A glimpse of Everglades National Park

This picture was taken at Flamingo on the Florida Bay. It is at the southern most tip of the mainland of Florida.

Fat Gator!

Everglades National Park Visitor Center

An endangered Wood Stork.

The hardwood hammock that this (and the next 2 pictures) are taken in is located next to the lake with the island of trees in the middle seen further down in this post.
It is amazing how much the landscape varies with a few inches of change in the elevation here.

Climbing a Gumbo Limbo tree.

Basking in the sun.

Not the greatest photo, but this is a beautiful Purple Gallinule...you can click on the pic to get a larger view.

Tree Snail...unfortunately, these have been over-poached by collectors.

Cormorant

This is one of my favorite places to go for a walk...there are lots of days when the sky is incredibly blue here.

Although the Great Blue Heron is common in many places, the Everglades is the only place we've gotten so close to them.

Paurotis Pond- where we go to watch Roseate Spoonbills.

Anhinga drying off after a swim.

You never know who you'll walk with on the trails in Everglades National Park.

Pictures

Florida Softshell Turtle.

Southeastern Lubber Grasshopper in Everglades National Park. 11/08

Having a blast at the beach...what a great ending to a very special day for us! 10/30/08

Outside the Obama rally. 10/30/08

Here's the bald eagle we spotted as we waited in line to enter the stadium for Obama's rally. Did I mention it was perched on a communications tower? "Calling all progressives, don't forget to vote!!" What a great omen for what came next!

During Obama's speech at the rally in Sarasota, FL on October 30, 2008.

Poop Master Brian taking a photo op break from dumping the tanks. Lake Lanier Islands, GA.

Gyan, Shanti, Kavi & Vashti...happy cousins.

Kavi, Deayne and Vashti after a trip to the Lego Outlet in Georgia.

You can take the girl out of the city, but you can't take the city out of the girl. On this day, Vashti spent most of her time talking to Sofia in Austin and her Aunt Lindsay in Dallas.

Our mighty traveler at the bottom of Mingo Falls, N.C.

Poppy enjoying a little rest after climbing many steps to Mingo Falls, N.C.

One of the views from the Blue Ridge Parkway.
Once again our camera doesn't quite capture the beauty, but it was a really lovely day.

Our camera doesn't quite capture how incredibly beautiful the smoky mountains were this fall, but you get a little taste from this pic. Notice the moon?

Hiking in Great Smoky Mountains National Park.

The kids had fun on their first ever pony rides at the fall festival on the Chesapeake Bay.

There were lots of great costumes in Colonial Williamsburg.

Cool kiddos.

The kids take every opportunity they get to climb trees.

Recruiters signing the boys up for the Union Army. Shanti got a little emotional talking to me afterwards because he didn't want to go to war or leave his family.

Reenactment of Union soldiers listening to a speech by Washington in Colonial Williamsburg.

Hanging out with Jason and Monica at Chesapeake Bay. We met them in Hershey, PA, and managed to meet up three times to camp together.

Monica is a no-nonsense kindergarten teacher, and Vashti loved being her little helper working on different projects.

Shanti with the other Jason and Monica

Daph in D.C.

This was the kids favorite in D.C. I'm not sure how many times we paid for them to ride the carousel, but Brian and Poppy got their fill :)

The kiddos striking some of their favorite poses inside the Washington monument.

WWII Memorial

Our native Texan at the WWII Memorial

D.C. sightseeing with Brian's Vietnamese sister, Ngoc.

Catching up

I can't believe how much time has passed since the last time we updated our blog. Right now we are camping in Everglades National Park which is at the southern tip of Florida (not counting the Keys). This morning, Brian and I rode our bikes for about 10 miles. We saw 3 alligators up close, a diamondback rattlesnake which was being harrassed by a mockingbird, a green garter snake which I gently caught and removed from the road, a black racer snake which was being harrassed by a silly human, a beautiful but dead corn snake, a yellow orb weaver which was 4 inches long, lots of beautiful birds, and a variety of fish (such as florida Gar and large mouth bass). We watched an Anhinga (a water bird) swim under water and catch a couple of fish. We are happy to be back in the Everglades.

Here's a quick synopsis of our travels since we left Ramblin' Pines:

