It was a perfect day for cruising up the ICW. The winds were calm in the morning and as it started getting warmer a slight breeze came up. We were expecting a fairly long day so we just sat back and enjoyed the ride. At a particularly wide part, I did open it up a little ("feed the twins" as Richard on Finally would say) and we picked up an hour of time but then paid dearly at the fuel dock. We needed 280 gallons and at $4.07 per, we went over the thousand dollar mark for the first time. Ouch! I will be watching the throttle for awhile or at least until the pain of this fill up passes. At least the Cdn dollar is cooperating.
Rob and Debbie from Lady Royale and Linda and I went for an air boat ride on the St. John's River.
It was great fun and very, very interesting. This fork of the river meanders every which way and is really only navigable by air boat; and every one in this area has one. It is primarily cattle country contributing to Florida's standing as the state with the most cattle. Texas, I learned is third, behind Oklahoma. This area floods every year, some year's worse than others, and it is easy to understand why. It is flat, no hills what so ever except those built by the Seminole Indians hundreds of years ago. The other interesting fact is the number of alligators in the area. In the adjoining picture, I count 8 gators. Blow it up and see how many you can find. It is reported, by the Wildlife people, that there are approximately 900 alligators in each mile of this part of the river. We had no problem spotting them in the water but it was too hot for them to be on the banks of the river. They do not like to go above 80 degrees.
We did have enough water to get into a Cyprus forest. This as a close as we got to looking like the Everglades. It was neat; no sound could get by the dense Cyprus tree trunks especially since the sound got diffused by the root looking bases of the trees. The line on the second photo is height of one of the reason floods in the area. It is a bit weird when you actually have that line at eye level and can see every tree with that same line as if made by a ruler.
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| This pip squeak is three years old already. No problem for me, yet. |
Tomorrow we visit NASA, The Kennedy Space Center.
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