Spring Vacation 2021

We just returned from our first vacation of the year. As we often like to do, we journeyed down to Florida to swim, kayak, and snorkel in some of the huge freshwater springs that are peppered across the state, mainly in the panhandle and north-central area. Generally, we like to explore springs we've never encountered, but this time we chose to revisit five that we'd seen in past years: Salt Spring, Wekiwa Spring, Rock Springs, Silver Glen Spring, and Alexander Spring.

My favorite of these is probably Silver Glen. The water clarity there is among the finest I've seen, and it's full of fish and other aquatic life. Basically, it's perfect for photography. The area around the springs is also heavy with wildlife and you never know what's going to come gliding in from the sky or ambling out of the nearby forest.

So, today, here are a few photos from Silver Glen. I'll post some more photos and information about the other places we visited as I unpack and process the 1000+ images and video we shot.

I have to say that this was one of the most perfect, most relaxing vacations we've taken since we bought out Casita travel trailer in 2005. The weather was perfect, and the modifications we made on the trailer before we left proved to be brilliant for us. In the week before leaving we replaced the old carpet with plank flooring and added an eight-inch memory foam mattress to the bed. Both improvements were far better as far as overall comfort for us than we could have imagined.

Our campsite at Salt Spring Recreation Area, a National Forest facility.

 

 

GoPro photo as I snorkeled toward the main vent at Silver Glen Spring.

Striped mullet in the main vent.

The shallows.

The view toward the head spring.

Big Predator and Tiny Prey

When I was taking the following photos I didn't actually realize that I was witnessing a predator catching and killing a tiny prey animal. Once I downloaded the photos and took a close look at the action, I realized that I had recorded a very young fish being captured and eaten by a Great egret. When I looked at the photos close-up, I felt sorry for the little fish. He was doing his best to keep from being eaten, but failed.

Still...it's a part of the cycle of life that Mother Nature has dictated. The following sad drama took place on the south beach of Fort DeSoto Park in Pinellas County, Florida, on the Gulf Coast.

I had been photographing the egret. It was at this point where I realized he'd brought something out of the water that he had captured in his beak.

It was only when I got a chance to sit in the shade and expand the image on the camera screen that I saw the bird had nabbed a little baby puffer fish. A puffer fish defends itself by ingesting air and puffing up like a balloon in an attempt to make a predator let go of it, thinking the fish would be too big to swallow.

The poor little puffer fish was puffed up as big as he could make himself. He was trying like heck to make the giant bird think he was too big to eat.

But he was just too tiny for the ploy to work. The egret swallowed him right down. "Gung!"

And then after eating that tiny, itsy-bitsy morsel, the egret turned and continued on his way, searching for more fish to catch and eat. Poor little puffer fish!

In Need of Better Lenses

I miss out on a lot of wildlife photos because I mainly photograph wildlife from a great distance. You just either cannot, or should not get very close to many types of animal in their natural habitat. For instance, all of the photos that I have taken of grizzly bears have been from a great distance. And since I don't have a really effective telephoto lens, all of my shots of griz have been grainy.

Here are a couple of examples of frustrating instances of trying to get photos of, first, an alligator catching and eating a prey animal; and a strange-looking osprey who had just caught a large fish. In both cases I'd have been able to get some decent detail if only I'd had a much better telephoto lens. In each case, the distance from which I was taking the photos was from well over 100 meters. I just couldn't capture exactly what I needed to see.

Yes, I am currently shopping for some better telephoto lenses. I have a couple picked out and will probably buy them over the next few months. Even a halfway decent lens costs more than I paid for my new camera. So the expense is somewhat daunting. But if I'm going to take better photos of wild animals, I must have a couple of good lenses.

I noticed this alligator in the Upper Myakka Lake because she had risen to the surface and was struggling to swallow something. From the distance I was at (a lake tour boat) I couldn't see what she was trying to eat. At first I thought it was a cormorant or anhinga. But once I got to shore and expanded the photo I could see that it was a very primitive looking fish (almost something like a lobefin!) that I assume is a catfish of some sort?

