#39 - Monday, 27 March 2017 - Kissimmee Prairie Preserve S.P., Florida

Greetings once again from the spot you're probably going to think is my favorite on Earth. It isn't. No place in Florida would rank very high. But this surely is my favorite area of Florida. The place is deserted. I am one of only four occupied campsites a month the 16 or 17 available in the equestrian campground. They had a big event here on Saturday and apparently everyone left first thing Sunday. There are still about a half dozen sites taken in the Astronomy Pad area and perhaps a dozen more campers in the family campground, but it is very peaceful here in the horse area. I can't see the other two occupied campsites and the one I can is two sites away and on the end.

My office as I type this for y'all

I just returned from a trail that cuts through a couple of deep ponds connected by a culvert with four big pipes and there must have been close to fifty alligators ranging in size from five to eleven feet in the area. I photographed some of them along with feeding great blue herons and great white egrets. I then drove out the park toward the spot where a caracara is often seen and captured some images of one perched there scanning the surrounding prairie for carrion. As I've mentioned before, the northern crested caracara is a type of falcon, but it has the feeding habits of a vulture. When I drove back to camp for lunch and to write this blog entry, a group of wild turkey was foraging around my Wheelhouse. I had seen a few hens and an immature male during my morning coffee, but now there was a larger group including a tom. They meandered off to leave me with my sardines, tuna and crackers.

I'm camped here until Friday, which is the last day of March. It is peaceful and without the hordes of savage mosquitoes that plagued my Everglades hiking. I sit at this picnic table as a gentle breeze keeps me cool as the temperature of the partly sunny day hovers around 27ºC/81ºF. I have no plan for Friday morning, but likely will pretty much go full speed ahead north and get out of Florida before I linger here any longer. I can't just stop every interesting place or I'll spend a year in one state. Texas is calling my name and I'd like to be able to visit Dr. Brent Hendrixson in Jackson, Mississippi along the way. Still, that's a bit farther north than I want to go and my goal will be to get across Alabama, Mississippi and Louisiana and shunpike on back highways into Texas avoiding Houston. I'll probably head up toward Austin before heading south to follow the Rio Grande towards Big Bend National Park. Texas has two national parks on the list, but I'll spend an extended amount of time in the Big Bend region before finally heading into New Mexico. 

Cheers, M

#7 - Sunday, 8 January 2017 | Huntley, Illinois

This blog is still in its early days and readers are few and far between. However, I am committed to growing it and using it to journal during my travels. I have decided to make a magnetic sign for the back of my travel trailer that will have my Instagram/Twitter (@jacobipix) and the URI to this blog. Once I am posting about my hikes, animal sightings and such, hopefully the blog keywords will also draw new readers in. In the meantime, I ask the few of you who are reading to share via social media and the like.

As I wrote in the last entry, now that spending all of January in southern Florida was a dream unrealized I am making the best of the opportunity I have. Unfortunately, making two trips south before my trip to Asia has become increasingly unlikely as well. I probably will just resign myself to spending time with family and friends and preparing for my adventures while I wait until I have both truck and RV to leave. Although the truck being also delayed has been a great disappointment, I will make the best of it and wait until I have both truck and travel trailer before heading south. Yesterday the Ford dealer found an identical truck (color and features) in another state and has put in a trade request. Tomorrow their Ford rep will tell them when the originally ordered vehicle should arrive and if it wouldn't make it by January 17, the day the RV is supposed to be completed, hopefully the out of state dealer will be willing to trade.

Today is the 8th and that means that it is exactly one month until I depart for Asia. I just was texting with my best mate Mark about our plans. I am excited about visiting Sarawak, Borneo for the first time and especially eager to trek in Bako National Park. There are so many amazing creatures there I wish to point a lens toward. Proboscis monkeys, orangutans, silver langurs, tree vipers, river dolphins, crocodiles, and assorted spiders are among the animals I seek. After Borneo we will be on Langkawi Island, Malaysia where I visited two years ago. There we will also find amazing animals like colugos, lorises, spectacled (dusky) langurs, butterfly agamas, flying lizards, water monitors and tarantulas. Those of you who follow my Instagram (@jacobipix) may have seen my organized camera gear all laid out yesterday.

We will have a group of 14 in Sarawak and my dear friends Ray & Angela Hale will be joining us in Langkawi. We have several birthdays to celebrate and have hired a boat for the Andaman Sea. Our captain is a German woman named Eva who we hired two years ago. Her sailing craft has a full bar and we are served appetizers and mini meals all day long with unlimited drinks. Mark and I love treading water in the ocean while drinking a cold can of Tiger lager. Last time we saw sea otters swimming nearby and it was exhilarating. I am extremely sensitive to motion sickness and was very apprehensive about the boat trip two years ago. However, the sea off Langkawi is calm and with Dramamine I had no worries and we had an amazing day diving off the second level of the boat into the ocean and exploring little islands.

All the best, MJ