Trip18

Wednesday.

The Corkscrew Swamp. An Audubon Preserve. It has a two-mile boardwalk through the old growth cypress forest. We got up at first light to drive over and spend an hour and snap some photos before heading off north to our next adventure. After five hours, we looked up the number of the RV Park and asked them if we could have our site for another night. After eight hours, we took pity on poor Annie’s bladder, locked inside the motorhome, and came back to let it out.

There is not really much there. Just an old swamp. It’s a really cool boardwalk, though, made out of some South American wood that lasts forever, is harvested sustainably, requires no treatment, gives off no pollutants, and you can’t get slivers. Nature’s most perfect wood, produced in nature’s most perfect way. Anyway, I always admire boardwalks, but they never seem long enough. This one was just right.

This turned out to be a good birding site. I kept track of the birds we saw. Thirty-six. That includes the yellow bellied sapsucker, northern waterthrush, the ovenbird, the summer tananger, the swamp sparrow, and the painted bunting, all new birds for us. The painted bunting is the most colorful bird we’ve seen lately. It’s blue, red, green, and yellow. It looks like a kindergartner painted it. Lots of bird noises and we recognize most now. We followed the calls and hammering of a pileated woodpecker until we spotted it. It’s a crow-sized woodpecker. It sounds like someone using a hand axe in the forest when it’s looking for food. Saw all four woodpeckers they have there: the pileated, red bellied, yellow bellied sapsucker, and downey. Saw lots of warblers, herons, egrets, anhingas… Naa, nevermind, too many to list. Watched two red shouldered hawks share a serious dating moment. Found lots of friendly quiet people to talk to about the birds. Eight hours wasn’t nearly enough.

The swamp has lots of cypress up to their ankles in swamp water. Some parts are pure black water reflections. Some open parts are covered in lake lettuce. Some deep dark parts are covered in bright green duckweed. It’s still relatively open because it’s January. Probably a lot darker in June.

We really like this RV Park we’re in. It is new, quiet, clean, and friendly. It has a fifty foot deep lake in the center. A run around crystal lake drive, circumnavigating the lake, takes twenty-five minutes. Lake front lots cost eighty-five thousand. Seems like a bargain after the Keys. In the Keys, they were two hundred to five hundred plus.

Here is a photo of another motorhome winner. It raises the bar to an entirely new level: like to about fifteen feet, not counting the continuous tracking satellite bubble. It does not supplant the last winner; this is a different contest. This is the contest to determine which motorhome brother Bill should get next. It’s forty-five feet long. Notice how it is hunkered down on the suspension while parked, so you won’t have to make any really big steps getting in and out. But that is not why Bill should get it. Bill should get it because of the windshield wipers. That’s right, windshield wipers. To my knowledge, Bill is the only one of us who has had two sets of wipers on a single car: windshield wipers and headlight wipers on the Volvo. To continue the trend, Bill’s new motorhome has two sets of wipers as well. One for the windshield, and another set for the upper windshields.

No miles on the motorhome. Birding. Swamping. Gator watching. Laundering. Five, count ‘em, five new birds. No manatees. Tomorrow, north.