Another Day - Another Beach (swamp, marsh, bird, etc)

First  - Our most sincere condolences to Pat Russel who just lost her husband.  Some solace to be found in the presence of the Ya's to help her through the coming days. 
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Spent the last two days at Jonathan Dickinson State Park just north of Palm Beach and home of the "famed" Loxahatchee, (river of turtles), River.  The park is named after Jonathan Dickinson (duh) who in 1699, along with his family, was shipwrecked on the South Florida coast a couple of miles east of here. 

Now at that time, south Florida was thought literally to be the end of the earth.  The closest settlement was 260 miles to the north.  The local Indians didn't appreciate tourist any more than the current residents.  The party was taken captive but eventually escaped and made their way to Saint Augustine with just the shirts on their backs, (which they later lost to other Indians).

Long-story-short, most eventually made it to Philadelphia, their original intended destination.  Bet they would have liked the Funmobile.

So....  Yesterday was a REALLY windy day so we decided not to canoe the "river of turtles" and instead poked around the park, which in the1940's housed an Army top secret radar training base.  From the top of the old radar tower on Mt Hobe (86 feet) you could see Cuba I think.

DiCaprio is probably sexier than me, but I have Val!

Spent the afternoon at the Hobe Sound Nat'l Wildlife Reserve beach which probably wasn't the best idea since the 30 mph wind comin' straight up the beach was like a sand blaster.  Pretty never-the-less, with about 4 miles of completely undeveloped beach.

You'd think 4 layers of SPF 97 and a cloudy day would be sufficient.

On the second day (today), the overnight rains tapered off and the sun came out. Still pretty windy so we got lazy and took the tour boat up the Loxahatchee instead of a canoe.  Now normally, I'd swim up an alligator infested river before I'd take a Florida "tour boat", but my vision isn't what it used to be.  So having the white-shirted, tan shorted, bling covered 60 year old, ex-Jersey native point out the snake birds  to "yous" had some advantages.  We were treated to 4 gators, 5 ospreys, 2 snake birds, 13 manatees, a great horned owl, and a couple of cute girls in a canoe.  (We'll see if Val is monitoring this blog.)

 I will add that the destination of the tour boat was Trapper Nelson"s River Camp, Jungle Garden and Exotic Animal Zoo.  This was the original 1930's precursor to the current version of a Florida tourist trap.  However it does come with a fascinating story, so if you're bored, try;

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trapper_Nelson

To ease the abject shame of the above boat tour, we did take a hike out through the Florida pine scrub where I hoped to encounter at least one of the 23 species of snakes in the park.   The sign back at the visitor's center said ONLY six of the 23 will kill you on the spot.  (I didn't even know there WERE 6 poisonous species of snake.)

While we didn't see 23, we did find one in the palm tree directly over our heads as we sat down on a bench to have a drink of water.

Alright.  It wasn't that big or scary, but it's better than another picture of an alligator (and there are many of those to come.).

Goodnight from The River of Turtles

(Oh - and we saw lots of turtles on the boat tour too.)

PS Be on the lookout for the next post.  There will be a special treat.