No excuses....

Busy.  That is the only reason I haven't blogged.  And I am sorry.  We have had lots of company and have lots of friends here.  Thanks to our friends who have checked on us! 

As usual, we have visited the favorite birding areas.  This lovely Great Blue Heron strikes a classic pose for us.

Later, we took a walk in the Enchanted Forest.  Not a lot of bird life but it does look like an enchanted forest!  It's a cool walk on a hot day.

Daughter Heather came down to visit for a few days and enjoy the Florida winter weather.  As soon as we picked her up from the airport, we headed for the Orlando Wetlands to do some birding.  This beautiful male anhinga is drying his wings.

He has a wee little buddy.  We still gave the little buddy a wide berth!  It might have a big bad mom hanging around.

This 4 foot tall sandhill crane had absolutely no fear of us. He strutted back and forth across the road, just feet from us.

"I'm so lovely...."

The woodstork is feeding. He digs and scrapes his feet in the water, scaring up little frogs, etc.  Then he snaps them up.

Heather's first full day was spent at the Kennedy Space Ctr.  A walk under the rocket boosters takes you into the Atlantis building.  

The Atlantis space shuttle hangs in the building.

Heather takes the controls!

A nice bus ride takes you to the Apollo building.  Here is the Saturn 5 with the Apollo capsule on top.

I got to touch a moon rock (along with millions of other people)!

We also spent most of the next day at the Blue Springs State Park.  This park is home of a deep natural spring that brings warm water into the St. John's River.  Manatees spend cold days here, basking in the warm water.  Unfortunately, only one was around when we were there, but we did take a boat ride and saw lots of other wildlife even though it was dreary, gray, and chilly.

Birds, of course.  Limpin are wading birds that are aptly named for their, well, limp as they walk!  They also are the voice of Cheeta the monkey in the original Tarzan movies.  Their wailing call sounds exactly like a monkey scream.  The movies were filmed in FL and the birds were used for the monkey calls.

This black crown night heron was fishing from a low hanging branch.

Ibis were everywhere!  I call these the ibis trees.

And the frequent sneaky gaters. Can you see two yellow rimmed black eyes eyeing you?

A day at Merritt Island gave us a real treat - a seldom seen Reddish Egret.  I am SO excited to see them!  This heron isn't the quiet, stealthy hunter like the Great Blue and others.  It dances, races, and lurches about, chasing it's prey.  It also spreads its wings to attract fish to the shade they create. 

The pictures aren't as good as I would like - this is one fast  bird.

Roseate Spoonbills were clustered there, feeding.  We didn't get any good pictures of them on the ground, but Heather got this beautiful shot of them in flight.

Last, manatees.  Rocks in the river?  Nope, manatee backs as they bask in the sun, warming their bodies through their backs.

A few days ago Luke and I went back to do a little more birding while we're still here.  we saw these...

A white ibis 

A limpkin.  Notice how camouflaged his legs are in the brown grasses!

A juvenile Little Blue Heron, his feathers still  white, but  he already has the trademark two tone bill.

Luke caught this amazing picture of a Great Blue Heron struggling with a water snake!  The heron won, but Luke's last blurry picture of the event show that the snake has the last 10 inches or so of it's body wrapped around the birds bill, trying it's best to avoid being completely swallowed.

Back at the campground, we found this fuzzy little guy, happy with his stolen treat.

Only about a week left for us here in FL.  We'll be heading back to VA, ready for the glorious spring.  We will sure miss our friends here, but it will be good to see family and friends at home.

Falcon Heavy launch and a slightly less important aerial disaster...

It was finally time for Elon Musk and his SpaceX company to launch the Falcon Heavy rocket!  This rocket has been in design for 7 years.  It is the prototype of the rocket that Musk plans to one day send to Mars to colonize the planet.  This is the heaviest rocket in the world. A bit of info about it

falcon heavy info

An influx of over 100,000 visitors were expected to come to view the launch. A crowd from the campground brought chairs and patiently awaited the launch.

