Canoeing on the Loxahatchee River

If you go the Jonathan Dickinson State Park, you have to travel the Loxahatchee River to see the site of Trapper Nelson’s former home. One method (for the old people) is to take a motorized river tour. Given the absolutely beautiful day, we went canoeing instead. It's at least an hour trip one-way (the park says to assume 1.5 hours each way). Canoeing here is different from a regular river. With tides, you might be fighting the current or going with the flow. If the tides change, you might fight the current both ways.

We saw all types of birds and animals. At one point we saw an osprey dive into the water and pick up a large fish. He flew back to this nest with his fish.

There were lots of turtles sunning along the way.

Small alligators were sunning too.

Several of the trees had these air plants. I don’t know the name, but I like them.

After an hour of canoeing, we arrived at Trapper Nelson’s site (or the Wildman of the Laxahatchee). He lived here in 1936 for 38 years. Besides living off the land, he charged for tours to his place. He set up a small zoo and wrestled alligators to entertain people.

Hobe Sound Area

One day was spent seeing things in town. A nearby preserve had a beautiful view of the water along with a distant view of the park fire.

The Blowing Rocks Preserve has rocks where waves will splash up to 50 feet. However, you have to be there at the right time. Instead we took a walk along the ocean.

 Jupiter Inlet Lighthouse.

Loggerhead Marinelife Center had an indoor area with fish and things like this Horse Conch. It’s just weird looking!

Outside were over 30 different turtles that they are rehabilitating.

Forest Fire!

OK, it’s not quite as exciting as an unplanned forest fire, but Jonathan Dickinson State Park had a prescribed burn in a section of the park (luckily not at our campground). A large portion of the park is full of saw palmettos and slash pines. The underbrush burns up over the years so they burn each portion of the park every 3-5 years. The burn was started along the road. Firemen were in several places watching the fire to make sure it didn’t go out of control.

It was pretty smoky, but at least we were driving. Several people we spoke to road their bikes through the area. They mentioned trying to hold their breath while pedaling quickly.

 Flames! Besides the smell of smoke, we could hear the fire crackling.

We could see the smoke seven miles away.

Firemen checking along the edges a few hours later were making sure the fire wasn’t going to spread.

The plants come back quickly. This is what the palmettos look like just 3 months after a fire.

Nature at Jonathan Dickinson

Jonathan Dickinson is a Florida state park with all sorts of wildlife. This osprey nest has been in use for around 15 years. I heard that these two osprey will be laying eggs soon.

  

Feral hogs chewed up this area. Feral hogs seem to be a problem at many parks we’ve visited.

This guy was walking along the path. When I took his picture, he turned to chase me. Are there such things as killer turtles?

Deer in the morning.

Just because I think it’s a pretty picture.

Navy SEAL Museum

This was a pretty cool museum giving the history of the Navy SEALs. The SEALs began here in Fort Pierce, Florida during World War II. Exhibits covered various wars along with different special missions. Some of the coolest was the lifeboat where Captain Phillips was held hostage by Somali pirates and later saved by Navy SEALs.

Way back in 2000, the TV show Survivor started. The oldest competitor was 72 year old Rudy Boesch who ended up in 3rd place. He was a legend in the SEALS with 45 years’ service. His uniform was displayed with plenty of medals and with each bar on the sleeve standing for 4 years’ service.

Another fairly recent mission highlighted was SEAL Team Six’s attack on Osama bin Laden’s compound. The model was donated by CBS 60 Minutes.

Outdoor displays included different boats used over the years. My personal favorite was the obstacle course. No, I am not ready to sign up, but I had fun!

Savannas

We stopped for a few days at the Savannas Recreation Area. The creatures seem to be younger here. We saw a few smaller alligators plus different young birds.

Treasure Coast

There is a section of the coast in Florida that is called Treasure Coast. This is due to the amount of ships that broke up along the coast due to hurricanes and storms. Shipwrecks are still being discovered even after over 300 years. Treasure can be found by people walking along the beach, particularly after a storm.

We visited a local museum (McLarty Treasure Museum) that had examples of things people had found in this area from a group of ships from 1715. We found out that Florida law says you own anything that you find in the area between the water and the dunes. So, if we found a gold coin (many have been found over the years), you own it. We had to try our hand by walking the beach and using a metal detector and now we’re rich! OK, I only found a quarter from the year 2000 and not the 1700’s. At least it’s something plus we enjoyed the walk. 

This looks like a blue balloon, but it’s a float of a Portuguese Man of War. The tentacles dangle underneath. We saw a lot of these on the beach.

Here’s a picture of Ghost Crab sex, or at least I assume that is what these two crabs are doing. Positively indecent doing this where everyone can see!

