January 24/16 A week at Weston, FL

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.