To our surprise the place is now equipped with a new building with individual showers and nice bathrooms. The old building that housed the one shower (dirty, with spiders watching you) has been cleaned and revamped and is now a nice place. These showers are with hot water and are free! The bathrooms have flush toilets and electric plugs so you can blow-dry your hair and look decent even when dry camping!
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| Large shower |
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| The old bathroom now cleaned up |
Unfortunately, even though we did hear the owls a few times, the nest was gone and they had established residence elsewhere in the park.
Another favorite of ours is the drive from Gate 1 to the small lake. Last year we saw numerous alligators, even small babies, by the side of the road. This year, we only saw one by the large pond and a couple of them in the lake.
We did spot a few hawks but they are quite abundant in that region (so are the kestrels).
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| Red-shouldered Hawk |
We discovered Ally's hunting style: a series of jumps that keep her above her prey (we never did find out what she was after but she sure was focused as she didn't respond at all to our calls). We thought we had lost her when she appeared back on the trail ahead of us. What a dog! She also has a tuck and roll routine down path when she is being pursued by Sadie. She quickly does a complete roll on the ground which for that time keeps her out of reach. Clever!
Oh! And we finally got a new battery! What a change! Our solar kept it fully charged during the day and it was still left we plenty of "juice" in the morning. What a relief to not have to get up through the night to run the truck in order to keep the battery from dying. Finally, Glen can sleep all night without worrying.
The new hosts Ed and Jo, who are retired military police officers, are super nice but make sure everyone there has a permit for camping and they keep everything ship-shape.
As usual, we met some very interesting people. A young couple who had a ChowChow as a service dog. He was the sweetest Chow I had ever met and a very handsome one too. We also met an older woman, kind of a gypsie, who was traveling with other women who all owned camping vans. What an awesome way to travel! All women with a sense of adventure!
We used the empty paddocks to let the dogs play. It worked well unless there was horse poop in them which made the dogs more interested in eating poop than running and playing. Disgusting!
We couldn't be this close to the coast without visiting Juno beach! A beach dedicated to the dogs where they can run off-leash, go into the water and meet a lot of other dogs. What a blast!
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| The gang! |
Birdwatching is easy when you're camping in a more natural setting than actual RV resorts. We spotted quite a few around where we were camped and some on our walks in the trails.
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| A beautiful Anhinga |
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| Northern Waterthrush? |
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| Immature Little Blue Heron |
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| Blue-ray Gnatcatcher |
And the many different kinds of Sandpipers on the beach.
The African Redhead Agama was still there although I think this is a younger one as it was smaller than the one last year.
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| Immature Redhead Agama |
Dupuis Equestrian Centre is still high on the list of our favorite free campgrounds. Now we are off to Orlando!
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