We have just spent a week at Palm Beach Coast, a little bit north of Fort Lauderdale, with an unusual mix of weather to be sure! There was a lot of rain, cold, flood warnings, tornado warnings, thunderstorm warnings, etc. But we did get some bike riding and walking on the beach weather as well. I'll just be posting lots of pictures in no particular order. So here goes.
One of the things we like to do in Florida is to walk on beaches. There were lots of sea birds on this one.
I love to see these little sand pipers run through and ahead of the waves, poking their long bills into the sand, looking for goodies.
These unusual birds are called skimmers, and they fly just above the waves looking for fish to eat, then when they find one, they skim into the water and grab it.
This one obviously spied something that interested him!
This man was fishing from the shore, but didn't seem to be having much luck.
This osprey was luckier than the man who was fishing - he caught a BIG one!
One day I came upon this poor fellow who only had one foot. I decided to call him "Stumpy". It really didn't seem to slow him down a bit!
Another time I came across a pair of gulls that were much bigger than the other gulls on the beach. They were more like the size of ducks!
This was the mate to the large gull. She was a tiny bit smaller, and much prettier.
In this picture, you can see the large gull behind the regular sized ones, and can see the difference in size.
On one nice day, we decided to do a fairly long bike ride to a state park at the north end of the island we were on. The island was called Singer Island, and the state park was called the John D. MacArthur Beach State Park. This is a statue of Mr. MacArthur. Apparently he was a VERY rich man, and donated some very valuable property to the State of Florida.
There was a visitors centre where we watched a movie, and there was a bit of an aquarium as well. This is a sea turtle, which can spend a lot of time under water, but does breathe air. Anna and Riley, can you tell me some differences between this turtle and the ones we see in Ontario?
Here's looking at you!
This very pretty fish seemed quite willing to pose for me!
This fellow was behind glass, which was okay with me!
This beautiful butterfly was outside, and I followed it until I could get a picture of it.
And this tiny little thing entertained us as we ate our picnic lunch. Where you see the white streak, he kept poofing out an orange pouch, but not when I was taking his picture!
This osprey seemed to be as interested in me as I was in him!
Along the side of the Intracoastal Waterway, which is between the mainland and the islands along the ocean, there are trees growing which are sometimes called "walking trees" Can you guess why, Anna and Rylee? The Intracoastal water is a mixture of salt and sweet water, and these trees, which are called Mangroves do very well in this water. There are 3 kinds of Mangroves - black, red, and white, but they all have roots growing down into the water like these. The water rises and falls with the ocean's tides, and many critters make their home among the roots.
From where we were staying, it was an easy ride to the south end of the island, where there was an "Inlet" from the ocean to the Intracoastal Waterway. There were always lots of boats coming and going up and down the inlet, and we loved to watch them.
There were lots of benches to sit and watch the boats, drink our coffee, read our books.
One day when we were there, there was a man with a "drone". He was using it to film the inlet for a boating magazine. His cell phone was attached to the controls, and there was a camera mounted under the drone, and he could see on the cell phone the pictures that the camera was taking. Amazing!
When I'm not chasing butterflies, I'm chasing bees!
This was the end of the "jetty" at the inlet, and on this day, the ocean was very rough. I got my feet wet on this one!
Because of the very cold weather that has been happening, even in the south of Florida this winter, many of these little guys have frozen to death, so I'm always excited to see some live ones!
On our ride to the inlet, we always rode through this long, narrow park, with lots of trees and flowers. This is a banyan tree, which shoots down air roots, which then start to grow into the ground to become more trunks, thus enlarging the tree. If you look very closely, you will see me in the middle of the tree. We heard that this tree is over a hundred years old.
Some of the beautiful flowers.
One of my favorite birds to watch in Florida is the pelican. This kind is the brown pelican, but there is another kind that is not nearly as easy to find. It is bigger than the brown pelican, and it is all white. I really hope that I will see some before the winter is over. I was lucky to get right up close and personal with these beautiful birds, and they didn't even seem to mind. Guess they are used to having people around.
And so farewell until next Monday. Hope you have enjoyed the pictures, Anna and Rylee. Have a wonderful week!
We have just completed a week in Weston, Florida, a suburb of Fort Lauderdale, and have moved to a unit in Palm Beach Shores, a suburb of West Palm Beach. It has been an unusual week, weather-wise. We wanted to stay this for south for a few weeks, thinking that it would be warmer than mid-state. NOT! It warmed up enough for us to get out on the bikes for a bit, but has been really windy, and one whole day of rain - a LOT of rain! We'll see what this week brings.
Weston is right on the edge of the Everglades. Most of the Everglades does not look quite like this. It is often called a "river of grass" because it mostly looks like grass, though it is full of water. There is some open water like this, but mostly not. People who like to ride through the everglades use airboats. Anna and Rylee, see if you can find out what an airboat is, and maybe check out the Everglades as well.
At home we often see Great Blue Herons, but this one is a little bit smaller kind of heron. It is called a Louisiana or Tri-coloured Heron.
We love to ride our bikes when we are in Florida, partly because there are lots of nice paths like this to ride on, and partly because there are no hills - it's all nice and flat!
We almost always take along a picnic lunch when we go bike riding. On this day, we ate our lunch while we watched some men flying remote control jet planes.
You can see that these "toys" that the men are playing with are pretty big!
The "Rebel" is just taking off from the runway.
Rylee, you said you liked my last week's iguana. Here's another one that I saw, but it was much smaller, and well-disguised in the green grass.
Another bike ride, another picnic.......
.......and another iguana, this time a little bigger again.
