Sunday in the Park

Ah-h-h-h-h...This is the life!......A beautiful day in the 70's...a jazz quartet concert in Sugden Park in Naples....

Some people texted on their phones.....

Some hung out with their best friends.....

And some took in the beauty of their surroundings while the music played.....

There were lots of families out at the park today...It's a wonderful park for picnics, walking, biking, and taking a nap out on the lawn!   An easy restful day today at the park this afternoon.....We've been having lots of those lately!  Until tomorrow.....

A Little Bit of the Beach

When you've been a midwestern girl all your life and winters consisted of slush, snow, shovel, sleet, cold, and winter's version of slip 'n' slide, you REALLY can't get enough of ___________(Florida, Arizona, California, etc. --your choice) sunshine. So every day, Eldy and I, one or the other or both, bike down from the RV park to the center of town in Naples and more often than not, down to the pier, to see what's happening. Here's one of several beautiful parks you can stop and sit for awhile on your way down to the pier.

When we get to the pier, we usually don't sit on the beach and soak up rays. We aren't beach bums, neither one of us really likes to sit and bake in the sun, especially me, with skin cancer in my family. I've spent YEARS baking myself in the sun, lifeguarding every summer and teaching swimming lessons. Back in college, Sparky tried to get an early start on a tan by going up on the dorm rooftop with metallic reflectors and baby oil working on that tan when it was still in the fifties in early spring! The years of sun baking have really done a number on my skin, so now I slather on the sunscreen and hope that all the moles and brown spots don't turn into something worse as the years go by. And yes, every couple of years I get checked by a dermatologist. But still, it's wonderful to be outside in bright sunshine when winter is hammering hard lots of other places. But, JUST IN CASE Eldy thinks Sparky is changing her tune about not minding missing winter, I have to say, I STILL MISS SNOW AND COLD AND SHOVELING!! (Darn! says E. But I'm sending her to go visit her sister in Detroit in January for four days-HA!) But geez, it sure is beautiful here in Naples....And especially at the pier, with the beautiful foliage and three mosaic turtles at the entrance to the pier. Here's one of them.....

The weather can't be any more perfect. Seventies and low eighties, a breeze from the gulf almost every single day...it doesn't feel hot at all....And this is what Sparky saw at the beach today down at Naples Pier....LOTS of pelicans, hundreds beyond just the few here....fishing for mackerel, I guess?

LOTS of fishermen catching LOTS of mackerel, fishing outside and yakking inside......

Trading fish tales?

But NO dolphins today....just the pelicans and terns and gulls.....

Time to go see another beach, Eldo! How about Marco Island? (Sounds good to me, we'll go when the weather warms up a bit....) WARMS UP???? We're in a "cool spell" right now...temps in the 60's this morning...he's gotta have it warmer to head to the beach..looks like Sparky might be headed to the zoo instead! We'll see.......

Eagle Lakes Community Park in Naples

About ten miles from the Neapolitan Cove RV park, which is on the south side of Naples off Tamiami Trail (highway 41 S.) there is a community park called Eagles Lakes. It's got the usual softball fields, picnic areas and tennis courts, etc. And then, it's got this:

There is some incredible biking/walking/hiking on the back side of the park. A 2.5 nature trail is yours for the walking along with a one mile paved trail as well...nice wide paths for riding a bike, so that's what Sparky did today...There are benches along the trails, and even a gazebo to stop and look out over the marshes. It was beautiful!

Here is the view from beyond the gazebo platform.....

We're really getting our exercise! From biking from Neapolitan Cove RV park to the middle of old town Naples and back is 7 miles, from Neapolitan Cove to Eagle Lakes Community Park is about ten miles. Between the two, we're hitting the roads every day on our bikes, heading either to the Naples Pier to dolphin watch, or out to the Eagles Lake or Sugden Park to bird watch. Naples is a VERY bike friendly town. You can count on wide sidewalks just about everywhere you go to get around town on a bike and if you'd rather not be on the sidewalk, there are designated bike lanes on the roadways. It's a great way to stay in shape and we're workin' it!

A Tale of Three Dolphins

We were exploring the Everglades City area and decided on the spur of the moment to take the Everglades National Park's Ten Thousand Islands boat tour. Sparky got sucked into the brochure hype of seeing dolphins playing in the wake of the boat! They take you out on a catamaran for an hour and a half, and if you are lucky, you will see dolphins, lots of birds and maybe roseate spoonbills! The lady at the ticket office said that the dolphins had been especially active the last two days...Sparky was SOLD! Twenty-six dollars and fifty cents a piece, was it worth it?

Wel-l-l-l-l....yes and no, depending on what you expect to see. Nature is not always cooperative as far as letting you see wildlife. Did we see dolphins? YES!  Three or four of them came up to the boat, swam under it, teased us with a little tail action, then quickly swam away...Were they especially active, like did they swim in the boat's wake? No.  Did we see roseate spoonbills? Nope... too early in the season....

Did we see some other unusual birds? Yes! We saw some royal terns...and a passel of pelicans.

Royal terns awaiting take off....

By the way, the boat captain says 1) pelicans do not like people and 2) they do not like boats! They are deciding whether to wait us out or take off. They waited! Pelicans with brown heads are the youngsters, white heads are the mature ones, just like people. No young pelicans appear to be here, it's all old folks! (The maturity factor for people is debatable, take Sparky, for example). Ah, yes, that's a story for another day...Sparky can be quite immature at times! As far as acting like a kid, don'tcha ya know!

