Our New Phones

After years with two phones and an air card with Verizon, we updated to one phone and a tablet which has a hot spot for the computer.  We are writing this post on our new smart phone – a Lucid – because we are in a remote area of New
Mexico at Abiquiu Lake.  The tablet thinks that our data signal is from a foreign country because it is not from Verizon but the phone is happy with a 3G connection albeit a weak signal.  We downloaded a mobile app from WordPress which seems to be working well.

With this change comes a new email address: pegandharrison at gmail dot com
And we still have another at Yahoo: Harrison.phillips at yahoo dot com

We will be letting our web site expire soon which will illiminate the email address: harrison@harrisonphillips.com

We will be staying here a little longer than we might have because the national forest campgrounds in southern Colorado do not open until around Memorial Day.

Most of our photos are still
on the computer and will need to be copied to our phone to insert into a post.  That is project for future days.

Family Get Together

Peg got a surprise for an early 75^th birthday celebration in Cagle Campground in the Sam Houston National Forest near Houston, Texas. Our Gregg and Genia drove to Texas from Illinois and camped at our campsite with us for a few days. Our Mark and Charlotte came out from Houston Saturday and Sunday and brought the biggest surprise – our Brett – made Peg cry! Mark and Charlotte had flown Brett to Houston from Saint Petersburg, Florida to stay with them for a few days. It’s not often all the kids get together at once when we are full timing on the road. We had a great time.

Gulf Islands National Seashore

We stayed first on the Florida portion of the Seashore at Fort Pickens near Pensacola Beach. The campground at Fort Pickens is on the edge of the old military area. Every time military technology improved, they built a new battery at Fort Pickens to protect against the new threat. The result is that there are a lot of batteries of various ages scattered all over the end of the island across Pensacola Bay from the Naval Air Station. All of them are in various stages of decay. The old original brick fort is open to explore.

The Blue Angels team practiced at the Naval Air Station for two days. The first day, we watched from our camp site. The second day, we took our coffee and lawn chairs to the beach across the bay from the Air Station and watched the show. The team flies for the most part full throttle so the noise is deafening and they really go fast. They put on quite a show for us. Peg took an excellent shot from the beach while they were flying by.

We enjoyed the sugary white sand beaches.

The local Beachcomber!

We then moved to the other side of Mobile, Alabama to the Mississippi portion of the Seashore at Ocean Springs, Mississippi where we discovered a local grocery that prepares their own seafood hourly in a brick out building. Yesterday we had a bag of shrimp. Today we had a bag of crayfish. Tomorrow we are going to get a bag of crabs to take with us to the piney woods of western Mississippi to await the storms.

Relaxing in the Shade with Lemonade

Our second site at Open Pond Campground in the middle of the Conecuh National Forest near Andalusia, Alabama in the good old US of A has a good view of the pond and is near a fishing pier. This picture is taken with the camera in the rear of our camp site.

This is really the life!

Hales Landing

Hales Landing Campground on Lake Seminole near Bainbridge Georgia was listed in our Corps of Engineers directory as not having hookups for water and electricity. However, one of our neighbors at Ocean Pond had stayed here recently and said the Corps had installed hookups. So we decided to try it. We like the ambiance better here than at East Bank Campground near the dam at the other end of the lake. That is the campground we stayed at in November.

This is site 14 before we parked and after we parked.

Later that evening we enjoyed the deck.

Hales Landing is located on one of the tail water branches which is the Flint River. The mosquitoes are more prevalent and so is the wildlife. There are a few fragile dogwoods amongst the big hard woods.

There are all kinds of butterflies.

There is a boat launching ramp in the day use area near the campground for the serious fisher people.

A neighbor camper in a motor home likes to canoe in their new homemade canoe. They finished the canoe just before taking off for southern parts from Michigan in Mid February.

The canoe is beautiful.

Near the boat ramp there was a turtle laying eggs.

No privacy at all.