Yesterday, we drove to a place called Hollywood, just south of Fort Lauderdale, and rode on a broad path beside the beach that is called the "Broadwalk". There is a special path that is just for bikes.
We love biking here, and sometimes just sitting and reading our books. It was so very windy this day, that it nearly blew us off the path sometimes.
While at the beach, I walked along the edge of the water, and this is one of the birds that I saw. It is called a "skimmer". Anna and Rylee, see if you can find out WHY it is called a skimmer.
"One of these things is not like the others....."
This was something else I found on the beach. It was alive and wiggling, and I think it may have been a "Sea Cucumber". I need my daughter-in-law Kerry to help me out with this one. Kerry, I think you may have introduced us to one of these at the Vancouver Aquarium. A nice young couple guided it back into the water - I think I heard it calling out, "thank you...."
This gives you an idea of what our bikes look like. They are quite small and fold up so that it is easy to transport them in the back of our van. They also go with us on our boat in the summer.
This time I found THREE iguanas. I think they were trying to keep warm on a cold day. I heard today that the cold weather has been very hard on the iguanas and the little geckos.
This is a collage of all the birds I have seen and "snapped" in the past week. And so, goodbye until next week, Anna and Rylee. I hope you have enjoyed the pictures.
We have returned from a week on a Holland America ship, cruising the eastern Caribbean.As you can imagine, I took WAY too many pics, so am endeavouring to keep it relatively brief so as not to bore you too much!
This is the beautiful ship that we sailed on. It is called the Nieuw Amsterdam. Many times we found ourselves in the hallways onboard going the wrong direction!
There are very many beautiful flower arrangements and large sculptures, etc on the ship, so I made a collage of some of them. Some of my on-board time was spent in digital workshops learning about photography and computers - especially the new Windows 10. One of the things I learned to do was to make a collage of pictures.
I really enjoyed watching a competition called "Dancing With The Stars At Sea". If you watch Dancing With the Stars on TV, you will recognize Tony, who danced with Broadway and tv star, Florence Henderson (80 years old) on the tv show, and Kym, who danced with Dragons Den star Robert Hertjavik (spelling?). They were some of the judges for the everyday people who danced in the competition. They were amazing, and included 2 Canadian women, plus men and women from many places in the world.
A collage of some of the dancing pics. As the stars on the tv program, these people were also dancing for a "mirrorball" trophy.
Another group of entertainers that we would call our very most favorites was this group from Trinidad and Tobago - called Island Magic. They were a steel drum band, and they could make amazing music with these drums! Loved them!
Four of our seven days were spent visiting different islands in the Caribbean. There were SO many beautiful flowers! Here is a collage of just a few of them.
We didn't choose to do any of the excursions offered by the ship, but just explored a bit on our own. The first stop was Grand Turk in the Turks and Caicos Islands. It was a lovely place to wander, then to relax on the beach.
The second place we stopped was in San Juan, Puerto Rico, and I liked it so much that I will be adding a few more individual pictures!
We walked up to one of the 2 historic forts in San Juan, and on the way, we found this iguana sunning himself on the barbed wire fence surrounding the fort. This is probably just the first of lots of iguanas you will see this winter!
I'm not sure what kind of bird this is, but I couldn't resist!
San Juan, which means "rich port", was discovered in 1493 by Christopher Columbus, and at different times in history has been owned by the Spanish, the Dutch, and the English. Now it is an American Territory, and hopes to become the 51st state. The fort was built over 150 years, and this is one of the tunnels inside it. It was a fun place to visit!
I was defending one of the turrets!
Unfortunately, we were running out of time and couldn't visit the second fort, so we took a trolley ride back downtown, and wandered along this lovely walk near the waterfront. It was still decorated for Christmas!
I believe this very noisy bird - a parakeet? - was defending a nest made in a palm tree. There was a lot of noise and we could see other birds fleeing before the wrath of this Mama!
And it was time to go back to the ship for "sail-away".
The third island we visited was St. Maarten, where we stopped in the town of Philipsburg. The island is quite small, but half of it is Dutch, and half is French. We were in the Dutch part. We went ashore to wander, and took a water taxi to the downtown area, which is where the beach is.
I had my picture taken near the beach with Jack Sparrow. I'm hoping this picture will get me another year's subscription to "More of Our Canada" magazine.
More pics from St. Maarten.
All of the cruise lines have a private island somewhere in the Caribbean, and this is Holland America's private island. It has an amazing white sand beach, with lots of things to do and see, and they serve a bar-b-q lunch on the island at noon. When we were here 3 years ago with our kids and grandkids, we all went horseback riding on the dunes, the beach, and in the water. It was great fun!
Anna and Rylee, why do you suppose I was able to float so easily in the sea, without paddling my arms or legs? If you can guess, please reply to my letter and tell me what you think.
While I swam and walked the whole length of the beach, Paul was relaxing in the sun and reading. It's a tough life!
As we ate our bar-b-q lunch in the picnic shelters, several chickens and roosters wandered around looking for crumbs. This is the only baby we saw.
This was definitely my favorite island of all of our stops! The ship was anchored offshore at this stop, and we had to be "tendered" to shore. Too soon it was time to go back!
We had really great stewards to look after our cabin on the ship - I didn't even have to make my bed! And every night, we found a towel sculpture and some chocolates waiting for us. My favorite was the lobster - the same night that we had lobster to eat for dinner!
Well, I finally did it! That's it for today. Hope you enjoyed the pictures and the stories, Anna and Rylee. See you again next Monday! (P.S. Charlotte, I always think of you when I see "that sun on the water").