It was interesting how the alligator bowed its body by lifting its head and tail out of the water to position the large fish for swallowing. (By then the gator had changed position so that I was seeing the opposite side of its head..)

The next photo is of an unusual looking osprey that I watched as it splashed into the lake to catch a fish (an invasive talapia). As I'd watched the osprey in flight there was nothing strange about the raptor at all. It flew normally and dived into the water and came back up moving naturally. But when I looked at the first image I got there seemed to be something trailing from the left wing. Had it picked up some water weed in the lake? Was it a loose wing feather? It just looked very weird. 

It was only in taking a good look at the second photo in the series that I saw that this osprey has a left wing that is much, much longer than the right wing. So that was the culprit of the weirdness of the first image. Whatever the source of the difference in lengths of the bird's wings, it obviously has no influence on its ability to fly or to hunt. But it does make me wonder how this happened. Was it due to an injury as a tiny nestling? Result of a mutation? Is this common in ospreys?

These pair of instances, taken quite actually just minutes apart in the wildlife-rich Myakka River State Park, illustrated to me that I must buy a couple of new telephoto lenses. Until I buy such lenses, my wildlife photography will continue to be limited.

Video and Photos

I'll be creating some videos from the trip to camp in Florida. The first one is actually from the last part of the trip--to Hillsborough River State Park.

We had a generally good time at Hillsborough, but the experience was tempered somewhat due to the authoritarian manner in which the park is managed. The rangers tended to be douchebags for no reason, trolling through the campground and along the park road looking for anything that might constitute a reason for admonition. A couple of the rangers looked like they were not enjoying this opportunity to be assholes, so my suspicion is that their top manger has brought the hammer down so that they act like soup Nazis.

I understand that a park like this needs to be managed carefully and effectively, but one can go to extremes. This one has obviously gone overboard on enforcement to the point where it looks like they actually want to make the park less attractive for visitors. That's one way to lessen human impact, I suppose.

One thing about the park that I did like is that it obviously employs a lot of local people. From groundskeepers to rangers and clerks, that place was busy with salaried employees. A good way to spend tax money, as far as I'm concerned.

We were pleasantly surprised to see that the park was very quiet and peaceful and uncrowded during the weekdays. Carole and I were able to hike park trails and encounter very few other hikers, which made for wonderful solitude. It's great to be able to walk about and experience the forest and rivers without other people tramping about, talking, and generally making too much noise.

Forest canopy along the trail beside the Hillsborough River.

The Class II rapids on the river.

Our campsite. Plenty of room. Complete with our Clam screenhouse.

Paddling along the Hillsborough River.

I counted seven alligators during our paddle trip. So there were probably ten times that many I couldn't see.

Carole on the suspension bridge over the Hillsborough River. Hike beyond and you come to the trails into the back country.

Picnic shelter and retaining wall. This was where we put into the river, just a very short distance from our campsite.

A video I made from our hike along the river.

Fort DeSoto Park, Third Visit, Part One

Carole and I started our vacation down to Florida (we go roughly once per year) by hooking up the Casita travel trailer, loading all of our various supplies onto the truck, and heading out about 8:00 pm on a Wednesday. What we generally do when we choose to start late that way is to drive as far as I feel comfortable (until I get too tired to drive) and then pull into a state rest area and park to get a few hours of sleep in the trailer. We tried this at a rest area near the SC/GA border and there was no space due to the fact that long-haul truckers had taken up all of the space. Which is okay, because you don't want a hard working truck driver falling asleep at the wheel.

So, we drove down into Georgia and stopped at first one, and then another state rest area, finding both of them also taken over by the big rigs. After that I kept my eyes peeled for a Cracker Barrel Restaurant, as I'd read they didn't mind RV folk parking overnight in their lot since most such folk wake up, go inside, and order breakfast. Ironically, we ended up pulling into a Cracker Barrel in my hometown of Brunswick GA around 1:00 am or so. And we slept there, got up in the morning, and had breakfast in the restaurant.

