One Last Hoorah

Rob and I went canoeing a few days ago. It's been a while, since he is always working these days. We both took a day off to go down the Santa Fe one last time before I leave town.

Unfortunately, it had been so long since we used the canoe that some large ants had moved in. A lot of them. Into both the front and the back of the boat, or as Rob insists I call them, the "bow" and "stern." I want to mention here that since I am not a pirate, I don't feel the need to use this fancy boat talk.

Anyway, we had to submerge the canoe for at least ten minutes to get rid of them all. 

But they were invincible! They floated toward shore in hordes and simply got out and began marching.

All those white dots in the above photo are ants. Here they are up close.

We didn't canoe very far -- just down to Blue Springs, where we canoed up a side spring run, and then back out and down to Ginnie Springs for some R & R. 

See the turtle (also known as a cooter)?

Rob demanded I take a photo of him.

A snake swam up to our canoe at Ginnie Springs and glared at me. It was kinda freaky, but I don't think the snake was a poisonous one. Still, who wants to be that close to any snake? It literally came up to the side of the canoe. Too close for me.

I'm in Europe right now, but wanted to finish this entry before I got back and became concerned with moving to D.C. (five days after my return). 

So this was my last Florida outing for the forseeable future.

Goodbye, river.

Goodbye, springs.

Goodbye, Florida.

More Crane Madness

Georgia and I went for a walk on Payne's Prairie this weekend. It was a blustery, miserable day, but tons of people were walking the La Chua trail because of the cranes.


Thousands of sandhill cranes have migrated down from northern parts to gather on the prairie (with native, non-migrating sandhills, which are a distinct but identical-looking subspecies) and eat insects, grubs, and frogs. They also spend a lot of time just standing around, talking to each other. If you click on this photo you can see a small fraction of the crowd that was there.


The photo also features two endangered whooping cranes, which hang out with the sandhills. There are only about thirty year-round whooping crane Florida residents -- and just 350 total wild whoopers in the wild. Of these, 68 of these migrate from Wisconsin to Florida every year (the juveniles with the guidance of the Whooping Crane Eastern Partnership), and the rest fly from northwest Canada to winter on the Texas coast.

The noise of the crane conference was unbelievable. But my favorite part of the visit was watching the sandhills land. They're a strange combination of elegant and goofy. When they're coming down from a flight, they're stretched parallel to the ground, with their long legs stretched behind them. Then, about fifty feet above the ground, they lower their legs like landing gear. Multiple cranes flying next to each other do this almost in unison. Thus they approach the ground, looking extremely intent and somewhat fragile. It makes me smile every time.


The prairie looked stark and beautiful that day.

Of course, there are always some wet areas.


The other interesting thing that happened that day was that there was a huge water moccasin parked next to the trail. All these people kept warning us about it. Yet those same people stood ten feet away from the snake, taking photographs and loudly talking about it. The snake did not look happy.


Me, I took a photo and then walked past it unmolested, on the other side of the trail.