Florida - Part 1

A frigid New England winter prompted us to hop into the car and drive to Florida, where we visited family, friends, and old haunts on a 4,300-mile round trip. After seventeen hours of driving spread over two days, we arrived in Palm Coast, where we set up a base of operations on the ICW. From there, we visited family in Del Rey and then Naples, before returning to base via Ocala and friends. We spent much of the time in Palm Coast, exploring a bewildering maze of roads and waterways and taking day trips to St. Augustine, Flagler Beach, and Merritt Island, north of Cape Canaveral. As time permits, we will post on the highlights of our escape from the Great White Berkshires.
Perhaps most evident on our wanderings in Florida was the extent of the recent frosts and freezes there. All the way to the south of Naples and the South Tamiami Trail in the Everglades, sensitive plants had either dropped their foliage or died, and uncountable floats of dead fish lay stinking in the waterways, killed by the unusual cold. We had two morning frosts in Palm Coast, where even lawns had browned, and Ocala had had snow.
Despite the unusual cold, we found much wildlife in our explorations, both on water and on land. Most mornings we awoke to gangs of robins chirping their displeasure at the cold as they hunted breakfast. When boating on the ICW, we were treated to up to a dozen porpoises hunting and playing around us. In sanctuaries and parks, we found that alligators outnumbered the people, as did a diverse assortment of egret, heron, ducks, spoonbills, and more. In the above photo, "Gramps" sunned beside the open road ditch in a solitude guaranteed by his 10-foot length.
A bit further up the dirt road we snapped this photo of a Florida Softshelled Turtle, perhaps more than two feet across.
Everywhere we went, we noticed high water levels from an abundance of rains during this normally dry season. Because Florida is virtually flat, estuaries, swamps, and ditches were brim full of rain water.
More tomorrow.