We had our traditional Saturday breakfast of pancakes and some sausage.  It was a beautiful morning, clear, dry and warm.  I started and finished the day in shorts.  I have a summer dress until the end of my summer, which usually lasts longer than everyone else’s.  Generally I try to make my summer last into late October.  How excellent to be in shorts and 72 degree weather in February!

We quickly cleaned up breakfast and detached all the hookups and then went off to the office and had a nice conversation with the volunteer, who gave us some sage advice about the concessionaires and politician and the National Park Service in the Everglades.  Suffice it to say, that it appears that they share the same sleeping arrangements.  During the last of the check in – check out process, she told us that the site we were on was bought and cancelled three times – we were the third and last booking.  I’ll take that kind of luck every time.

They do have a dump station, in addition to a composting toilet, and we took care of the necessary after several nights of using the RV tanks. In the process, we saw a flock of turkeys.  It had been remarked that the local turkeys are more colorful than the ones up north.  That is still open to debate, but I hold that our colorful turkeys are elected to public office, where it is only an indeterminate time until they have stuffed themselves and come to an end.

On the way out of the park, we say a flock of immature white ibises feeding near some egrets.  After we passed they took off in a large brown and white cloud off to some of the deeper grasses and palmetto.  I’m assuming that there are a number of egret species, but the birds seem to come in a wide variety of sizes.  Small, medium and basketball player sized birds.  I’m glad that feathered hats fell out of popularity.

We also saw two different hawks sitting on fence posts looking for something to eat.  One had a barred tail and I think, according to the bird book we carry, that it was a broad shouldered hawk, right after that we say a jay sized/meadowlark sized bird sitting on a fence post that also turned out to be a hawk. That one had a slate grey/navy blue looking back with rust colored flares on both sides.  The bird book indicated that it might be a sharp shinned hawk.  Very cool area and we wished that we could stay longer, or that there was room for us to stay.

It was a very pleasant drive from the State Park to Miami.  Jackie’s address is apparently confused by the GPS all the time.  My brother-in-law had trouble finding her house when he was in Miami. We made a quick call to her and figured that it was one of the other similar named addresses, and eventually had no difficulty in getting to the destination.  We were told that we could park in the driveway, and through some cosmic alignment and some excellent driving skills and darn good luck, the RV just fit, in the driveway behind the gate.  We had to fold in the mirrors to make it, but we did.

Jackie and Julian put on a very nice little ‘cocktail’ time with great south Florida IPA beers and some great cheese crackers and hummus. They have season tickets to Miami University College baseball, and they recommended a nice bar, the ‘Titanic’ for beers at the seventh inning stretch.  Off we went. The game was good, the food at the park was surprisingly good, and we wandered off to the bar where we had a good time and fortunately missed the end of the game when Maine beat Miami.  College ball is really enjoyable than major league ball; anything can happen in college ball, and seems to happen regularly. The end of the night was capped with a little Olympic watching, and we slept in the RV; it was simpler to do that as opposed to move everything in the house. What a day!