Trip23

Monday. Getaway day. Time to leave for home…

Tomorrow. We need to spend a little more time here. Honest. We’ll start for home tomorrow. Today we started with breakfast, a three hour birding walk, lunch, a walk through the dunes and down the beach, some secluded sunbathing, a barefoot run in the sand, a snack, a walk with the dog between the alligator ponds, and now it’s dark and time for dinner already. We reconfigured the car/motorhome setup so we’re all hooked up ready to go at first light tomorrow, even though we’re in a back-in site. Usually, in a back-in site, you disconnect the car, back the motorhome in, and park the car in front. Then you can come and go in the car as much as you want without disturbing the motorhome setup. We reversed that today so we wouldn’t have to mess around with hooking up the car while it’s cold and dark.

I have scored shirts twice on this trip; both times by buying things for Judy. Once while at Turtle Kraals Restaurant in Key West, and once while out on the boat. Both times, Judy got chilled, and needed something to cover up with. Both times, they were out of small sweatshirts, or medium T-shirts. So each time, we picked out shirts in my size, in colors I like, and let Judy wear my shirts then to be comfortable.

When we look up campgrounds in the Woodall’s book, they often show length limits. In the Florida State Parks guide, they show length limits. The length limit for this park is thirty feet. The Bounder is thirty-five feet. No problem. We called ahead to the campground, they said “Sure. We have some big spaces left.” No problem. Now we’re in the park. There are lots of sites large enough to accommodate this length. There are lots of motorhomes in this campground our size and larger. We can’t figure out what the length limit means.

It was cold on the way to Florida. Then we got warm. Then we hit a cold snap. When it gets cold outside, the Bounder feels a little drafty. The heater vents only come halfway out into the living room, so the whole front half is a little cold. Now that the trip is almost over, we remembered the electric heater. It’s a nice little heater with a built in thermostat, so you can find the right setting, then it just turns on and off as necessary. It has a shut-off switch on the bottom, so if someone knocks it over, it turns off. It’s perfect for State Parks, like this, where we have electrical hookups. We just put the heater up front and plug it in. It keeps the front half warm and comfortable in the evenings. Today, we’re way out at one end of a barrier island, with a speed limit of twenty-five miles per hour. We’re a long slow way from any services. We’re running low on propane. So last night, we set both furnaces nice and low, set the electric heater in the front room, and went to sleep. The sleeping temperature was perfect and I never heard either furnace come on during the night. Today, we have the same small amount of propane left that we did yesterday. We’ll make it through tonight just fine. Tomorrow, we’ll be on the road again, and can stop along the way for propane.

This has been a good place for us to bird. It has been a good place for rags to bird too. We come back from our birding walks, and Rags is right there in the window. Studying. While we are identifying birds by genus and species, based on identifying field marks, I suspect Rags uses a different system to categorize. I can just see that little brain sorting them all out by flavor.

The mysterious RV sleeping sickness never struck this trip. We’ve had a few ten-hour nights, but mostly, it’s been less than that; more like eight hours or so. We were never struck by a twelve or thirteen hour night. I guess we’ve defeated the dreaded sleep monster.

We’re sitting here listening to catbirds all around us. They’re a gray bird with a black racing stripe on the top of their heads. They have a rufous patch right under the base of their tail. In fact, I think we got mooned by one today. Anyway, there is a reason why they are called catbirds. Picture a little tiny kitten. Flat face. Staggering and stumbling when it walks. It looks at you and meows. That’s it. That’s exactly the sound a catbird makes. Sitting here, surrounded by meowing tiny kittens. It’s enough to make a person smile.

No miles. Birding. Walking. Beaching. Sunbathing. Beach running. No new birds.

Tomorrow. We actually leave.