The lift off was delayed over 2 hours, taking off only 15 minutes before the launch window closed.  But she did take off!  Here is the initial cloud of exhaust as the ignition started.

And liftoff!  We could see the ship for a long time.

The two rocket boosters separated as planned and returned to earth to safely land on pads about 8 minutes later.  They looked like 2 balls of fine falling from the sky.  And gave us a most wonderful double sonic boom!

Unfortunately, the middle core of the rocket failed to land on the drone ship when 2 of the 3 engines necessary to guide the core failed to fire.

failure to land on drone ship

But still, a success!  The upper stage of the ship is now in orbit and so is Musk's private Tesla car, with a space dummy "Starman" at the wheel.  Musk mounted cameras on the car..real pictures..

starman in the tesla

Luke had a bit of less success with his RC plane today.  It took a sudden nosedive and ended up in the sawgrass of FL.  They don't call it sawgrass for nothing.  Both Luke and his 2 friends ended up with cuts.  It took all 3 men 2 hours of pushing through saw palmetto and brush, sometimes cutting through vines searching to find the little plane, but as they were about to give up, one of them found it.

She ended up with a broken prop and motor, plus some scrapes, scratches, gouges and cracks in the foam fuselage.  Luke and John are going to an RC store tomorrow to have it looked at and to buy replacement/repair parts.

Other than the above, it's been sorta quiet and fun.  We did take part in a campground pot luck hot dog/hamburger party yesterday.   Don't ever let anyone tell you that old folks don't like to eat!

Jupiter Lighthouse, a Falcon 9 launch, and Luke finally flies his RC airplane!

Friends Ange and Ray drove up to spend the day with us in Jupiter.  After catching up in the RV over a dozen fresh, warm donuts brought by Ange and Ray, we left to have lunch in Jupiter.  

The Loxahatchee watershed and the Jupiter inlet have supported continuous human occupation for over 5000 years!  By the time of the Spanish contact in the 1500's, the native peoples had established an inlet fishing village.  

The Jupiter Lighthouse was first lit in 1860.  Except for a brief period during the War Between the States when Southern sympathizers hid and buried the Fresnel lens, the lighthouse has been continuously lit.

Luke took the lighthouse tour, climbed the 105 steps, and got these pictures.  The first is the First Order Fresnel lens.  A first order lens is one with the brightest beam.

View to the East, out into the Atlantic.

View to the West, towards the ICW

On Wednesday we took our time leaving Jonathan Dickinson State Park and arrived at Manatee Hammock Campground around 3:20.  Winding through the narrow campground roads, we couldn't help but notice that EVERYONE was drifting down toward the dock. The reason? A Falcon 9 launch from Cape Canaveral in 5 MINUTES!!!! You cannot imagine how quickly we got the RV parked and ran to the shore.  Just in time to watch the rocket lift into the sky!

Up, up, and away she went.  It was so exciting!

Manatee Hammock in Titusville is where we spent several weeks last winter.  It is nice to be  catching up with friends back again from last year.  One special friend, John, is mainly responsible for getting Luke excited about trying remote control airplanes again.  With his new Cub RC plane, we headed off to a RC flying field today with John and his wife Janet.  John and Luke carefully checked and prepared the Cub for her maiden flight.

John is an instructor and knew just how to get Luke comfortable in his first flight, along with saving the integrity of the airplane itself (i.e.  no pieces of shattered plane)

Up into the air she went under John's guidance.  That yellow "hawk" coming in over the guy's heads is the plane.

John gave Luke opportunities to guide and fly the plane once she was in the air, eventually getting Luke to the point of being able to take off from the ground and fly.  John smartly landed her.

Luke FINALLY has the remote control in his hands and is flying his plane!

There will be many more lessons and guidance as Luke becomes more comfortable and capable.

John brought one of his many planes to fly also.  Boys and their toys....

The nice day ended with a campfire at John and Janet's RV site, along with several other campers.

The adventure has just begun...