We spent 5 days in D.C. where we visited museums, monuments, and friends. Then, we camped at Chesapeake Bay campground in Virginia which hosted a great weekend festival and had a wonderful hiking trail through the woods. The friends (Jason, Monica and Hunter) we made in Hershey, PA met up with us in Chesapeake and we all had a great time visiting again. We all took a day trip to Colonial Williamsburg which was educational and fun. After saying our goodbyes, we headed off towards Asheville, NC and Great Smoky Mountains National Park. We were very fortunate to arrive in the mountains during the peak of the fall foliage, and it was truly spectacular. We enjoyed a couple of gorgeous days and 32 degrees nights (we put our faux fireplace to good use during those cold mountain nights)! Unfortunately, due to the limited amount of time we had left to get to the Everglades, we had to rush through North Carolina. So, after a couple of days we headed off to Georgia to camp with Brian's sister, Deayne, and her family. We camped on Lake Lanier Islands, and it was one of the nicest surprises we have had on our journey. The campground was beautiful and mostly empty. The hiking was fantastic! There were lots of pine trees and it was possible to hike along huge sections of the shoreline which alternated between sand, rocks full of mica, pyrite and quartz, and red earth. One day while we were on the island I went on a four hour hike by myself along the shoreline of the lake and through the woods. When it was time to leave Deayne, Paul, Kavi, and Gyan, we had less than a week to get to the Everglades, and a lot of miles to cover. We drove each day for three days straight, and then on a Wednesday stopped at a campground on the Peace River about 60 miles east of Sarasota. While we were there we saw a couple of alligators (one was a mother with her babies!), and lots of red shouldered hawks. We also discovered that Obama was holding a morning rally in Sarasota the next day. Excited (and nervous) about the upcoming election, we all decided that it was worth it to spend another day driving around if it meant we could show our support for Obama in person.
On Thursday morning, with the kids in their pj's, we headed out just after 7am. As we approached the stadium, we found the whole area buzzing with excitement. Sarasota is traditionally a Republican stronghold, but 12,500 people showed up for the rally (the stadium capacity was 10,000 but since some people stood on the field everyone got to go in). While we happily waited in line the crowd noticed a wild bald eagle perched on a tower just outside the stadium. The eagle's presence seemed auspicious and I think everyone felt like it was a good omen! Everyone was in such high spirits that we all cheered as Obama's plane flew overhead. The thing that struck us the most about the rally was the diversity of the crowd and the feelings of joy, unity, and hope that everyone seemed to share. After the rally, as we made our way back to our car, the bald eagle repeatedly soared overhead. Someone handed us a postcard for a Columbian/Mexican restaurant which ended up leading us to the best meal we've eaten out since we left Austin. We spent the rest of the day at the nicest beach any of us have ever been to. The beach is on Siesta Key and is 99% quartz which makes the sand extremely fine and white (so the sand stays cool even on hot days). The beach also has a very gentle slope which makes it super kid friendly. As some of you know, Vashti has been proclaiming that we are going to the beach since before we even left Austin. She finally got her day at the beach, and now she can't wait to go back!
After one more day of driving, we made it back to the Everglades. For now, it feels as though we have come full circle since this is the place that inspired us to sell our home and begin this journey. We will be here for at least two months, and then we will gradually head west where we look forward to visiting our friends in Austin and beyond.

Maryland update

Halloween at Ramblin' Pines in Woodbine, MD 10/4/08

Fairy Princess

Zorro

Halloween Hayride

One of Vashti's favorite poses.

Pumpkin Carving at Ramblin' Pines

Shanti with Great Grandmother Johnson

Masonic Temple in Elizabethtown, PA where Brian's grandparents live.

This visitor to our RV was about 3 1/2 inches. Beautiful!

Mini-golf at our Hershey, PA campground...we played a couple of times with Brian's Grandparents and at least every other day during the 2 1/2 weeks we were there. Even the kids were getting hole in 1's on a regular basis!

So much for Brown Widow spiders being a tropical spider....After feeling a sticky web under our picnic table, Brian discovered 3 adult females with a total of 19 eggs and a whole bunch of immature spiders. We still have or "Miss Spider" who currently has 3 eggs after 1 month in captivity. After doing a thorough search, Brian found a couple more of them under our RV with a whole bunch of eggs. Unfortunately, due to their toxic nature and their ability to repoduce quickly and in large quantities, we felt a need to dispose of the ones trying to set up house on our RV.

This is by far the most commercial thing we've done with the kids, but they offer a 20 minute free tour/ride on how Hershey Chocolate is made complete with singing cows. It was interesting to learn about everything Milton Hershey did to help his community especially during the depression.

Beautiful Johnson's

Sitting in a mini race car at the Masonic Temple's Fall Festival.

That's our girl...for every picture that Vashti smiles at us there are about 10 of her making funny faces or refusing to look at the camera (If it's not obvious she has a mouthful of spit bubbles in this one)....We wouldn't want her to be any different!

The kids at the masonic temple.

Frank Lloyd Wright's masterpiece: Falling Water in western Pennsylvania. At the end of the tour Brian turned to Shanti and said, "So, you know that an architect designed this home. What do you think would be different if it was designed by an engineer?" Shanti promptly replied, "Well, there would be posts all over the place." That particular point was not mentioned during the tour, and it is a great example of "worldschooling/unschooling" in action!

We are currently camped at Ramblin' Pines in Woodbine, MD which is a little west of Baltimore and a little north of D.C. Our primary reason for stopping here is they have a huge halloween celebration, and the kids wanted a chance to be around lots of other kids while partaking in a little sugar indulgence (or I should say over-indulgence). This is by far the busiest campground we have visited which is fun, but GOOD GOD WE WISH THEY WOULD TONE DOWN THE CAMPFIRES! It's like living in a chimney for the weekend! We all have stuffy noses and smell so strongly of smoke we can taste it. The entire park is covered with trees so we are slowly smoking ourselves. But not to be party poopers....we ARE having a lot of fun. We've carved a pumpkin, gone on a hayride, trick-or-treated, and played at the park. Once it starts to get dark we get to go on a spook walk, and I've never seen so many halloween decorations. There are fake spider webs and talking, smoking graveyards around every corner. Who knew there were so many pagans in Maryland! Another plus of being in this area is we have seen a lot more Obama supporters....we were starting to feel like outsiders in our own country because rural America sure flies a lot of McCain signs. Tomorrow we are moving down to D.C. for a few days.