The Truth Of My Day

  I can't help it. I thought I was done. But there are a few pictures that I haven't included yet and that I really love. It was a memory making week. Also I haven't talked about the one time we went out of our way to see alligators. The signs were intimidating to me but promising to Ron. The stormy skies only added to the effect. There is a dot in the water, it's an alligator. Our first sighting. I was nothing but nervous. This was the wild, no fences! The sign only says if one appears on your path, turn and walk back where you came from. What if more than one climbs up the small bank to the path? No one mentions that, and I'm wondering why. We saw several of the alligators on the edge of the water, each one quite creepy. I did not share Ron's enthusiasm at all. Plus, I'm fairly certain he can run faster than me.  I know this picture isn't very good, but I wasn't getting any closer just for a blog shot. This big guy was not that far away. The steep ...

  We drove so many miles and still have so much more to see. Next time I think I would like to fly into Miami and stay in the south and explore the Keys and the Everglades. Before the heat of the summer sets in! Key West is 1,699 from the Equator. (If you calculate it as the orthodromic distance on the surface of a sphere) (I'm not a brainiac, this was on the website I checked and I wanted to sound smartiful) Our biggest road trip took us south from Palm Bay to somewhere around Port St. Lucie diving west to cross Florida at the northern tip of lake Okeechobee. We are spontaneous people. We drove off heading south and then started talking about what our destination might be. I said "Lake Okeechobee!" Why? Because I liked to say the name. I learned a lot of cool things about it when we stopped there. It's the second largest lake in the United States. The deepest part of it is a mere twelve feet. How odd. I like odd things. It's chock full of alligators, but we didn...

   So many puddles and ponds and shallow lakes in Florida. All teeming with life. Here a frog, there a turtle, and oh the birds. This first picture looks like a bird floating on a liquid mirror. The only thing disturbing this calm water was the occasional turtle head. It was a bit frustrating, not being able to see anything in the waters most of the time. The mystery remained about what secrets the water held. Like a cloaking device, or incredible pond camouflage. So much of Florida seemed like an optical illusion, and I loved it. I didn't have to look up to see the skies. I will never know the depth of the ponds. The water always threw the light back without absorbing it. Sometimes even a puddle looked like a glimpse into an opposite world. This puddle had a flock of white birds in it at one point. It was very cool. How come reflection and mirror are the only two words I can think of? And yet the opposite of reflection is not clarity. Reflect usually refers to contemplation. ...

  It was not warm in Florida. We drove east from Orlando to Palm Bay for most of the seven days of our trip. We got the rental car right as night set in. We traveled over an hour on a  quiet dark toll road, they are not well lit, and it was kind of eerie. I wanted to see what was out there. Oh well. The next morning we grabbed the sweatshirts and took the first road that led to the water. It wasn't the ocean, it was the Indian river. I felt like I was holding my breath as we got out of the car.  I thought we would have to go to the other side of Florida to see manatees! We went to the first dock and saw wonderful big birds like pelicans and herons and others that I want to get to know better. The second dock could be seen from the first dock, and we could see manatee wakes out there, which was cool. They were a couple hundred feet out there with a nose popping up here and there. We found three people to talk to who were all incredibly nice. The last two guys said that the...