Then we made all safe haste to get on down to St. Petersburg and the Pinellas County administered Fort DeSoto Park. We'd been to the park twice before--the first time having discovered it completely by accident while driving around--and it never ceases to amaze me. The infrastructure in the park is of the highest quality: roads, parking lots, ocean/bay access, docks, bath facilities, campgrounds, offices, historical structures, picnic areas, etc. It's hard to believe that it's a county park and not a full-fledged state park.

It exists on about 1400 acres shared between several islands connected by narrow causeways. If you like bird life, this is your place. Well over 300 recorded species of birds make this park at least a temporary stopping off point. There are decent numbers of resident ospreys--a bird which I dearly love to watch and photograph. I found out on this trip that there are now several nesting pairs of Bald eagles, but I didn't see any of them.

Unlike on our last trip, we brought our kayaks with us. While you can rent kayaks and canoes in the park, we like to bring our own. We put in at one of the spots along the bayou near our campsite (site #100) and paddled around observing the bird life and aquatic creatures who made their presence known from time to time. We were lucky enough to encounter two manatees, but as the water in the lagoon is a bit turbid, I only got a couple of photos when one of the big mammals came to the surface to get a breath of air.

As for the campground: it is huge. It offers 238 sites, all with electric and water hookups. Most of the sites have lots of vegetation on either side, giving you a plenty of privacy. And there are many live oaks with their sheltering branches offering shade. Many sites are waterfront, either on the lagoon, or on the bay allowing access to the Gulf. There are extremely nice bathhouses sprinkled through the campground with flush toilets, sinks, hot showers, and laundry facilities. (The laundry prices went up quite a lot since our last visit so it's a bit pricey to wash and dry a load of clothes compared to our previous trip.)

One thing that is unique about this park is that you feel as if you are far away from cities and traffic, but you have to drive through St. Petersburg to get to the park (tolls to get in total $1.75). We had picked a day to go into St. Pete to have breakfast, visit the Salvador Dali Museum, hit some shops, have supper, and then go back to the campground. Normally we don't do city-stuff on our vacations, but because of the campground's proximity to the city and all that it offers, we made an exception.

My only complaints about the trip have nothing whatsoever to do with the park itself, or with the city. But I have noticed on my last three vacations to Florida that the amount and diversity of wildlife has diminished. This could be just the luck of the roll and we've merely hit some bare patches in the continuity. But I have been disturbed to note that I am not seeing the numbers and varieties of wild animals that we normally encounter when in the state.

Bottom line: you could do a whole lot worse than booking a camping vacation at Fort DeSoto Park. But if you do want to stay there, book well in advance. We had to book our site five months before we used them, and were lucky to get the site that we wanted.

Our site (#100). Directly across from the bathhouse and laundry.

The bathhouse in our section of the campground with accompanying amazing oak.

Our spot at North Beach. We think this is the best of the beaches in the Park. There's a big sandbar just off the beach that becomes accessible at lower tides and you can wade or swim out to look for seashells and sea critters. No crowds on the weekdays--stupendously crowded on Saturdays and Sundays.

One of the trails I hiked on the island.

A pterodactyl...I mean Brown pelican that sailed over me on its way somewhere else.

Part of the park's namesake: Fort DeSoto. Built during the Spanish-American War when we took most of Spain's colonies away from them. The fort was armed and manned (along with the one on Egmont Key), but of course they never saw any battles.

An inner section of the fort.

Me, lounging on one of the big mortars/cannons/whatever.

A great egret that I photographed as it caught (and then ate) a small pufferfish (which you can see in its beak).

I don't know anyone in this photo. they were just in my way when I took this composite image of the Salvador Dali Museum building. Designed by Yann Weymouth, it is sometimes called "The Enigma".

I call this one: "American with Dali".

I'll post more stuff tomorrow, time willing.

Small Preparations

Vacation time is drawing near, so I took Carole's kayak out of the barn where we hang it when it's not in use. It was dirty so I hosed it down and scrubbed the hull. Also I checked the spot where I sealed a small leak and it's in good shape. The resin did its job.

Tomorrow I'll take mine down and make sure it's clean and ready to go. Not much longer till we head out for our first trip of the Spring/Summer season.

