New Digs

We are now on the St Lucie river, near Stuart, fl at the St Lucie locks, we have a site about 10 feet off the river. The lock is on our side and we see all the boat traffic close up. The park also has 6 boat slips for the transient boaters, see the boat behind Nita. The damn is in the background and the lock, unseen in this picture, is on the right side.




This park is pristine and the location is hard to beat. Nita is busy reading and capturing a few rays.




Two story barge house on a bigger barge, being pushed by a tugboat, just pasted through the lock.




A German kayaking team practices here in the winter, they store their boats here and put in them in the water at the parks boat ramp. The big boat is going into the lock. The fresh water here is the same level as Lake Okeechobee. The lock will lower this boat 14 feet down to sea level, still on the St Lucie river which leads to the St Lucie Inlet and the Atlantic in a few miles.




There are a number of ponds that I explore around the park. This water plant is decorated with flowers and pearls. The pearls may turn out to be frog eggs?

Loxahatchee river

Yesterday we boarded a boat that took us up the Loxahatchee river starting from a saltwater mangrove environment and gradually changed to completely fresh water with a blend of temperate and tropical vegetation. The upper NW fork of the river is one of the few wild and natural rivers remaining in SE Florida. Here we visited the Trapper Nelson site, Trapper came to live here in 1936. In 38 year he became a local legend known as the Wild Man of the Loxahatchee. He lived off the land and constructed his home and cabins, open a native animal zoo and wrestled alligators for income.




Going up river into the fresh water




This was an Osprey nest, now taken over by a great Horned Owl




There is a book published on Trapper Nelson called Life and Death on the Loxahatchee, I ordered one and will read it when we get back home. Click on the picture to enlarge.




Some of the building on Trapper's site




The trees are full of Air Plants that are non parasitic, they get their nourishment from the air, the Spanish moss and the flowering plants are air plants.

Sunday Morning

Kind of a lazy morning, just finished breakfast of steel cut oats with apricots and pecans followed by grapefruit and plums. We are awaiting the Sunday Morning tv program, then may get our act together for the day.
The weather has been clear and warm to hot, the last few nights have been warm enough that we need to run the AC.
The town of LaBelle is having their annual Swamp Cabbage Festival today. We will probably head over there about noon and take in the armadillo races and some of their weird snacks of alligator and swamp cabbage.
Our neighbor next door has a cute little dachshund who goes nuts when I fly the quadcopter. I hover it over him and he jumps up for it, when it lands he runs around it barking like mad, reving up the props a little really sets him off, fortunately he doesn't bite it. It doesn't take much to entertain some people, dogs owner gets a big kick out of the action, not sure about the dog.






This is a replica of the Pinta just passing through the locks. It had an all women crew, don't know more than that about the ship. The rebel flag on the left is flown by the owner of a home across the river from, probably a very upstanding citizen.




Sunrise, there is a flock of Ibis asleep in the shrubs. If you click on the pictures they will enlarge for more details.
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Friends and other stuff

An evening get together with Jack and Martha from NC and Claudia and Lynn from Iowa. We have met these folks at various places around the country every year since 2008. Last year we visited Jack and Martha at a campground on the Blue Ridge Parkway where they were the campground hosts. We were with Lynn and Claudia last September in Grand Maria, Minnesota where they hosted a rally for our kind of motorhomes. We are all vowing to meet here at Ortona again next year. We have tentative plans to meet Lynn and Claudia in Oregon next May for a rally.


Happy is a cockateel and is Jack and Martha's spoiled child, she rules the roost when you visit.


Martha and Nita enjoying their valentine lunch. Nita ordered a brownie Sunday which she said she wasn't sharing. When it arrive it must of had over a half gallon of ice cream, she finally decided to share.


This was last Saturadays Hispanic market in LaBelle. According to the sign all these guys are lost, all the wives are probably happy and some of these guys may never be claimed.

As you may conclude we are not experiencing lots of news worthy events and more pictures of birds, alligators and animals would be a repeat. We are enjoying the nice weather, company, flying various devices, and have read quite a few books. Stay tuned for the next exciting post, maybe.

Wild boar dinner for gator and buzzard

There is a wide irrigation canal on the back side of the park that irrigates sugar cane and citrus crops. It has a rapid flow of water and exits into the river on the front side of the park. It looks quite peaceful, a wild boar probably dropped by for a drink and got caught by the alligators, he got carried by the current and hung up on the damn. We watched the alligators take bites of him and do their roll to rip off a chunk, the boar lasted for a day and was gone. Every time I walked down to film the action the gators would swim away from the boar and just watch me, either I frightened them away or perhaps I looked like a better meal.



Poor boar


Keeping an eye on me, he is a good 10 feet long.


When the gators moved away for a rest the vultures moved in, here they are drying off after the gator returned


Lynn and Claudia treated us to a delicious pancake breakfast.


Great Blue Heron just landing.