Decided to start with the Highlands Hammock State Park because Mum and Dad had good things to say about it last year when they visited. Here is a short blurb from their website.
"One of Florida´s oldest parks, opening to the public in 1931, this park was established when local citizens came together to promote the hammock as a candidate for national park status. During the Great Depression, just prior to World War II, the Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC) developed additional park facilities and the beginnings of a botanical garden. Many visitors enjoy bicycling the scenic 3-mile loop drive or hiking along the park´s nine trails. An elevated boardwalk traverses an old-growth cypress swamp."
We left the house at about 0630, stopped to get ice, gas, and breakfast at Sonic. Then we were on our way. The drive was great, hardly anyone on the road and only ground fog in the distance. Took us just short of two hours to get there, only had to wait about five minutes for the Museum to open.
This is where we had the pleasure of meeting Grace, she was very enthusiastic about her job and told us all about the Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC) and how much it helped families and the country. I really think she would have taken us to every display and told us everything about them but having just opened she had some things that needed to be done.
The whirly-gig was in the entry and I don't know if it was there last year when Mum and Dad were here but thought Dad would like to see it.
This is a map of all the CCC projects that took place, didn't know there were that many.
After touring the museum we started the drive, wasn't until we were about 1/2 way through that we realized we could have just parked at the picnic area and walked to all the trails, most of them were continuations of each other.
This is some interesting lichen on some of the trees.
If it weren't for bugs we wouldn't have seen much wildlife. This caterpillar was about 1.5 inches long and we would have missed it but I went back to look at the stream running though the area we were walking in at the time.
Then we found this dragonfly, it was sunning itself trying to warm up. It's wingspan was about 5 - 6 inches.
And of course we saw lots of spiders, but this was the biggest, it's body about two inches.
Looking down the road, the two trees that cross above the middle of the road are actually inter-twined and very interesting.
Just a shot to show what a beautiful day it was. The temperature was gorgeous, not to hot for Dan and I didn't take my sweater off until the last trail and I was comfortable the whole time.
Before this trail we went back to the picnic area to eat lunch, it was the only place with tables and it wasn't that far. Had a great lunch, made sandwiches with pickles (Boar's Head of course) and chips. Then Dan got an ice cream at the snack bar, I forgot to pack dessert so I was lucky there was something available in the park.
Then we were off to drive the loop and hike the last two trails we had picked out. Got lucky on the Cypress Swamp trail and saw some actual wildlife.
Look carefully and you can see the tail sticking out from behind the tree.
Then I couldn't believe he was just going to walk away from us.
But he just went around the next tree and walked right towards us.
This was looking in the opposite direction in the swamp.
Portions of the boardwalk were very narrow and only had a rail on one side. Didn't mind when we were walking over dry land but when it was water underneath I just knew I would be falling in and getting wet. But I made it to the end without a single mis-step.
Dan saw this butterfly/moth flying and it landed on the underside of a plant and stayed long enough for me to get a couple of pictures.
By this time we were ready to call it a day, stopped back by the Museum area to use the bathroom and there were only a couple of empty parking slots. Don't know if this is normal or there was something going on or people were just taking advantage of the beautiful day.
The drive home was pretty uneventful, except for the traffic and it had picked up considerably. Got home at about 1530 just in time for the NFL pre-game show.
4 comments:
Looks like you had a good time. Mum and I enjoyed it very much.
Loved the pictures. See, if we get stationed in Georgia, we can do something like that. You can only go around the island so many times. But we keep going around the island hoping to see something new.
We did have a good time. Understand about the island thing, Adak only had 8 miles of paved road and most of that was in housing but we still went all over.
love the pictures.
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