk, so my pictures were blurry.

I kept my camera pointed up and pretty soon I saw another Caracara, and one appeared to be sharing the food with the other.

I didn’t capture the picture of that unfortunately, but before I knew it, this is what I saw.

(sorry for the bad picture…it was the best I could do)

 

Yep…..more sex on the prairie!

I am upset these pictures were blurry, but at least I captured something.

Bad pictures or not, this was still a very exciting moment for me.  Unfortunately, Al hadn’t quite found them in his binoculars, so he didn’t see this amazing sight!   How lucky was I to have caught this?

It was another great day on the prairie!

Fire…Or What a Way to Ruin a Hike

 

Kissimmee Prairie Preserve State Park, Okeechobee Florida (high 78, low 49)

We didn’t get out hiking yesterday until nearly 11 am.  We decided to go back to a trail just off the main road that leads a couple directions, including back to the campground.

It was a pretty day, warm with a gentle breeze.

 

It was too late in the morning, and even the Meadowlarks were hiding.  We saw very little wildlife and it was getting pretty boring.  We decided to continue for a while longer, and see if we could find anything.

We had gone about a mile and a half when Al noticed a fire off in the distance.  Of course when we notice fire, we immediately check to make sure it’s not coming from the direction of the motor home.

This time it was.

At first this fire had a lot of thick black smoke.  The kind you might see if an Rv was burning?

I have been particularly nervous about fires in Rv’s lately since I have heard of FOUR  the past month of so.  There was one at a Bluegrass festival that we passed on the way here.

These Rv refrigerators have a pretty good history of catching fire.  I read somewhere Norcolds are at about a  2% failure rate.  That’s way too high in my opinion.   We decided to order an automatic fire extinguisher that fits in the outside refrigerator compartment. It’s heat activated.  In fact, we decided for good measure, we’d  order two!   We figure, it could be the best money we ever pay for “insurance.”

But….the fire extinguishers have not arrived yet and the more we looked at the heavy smoke, the more nervous we  became.  It looked very much like it was right in the direction of our campground.  Al even got a bit nervous, which in turn made me really nervous. We knew if it was coming from a campground it was very probably an Rv burning. 

It really  looked like it was coming from the campground.

We decided to head back and see where the fire was.

We walked faster and and faster, and rushed back as quickly as we could.

As we got nearer the main road, we realized the fire was not at the campground, and was either on the far reaches of the prairie, or some nearby land.  As it turned out, it was a prescribed/controlled burn on a neighboring property. 

Phew….   We felt better, but are even more anxious to get our new fire extinguishers installed. 

What a way to ruin a crappy hike!

We went back to our nice “unburned” motor home, ate lunch, started some soup, and took a short nap.

After naptime, we took a drive over to the showers and do a load of laundry.    We saw the same group of deer we’d seen the night before, only this time we saw “Big Daddy.”

You can sure tell they don’t allow hunting here.  I don’t know what happened to his right ear.  It’s floppy.

 

Later on, before sunset, we walked over to the camping area that’s reserved for the star gazers.  We talked to a nice man who  staying there. He had a huge telescope.  He had it plugged it, connected to a computer and camera and was getting ready for darkness.  He told us a lot about the telescope and the stars…most of which I sadly cannot remember. 

We walked until it got too wet and turned around and headed home for happy hour and a marshmallow roasted on the campfire.

 

Is it just me, or have they done something different with marshmallows?  They didn’t taste as good as they used to.

Prairie Dust

Kissimmee Prairie Preserve State Park,  Okeechobee, Florida  (high 74, low 46)

 

As we’re winding down our stay on the prairie, we’re  trying to hike some trails we haven’t done before.  This preserve is so large, you have to drive to the hiking trails, or be worn out before you get there! We drove the truck about 5 miles up to the East Military Trail.

On the way to trail, I was able to capture an unusual picture of a Caracara in a tree. 

We only did about 3 miles on the trail.  It was a beautiful day but we didn’t see much of interest, so we didn’t go all the way.

These palm trees are very common on the prairie.

We saw several varieties of flowers.

I did take a few photos to try and capture how vast this area is.  It looks so different in person, but I have not been able to quite capture it on a photo.  A better photographer could.  I have been trying out the free Windows Photo Gallery program, and discovered they have an easy way to stitch photos together to make a panoramic photo. 

I’ll have to work on getting some better photos to make a panoramic photo, now that I’ve discovered this easy program.  The reason I looked at the Windows Photo Gallery is because for some reason when I try to download photos from Picasa, my videos won’t upload.  They do fine on Windows Photo Gallery.  I’m sure there is a good reason, but I have not found it.  Yes, I have gone to “options”, and selected all the file types available.

There were quite a few horses here in the equestrian camp this week-end.  This is a wonderful place to ride.  I wish I had a horse to explore all these trails.  No way can we do all them on foot.

A group went on a night ride Saturday night and then they were back out there Sunday morning.

This is the view from our window.  We love our view here.

When we leave here, we will have a very big job removing all the prairie dust and sand from in and out of  both the truck and the motorhome.   The main road into the campground is crushed limestone, and it gets pretty dusty as you can tell by our truck.  The trails are all sandy, so there is plenty of dirt to go around.  I’ll be vacuuming for weeks probably.

 

Yesterday late afternoon, we decided to take a walk up the campground road.  We find we always see more wildlife on the road than the trails.  This was no exception.

The deer aren’t skittish, but don’t appear to have been hand fed.

We stopped and were talking to one of the many campground hosts, when Ranger Jen drove up on the swamp buggy.  She offered us a ride back to our campsite.  We jumped on the chance to ride the swamp buggy.  She took us on a little tour and pointed out some Penny Royal plants that were just starting to bloom.  Thanks Jen!  We’re available anytime!

Jen is a wealth of knowledge so we took the opportunity to pick her brain a bit.  She told us about the hog hunters in the park. They come every week-end.  I believe they are Indian.  They  bring horses and dogs.  The dogs find the hogs and then from horseback, they lasso them and take them to market.  I really hate killing any animal, but the terrible damage they do, makes it necessary to preserve the prairie.  Four wild hogs can destroy an acre of ground in one night. Jen told us that in December they removed 70+ hogs and 50+ in January. 

You sure get a great view from high up on the buggy.

These deer didn’t seem concerned at all.

After Jen dropped us off, it was time for our evening drive up the road.   Sunset was beautiful but nothing out of the ordinary, so I didn’t take any pictures for a change.   We had to get back so that Al could watch the Super Bowl.

I did get a rare photo of two Caracara sitting on fence posts.

I tried to capture this guy flying off, but with my slow shutter, I only got…..

 

the end

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.