Way Down upon the Suwannee River

We are at the Stephen Foster State Folk Culture Center on the Suwannee River. It is located at White Springs, Fl in northern Florida. As a kid in grade school we were taught to sing all the Stephen Foster songs, Old Black Joe, Camp Town Races, Beautiful Dreamer, Old Folks at Home, My Old Kentucky Home and more, some are deemed not politically correct today. I can still sing most of them.There is a large Carillon Tower here that plays the Stephan Foster songs during the day.
The WIld Azalea Festival was also held here this weekend with races, music, food and interesting rural folks who attended. We had barbecued ribs prepared by Pastor Phillips and sister Matilda, good.
Michael Vicky, a friend from the motorhome rallies we have attended, is a volunteer musician at the park during the winter and he plays the hammered dulcimer. We were lucky to attend two of his performances here.
The day before we visited Paynes Prairie Preserve, a huge wetland and a habitat for birds and animals. We hiked several miles to find a large community of Sandhill Cranes that winter here, to our disappointment they got natures signal to migrate north and we found none. Saw lots of wild horses, alligators and other kinds of birds. There is buffalo there but we didn't see them, you could see much of the ground uprooted by wild boars which are an invasive species doing a lot of damage.




Pastor Phillips and his barbecue




Nita eating it




Micheal Vickey playing the hammered dulcimer




At Dark, if it moves it's food, Nita anxious to leave




Found this critter along the bank, don't know what it is, not an alligator. The upper part couldn't be seen, covered in grass and reed. What you can see there is about 4 feet long. I wanted to poke it to get a view of the head but Nita restrained me. Mystery? After sending this photo to a park ranger he responded that it is a large water moccasin snake, shown is the tail, wonder what the distance is to the head?