We're probably going to sell my kayak this summer and buy a tandem model. We'll keep Carole's excellent Wilderness Pungo for when our son wants to go kayaking with us. We decided a couple of years ago that we wanted to switch to a tandem kayak, but we've either just been too busy working to shop for one, or it wasn't in the budget. Recently, though, we have been able to look around and eyed a number of them. For a while we were going to get a sit-on-top model, but we have opted to get a conventional type. And, again, we'll go for the Wilderness kayak--we have really been impressed with Carole's (it tracks exceptionally well) so the company sold us on design and general quality.

Carole ahead of me when we paddled Holmes Creek in Florida in 2017.

Carole out in the bay at Gulf Shores National Seashore (also in 2017). That's her kayak in the foreground and my Perception model on the left.

One of My Favorites

My family and I took two vacations that stand out above all of the others. The best we ever had was our two-week trip to Yellowstone National Park. But our second favorite was a long excursion in our travel trailer down the length of Florida for about an eight-day exploration of the Florida Keys.

And the most fun of any single day was our trip out to the Dry Tortugas National Park many miles off the coast of Key West. The Dry Tortugas NP is one of the least visited of our National Parks. It consists mainly of water and reefs with only a few islands where you can walk around. But the main reason it is so lightly visited is that you can only get there via boat or floatplane. Being working class folk, we chose the less expensive method of getting there by taking a fast catamaran from Key West to Fort Jefferson on the main island.

I didn't really tell Carole and Andy what to expect, only that they would love the trip and that they would see something they'd enjoy immensely. So I stopped at the office and bought three tickets for the catamaran trip out to the Tortugas. As I recall, they ran $70 each, but this included a very nice lunch that was served on the big catamaran.

Carole and Andy thought that they were in for a boring day out to see yet another fort out in the middle of nowhere. Neither of them was very happy as we waited on the waterfront in Key West very early in the morning to board the ship.

But once we got there they were amazed. As with most people, they did not realize that you needn't leave the States to see thriving coral reefs. The main island where one disembarks is surrounded by one of the finest living reef environments in the USA. The ocean is crystal clear and thriving with life. We spent most of the day swimming, snorkeling, and walking around the island (the pre-Civil War fort occupies almost all of the dry land), and bird-watching. When it was time to go they were sad to leave.

Following here are a number of photos I took, most of which I think I have never posted online. This was back in the days before underwater digital cameras. So what I did was stop at a shop where I bought an disposable underwater film camera. Surprisingly, it took fairly good images. Not the best quality, but better than I had expected before I snorkeled out into the ocean, eventually swimming out about 1/3 of a mile before turning back.

I swam through a number of schools of these small fry. It was fun.

This was a section of brick wall that had tumbled off of the fort no telling how long ago. Long since coated in coral accretions.

Another curious fish. Note the coral-covered bricks behind him.

This is the critter that made me turn around and swim back to the island. It's a Nurse shark. I knew at the time it was a Nurse shark and that it was basically harmless, but just the idea of being in the water with fish that big scared me. So I chickened out and went back to Fort Jefferson. This fish was six-feet long, but he was actually afraid of me. I got the impression it was trying to bury its head in that outcropping of coral in an attempt to hide from me.

Alligators

I read about another alligator-on-human attack in Florida today.

For all of my reading life and note-taking in my many outdoor adventures (you can better believe I always have done my freaking research when I go out into the wild) I would read that alligators are essentially harmless to humans. Over and over and over. Time after time I would read this and hear this. To the point that several times in my trips on Florida and south Georgia creeks and ponds I would go swimming with alligators nearby.

I was misinformed, for sure. And I was lucky that I was never attacked (I did have a close encounter with a big alligator that taught me that all of the "facts" I'd read about how they were harmless to people were so much bullshit). But why would anyone say this about an apex predator that can kill and dismember and eat large prey up to the size of horses?

It was because from the 19th Century until relatively recent years the alligator was actually a threatened species. Their numbers had dwindled so much due to over-hunting that they were approaching dangerous levels for the species. Then, in the 1960s they were protected. Harvesting was limited and ecosystems were put into parks and wilderness.