It is nice to have electricity for a change. We have been on generator for most of the winter.

Random Thoughts About Northern Florida

We have been at the Ocean Pond Campground in the Osceola National Forest for a while now taking day trips and performing maintenance.

One trip was to Fernandina Beach on Amelia Island north of Jacksonville Florida. It is an old historic port and tourist attraction. The marina has been upgraded with new buildings including a café that we thought might interest our Brett.

Outside the visitor’s center in a flower garden were some irises that were different than the plain ones we were used to at home.

Some of the blossoms had gone to seed so we took some of the seed pods for our Gregg and Genia to grow.

We will be moving to Lake Seminole tomorrow and hope the storms stay tame for a while.

Dressage (Horse Jumping)

On the edge of the Ocala National Forest not far from our campsite was a national dressage competition at the Rocking Horse Stables which is a 150 acre equestrian paradise according to their website. People with horses came from all over to compete and stayed in a temporary village of campers and horse trailers some of which put our camper to shame. The trailers shone in this photo extended for maybe a half mile or more and included horse barns for hundreds of horses. We have never seen anything like it.

We were there during the earlier contests where the bars were not too high.

One area of the grounds had vendors of food and horse riding equipment such as bits and saddles. We noted one vendor that had riding boots hand made in a South American country that were selling for $850. This is definitely a rich peoples sport.

Another vendor had air vests as safety wear – presumably to guard against broken ribs.

We only saw a few male riders and hundreds of female riders – interesting.

We really enjoyed the hundreds of beautiful horses. There were all kinds and colors of horses but all the riders were dressed alike with most wearing black coats and a few wearing other dark color coats.

Random Thoughts

We enjoyed W P Franklin Campground on the Okeechobee Waterway. The sites are similar to the sites up stream at Ortona South Campground but are right on the water. We wish we could have stayed longer but that would have required reservations being made many months in advance. We might do that next year.

Moth or Butterfly?

This guy liked to rub the two wings together constantly. The inside of the wing was deep blue when rubbing the wings exposed it. Our insect book does not have any that have the rear antennae. Can any of you tell us what this guy or gal is?

 

Brrrrr!

We have had such wonderful weather this winter in Florida after three cold winters in Florida and Texas. We wore shorts and tee shirts quite a bit this winter. Unfortunately, we started north a little too early and are now having a couple nights of cold weather before the temperature heads again toward 80 degrees.

The Sand Hill Cranes here stay out of sight in the shrubs but we hear them regularly as if they are outside our door. They have a distinctive sound that one bird book described as a ‘low, loud, musical rattle’. From the sounds they emit, there must be a bunch of them.

We have improved the appearance of our homemade television antenna by replacing the board with plastic water pipes. This also allowed better mounting to the extension pole giving us much more height. We are still pleased with the reception we get with this antenna and the additional height brings in more channels sometimes.

Royal Palms in the Everglades National Park Florida USA

The Royal Palms on Taylor Slough in the Everglades was a park started by the local women’s club in the early nineteen hundreds. It became the nucleus of the National Park in 1947. The main trail is the Anhinga Trail with abundant wildlife in the winter dry season.

This young alligator seems to have wanted a good view of the visitors on the trail.

At a more remote end of the trail, there is a larger gathering of alligators lounging. There are alligators throughout the park.

One of the birds we saw on the trail was a long way off but we have a picture that gives an idea what this rare bird looks like. It is a young Purple Gallinule.

The anhingas dive for fish and get wet. When their wings are wet, they cannot fly very well so they stand around drying their feathers after they dive.

The egrets are plentiful as are many other bird species.

The phone/internet service has been spotty so we only post when it seems stable enough to get out. We have been to Flamingo campground then Long Pine Key campground both of which are in the Everglades National Park and are now at Midway campground in the Big Cypress National Preserve. On Monday, we will move to the Monument Lake campground in the Big Cypress Preserve which has a cell tower adjacent to it.