Florida Camping

We’re finding that southern Florida winter camping is very different than what we’re used to doing. We like keeping things open so we very rarely get reservations. Here, though, you have to get reservations. In some cases the campground fills up a year in advance, especially as you travel farther south. The campsites tend to be smaller. The whole area is much more congested with houses right next to each other with small lots. Plus, being near the warm waters seems to mean that No-See-Ums (biting midges) will attack. These are small bugs that you can barely see but bite any skin they can find. So my legs are spotted like I have chicken pox. We originally planned to spend the winter here, but we may change those plans. 

For a warm Florida stop, we went to a botanical garden. The weirdest thing we saw was this large thing with stuff growing out of it. It reminded us of some cocoon that would have something scary come out of it. What is it?

Rocket Launch and Canoeing

Like I mentioned in the last post, I was hoping to see a launch while we were camping nearby. Instead, we saw it from around 40 miles away. The launch was at 4:47 am.  Yes, we actually got up to see it. We knew we wouldn’t see it from the campsite, so we scoped out a foot bridge that had a good view to the north that was just a few minutes walk from our site. Unfortunately, it was partly cloudy too. Even with all that, we saw much more than I expected given the distance and clouds. We saw a glow at take-off and saw the rocket flames move up behind the clouds for a couple of minutes. Wahoo..our first launch! We tried to take pictures but basically they are just a small red light or smear in the dark.

While the rest of the country is freezing, our part of Florida is reaching the 70’s during the day. Was that too much? Anyhow, we’re staying at a campground that is on the water. Every campsite has a small area for a boat to pull up. We don’t have a canoe or kayak (many RV’ers seems to have them in this area), but the local marina has them for rent so we took one out for a couple of hours.

We saw dolphins playing in the distance along with plenty of birds nesting in trees or swooping the water. I was surprised to see an opossum at the waterfront on one of the islands. The current was pretty fast in places. There was one point we were desperately paddling for several minutes to get just a few feet ahead and out of the current. Other times we floated along with the current to pass small islands or travel channels. Pretty fun! 

Space Events

When we were at the Kennedy Space Center, we heard a talk that mentioned that NASA has a website (http://spotthestation.nasa.gov/ ) where you can find out when the International Space Station is passing your location next. It gives all kinds of information to help you see it. There are currently 6 people on the ISS. It seemed appropriate to look at the station passing before the planned launch to resupply it, so we were out Tuesday morning and were easily able to see the station pass.

We were lucky enough to be in the area to see a SpaceX launch from Space Launch Comples-40 (SLC-40) which was just across from the campground. It is an unmanned launch to take supplies to the ISS including a laser instrument to measure Earth’s clouds, dust, smoke, and pollutants. SpaceX is a commercial contractor funded by former PayPal founder and Tesla Motors CEO Elon Musk.

We were unlucky, however, in that the launch was scrubbed a minute before the launch. It was kind of fun standing out on the dock talking to lots of people from the campground while we waited for the launch. A couple of people had apps set up to monitor the launch so we found out when it was cancelled. We hope to see it from our next stop, but instead of being <10 miles from the launch site, we’ll be 40-50 miles. Oh, well.

Space Museums

Besides the Kennedy Space Center, we stopped at the U.S. Astronaut Hall of Fame. It is under the same ticket as the Kennedy complex, but you can do it on a different day. There are bigger displays like a Gemini space module or this suit that was worn by Gus Grissom during his Mercury flight. This was what he wore when the hatch unexpectedly blew after landing in the ocean. There has been a big controversy on who owns this suit, NASA or Grissom’s family. I guess NASA won since the suit is still here.

Smaller displays include this sheet from Apollo 13. The changes and notes were added when the crew were working to get back to Earth after their problems.

I loved the US Space Walk of Fame. This museum was put together by the actual people who worked at the Kennedy Space Center. The memorabilia is stuff these people got by being involved in the work. The pieces might be smaller, but the stories were bigger. For instance, this glove was used in the Mercury program. Energy use was so low in the capsule that they couldn’t light the whole control panel. This glove had small lights in two fingers so the astronaut could see in the unlighted areas. You can see the switch in the middle with two wires running up a seam to the finger tip lights.

This is the countdown procedure for the first American manned flight signed by the Mercury astronaut Alan Shepard.

X-rays of the space boots that Neil Armstrong wore when he first stepped on the moon. The boots are still on the moon but the x-rays still exist here.

These were the panels used up to 2004 to help launch unmanned rockets.

Handprints from my favorite astronaut.

Our tour guide was fabulous. He was a payload specialist working from control panels like these when he worked for the shuttle program.