Alligator populations rebounded. With a vengeance. And, more importantly, they were allowed to live to be old. In the days when they were under threat there were almost no older, larger alligators. That is, there were very few gators who could seriously look at a human being as a prey animal--and those few were safely tucked away inside wildernesses where they were unlikely to ever see a human.

Not now. Now I see enormous alligators almost everywhere I go in Florida. 8-foot alligators are now routine. And we've all seen the film of the monster alligator on that golf course. You can better believe predators of that size would look at a 200-pound human being as nothing more than something good to eat.

These days I do not go swimming in rivers or creeks or springs in Florida unless I am DAMNED sure that there are no large alligators around.

It ain't worth the risk.

And, yes, I'm sure everyone has seen this video. I've heard it said that this alligator is between 16-17 feet in length. Keep in mind this is nowhere near the largest recorded gator which was almost 20 feet long. It's time to be careful when you go swimming in the deep South.

Be careful out there.

One of the largest alligators I have seen in Florida. He was at Wakulla Springs State Park. Very fat. Very healthy. Very damned intimidating. I would not swim around this animal.

I've heard it said the alligator in this video is 16-17 feet long. That is not as long as the largest on record (over 19 feet). It would look at you as something to eat.

Holmes Creek Paddle to Cypress Springs.

One of the places we wanted to kayak was Holmes Creek. It was conveniently located near the first campground we used at Falling Waters State Park.

One thing that all of the literature we had read indicated was that Cypress Springs is extremely popular with the locals and to expect crowds if you go on the weekend. Of course we wanted to avoid going on a Saturday or Sunday, but because of our traveling schedule we had to do it on a Saturday, or not at all.

Alas.

As the literature had warned, we encountered a huge crowd by the time we arrived. We left early, but the multitudes had set out even earlier. I knew we were in for a troublesome visit when I saw one guy in a kayak paddling toward the head spring with a 20-lb propane tank on his kayak.

Sheeit.

Most of the land around Cypress Spring is privately owned. It used to be almost impossible to disembark there, but either the state or the local government must have reached some kind of accommodation with the landowner(s) because now there is a strip of land where you can beach your kayaks/canoes. Of course that beach was packed to capacity as we got there so we settled on nesting our kayaks among tree roots and climbing out to go swimming and snorkeling.

Cypress Springs itself is pretty damned impressive. It has one of the most obvious and powerful spring boils I have encountered in Florida. The water was extremely clear, even with all of those scores of cigarette-smoking, music-blaring morons surrounding the water's edge.

I had a pretty good time swimming and diving and observing the aquatic critters. We were there for about an hour before the negative vibes got to us and we headed back down the waterway.

Another thing about Holmes Creek is that as you get to the spring the water becomes more and more clear and beautiful. And the land along the creek becomes more and more privately owned. Dozens were the "KEEP OUT" signs on dry land. Don't get out there. Seriously. As we passed one of these sections a land owner was sitting in his fancy ATV along the banks watching us. I will guarantee you the guy was armed and ready to brandish a gun if you dared to try to beach along his property boundary. These are the same people from whom my father came. When you see a 'Keep Out' sign or a Private Property boundary you'd better, by God, stay off. I'm serious. These things were drilled into my psyche by my late father. Don't test these folk. I'm just warning you guys who do not hail from such stock or from places where a man's property rights are guarded on a level that is extreme and insane.

I always try to inform my Yankee and Midwest pals about this. Usually they ignore me, thinking that I'm kidding or exaggerating (I am not). Hopefully they won't have to find out the hard way to obey those signs when they encounter them.

Just at the put-in point at a county park.

About a half mile before you get to the spring the water becomes crystal clear.

Carole's kayak has a keel and slices through the water. I can't keep up with her because my kayak has no keel.

The main spring. The folk across the way were, I assume, on a dab of public (or at least un-posted) property. They had a tent set up and had obviously been camping there for a day or so.

Gnarly old trees on one side of the creek.

I imagined dinosaurs creeping through this forest.

A quiet, uncrowded spot about 100 yards down from the head spring.

Getting close to our take out point. Big bluffs above the creek.