We learned some interesting things from the boat captain about mangroves and dolphins' mating habits. We found out that it  takes two males to "herd" a female away from her pod and that the males use each other to restrain her while one does his thing. You learn the darndest things on these tours! There is no mating season for dolphins, they mate whenever they feel like it! Did you know that dolphins are second on the list of intelligent species? Man is first, dolphins second, and primates third. Elephants are #4, this is according to the ship's captain. Whaddya know!?

Was it a wonderful day to be out on the water? You bet! We thought this was a great way to get out and see nature for the day...especially since we don't have a boat or kayaks.....We highly recommend the boat tour in the Everglades 10,000 Islands.

Ten Thousand Islands Preserve

This morning was Knit and Nibble at Knitting with Nancy, the wonderful knit shop that is right next door to our RV park. From 8:30-10:00, I sat with a great group of gals and we yakked and shared and knitted up a storm. (Yeah, but did you BUY anything? Eldo wants to know.) Nope! I was a good girl, Christmas is coming! (But we don't exchange presents, remember? reminds E.)  Oh, I know, I just threw that out there.... :-)   Something extra cool today happened.  A lady, whom I had not seen before at the shop, was talking about some suburbs of Chicago. I was listening with half an ear, counting stitches, when I heard, "Winnetka and Kenilworth". Those were my childhood neighborhoods, where I grew up and went to school! We started talking and remembering the area---it was really neat to meet her and find someone to connect memories with, going back to the first 18 years of my life. She was a retired teacher, too.

The world can be a VERY small place when you are a full time RVer. There was another time when we were on a Pictured Rocks tour boat in the upper peninsula of Michigan, and a lady was on our boat from Wilmette, IL, where my mother lived for quite a few years! Small world, indeed!

Spoonbills seen in January, 2010

Back to the Ten Thousand Islands national wildlife refuge preserve-a part of the Florida Everglades. We love going there because it has a boardwalk, a hiking trail, and an observation tower. It's free to stop off there and take a leisurely hike. Last year we saw beautiful roseate spoonbills in January, when we made our visit, along with a couple of alligators. Today, we checked out the marsh and observation tower and saw very little...no alligators, no spoonbills, just lots of egrets, herons, and little ducks. The refuge boardwalk is just a very small part of a much larger ecosystem.....If you travel a little farther east, you can enter the Everglades National Park at the Everglades City entrance and take a catamaran boat ride through the Ten Thousand Islands Preserve. We're thinking about doing that later today......

The refuge pull out along highway 41 is a beautiful, relaxing place....you can sit at the observation tower under shade and look out over nature's beauty and just enjoy....We did just that......

We decided to drive further down to Everglades City and revisit the Everglades National Park services there....We weren't planning on taking the boat tour, but then, on a spur of the moment decision, we did! We'll tell you about it tomorrow......

Dolphin Tale

In case you haven't seen the movie, it's great! Awesome movie to take a grandchild six years and up, younger ones won't get the story line very well..I loved it because part of the story line is about a kid who struggles in school and has trouble paying attention, but bring in something that catches his eye and he becomes a motivated learner. That's right up my special education alley! And it's based on a true story about Winter, the dolphin, who lost her tail.

But the dolphin tale we are talking about is getting out into the gulf and seeing some dolphins up close and personal! We headed to Naples Beach a second time and I put Eldy out on dolphin watch while I tried to finish knitting my scarf.

We saw shore birds and wading birds....

We saw bathing beauties......er, bathing buddies.....

And finally, Eldy spotted a pair of dolphins! You know how hard it is to focus a 200 mm zoom lens looking through a 3" LCD display and trying to guess where the dolphin will come up next? It's tough! And this is all I got for my efforts today.....Sure looks like a shark to the untrained eye! There really were a couple of dolphins out there swimming today, but they didn't play, they were boogeying to the west.....They didn't surface much, either! But we were happy to get to see them again.....

And it was a beautiful, relaxing day at the beach......

Tomorrow we're headed to Ten Thousand Islands preserve....last year we saw about fifty roseate spoonbills there along with a couple of alligators. Hope to see some this year, we'll let you know.......

A Hidden Gem

Naples has lots of surprises within the city limits...a first class botanical garden, a zoo, a historical "old Florida" shopping district and some quiet little parks. Naples is a ritzy town in some ways, with its expensive shopping districts and multimillion dollar homes. It would be easy to spend a LOT of money here in the restaurants and shops. Thankfully, there are lots of places offering reasonable prices, happy hour specials and dinner deals so you can still hobknob with the rich and famous! But then there are wonderful places that don't cost you anything except for the price of gas to get there, or in Sparky's case, a bike ride to Sugden Park off Tamiami Trail in Naples, very close to our RV park.

It's a beautiful park with a short bike/walking trail and beautiful scenery. It also has a beach at the park's own Lake Avon, a 60 acre lake. The park has a great playground for kids and-- a butterfly garden. The first time I rode through today, a whole bunch of ibis were lined up on an observation platform overlooking the lake, about 15 of them. Of course, I didn't bring my camera, thinking I'd just hit the bike trail today and then head home. So I did head back home and get the camera, and of course, they were gone by the time I got back. There are anhingas hanging their wings out to dry, there are a variety of ducks...Here's the beach, which has gazebos for shade and many nice areas for picnics.

It's a beautiful place to spend part of your day and it's free...We LOVE free!