Friday, November 30, 2012

Did a lot, but not much to say

Washed the dogs(they smell a lot better and feel great) and the car(shiny and bright).  Also cut Rog's hair(no tattoo yet so I had to do it all by myself). Ironed clothes(most of the wrinkles are gone)and washed the dishes(most of the spots are gone).  Knitted(added a few rows).  Went on the Net looking up stuff(some that I will use, but most not).  I was busy, but nothing to really write about.  

I will get out and take some pix of the birds before we leave this resort.  

I will now post some pix I found on the Internet.  Some to make you smile and say wow, some to make you laugh, some to make you hungry and some to make you think(maybe).





Pine cone sculpture.  I am not sure where.  It is really neat looking.  The cones are made from shovels.  Amazing.  Large Pine Cones by sculptor Patrick Plourde 
 

I am thinking they are in Maine somewhere in the sculptor's yard.


 

Thursday, November 29, 2012

Another walk by Peace River.

We went on another walk in the park (resort).  These signs greet us before we start each walk and we also see them during our journeys.  Keeps you on the look out at all times, but I am always looking anyway because I am taking pix.
This is Peace River close to the resort's boat ramp area.  I must report that we did not see any alligators or snakes on this walk.  But, did see a frog.  He was pretty flat and you can see a few tire tracks from rvs really really close to him.  Poor guy.  He croaked or should I say he will not croak any more. 
      "It's a jungle out there."   To quote the theme song to Monk.
We spotted this beauty making a lot of noise by the river.  I think it is a red shoulder hawk because they have signs along the walk that talk about them. 
 
Whether wheeling over a swamp forest or whistling plaintively from a river park, a Red-shouldered Hawk is typically a sign of tall woods and water. It’s one of our most distinctively marked common hawks, with barred reddish-peachy underparts and a strongly banded tail. In flight, translucent crescents near the wingtips help to identify the species at a distance. These forest hawks hunt prey ranging from mice to frogs and snakes. 



A group of hawks has many collective nouns, including a "boil", "knot", "spiraling", "stream", and "tower" of hawks.
It looks to me like this guy is looking for something to eat.
This is a spider.  They have webs all over the place on our walkThey are above you.  If you look really close you can see the web he has spun and is holding on to.
Pretty flowers here and there.
A zebra butterfly.
Peace River is not deep here but, is very clear.  You can see the bottom with all the different colors of moss and water plant life.

We also spotted these hoof prints in the sand.  Not sure if they are deer or Farrel pigs.  They did have a potluck dinner here yesterday were they Bar-B-Cued one of the pigs they killed here at the park.  






I always wondered how they made those blocks for the igloos.  LOL



I have finally found a tattoo Rog can get.  I just love it. 

Wednesday, November 28, 2012

walk

Went for a walk today and saw some neat things.
Rog and the ladies out for a walk with me too.
Little plants growing on a decaying log.  
 
Seeds that were blown onto a branch.  These little seeds are on everything in the woods.
This looks like snow.  It is the seeds from the plant in the pic above.
Yellow flower looks like a butterfly to me.?
This tree looks like a lion to me or another such animal.
White flower.  LOL  There are many flowers still blooming this late in the season, but we are in Florida.
Pretty purple berries.
Another log with moss growing on it this time.
Pretty orange mushroom
Big Elephant Ears not sure if they grow wild in Florida or this has been planted here.
This is the last stop on our trip.  It is the graveyard for picnic tables.  We walked for a little over a mile.  Rog kept saying that the end was just around the next bend in the trail.  NOT  I do need the exercise.




This is probably more true than joke.
 Would love to see this at one of the many Christmas parties I will be going to this year.

Tuesday, November 27, 2012

Sebring, Florida

We did absolutely nothing today.  That said we did go into a town near us called, Sebring do to a little shopping and ate lunch.  
 Sebring is also where our dentist is located and it has some interesting history too.

Sebring
 Sebring was founded in 1912. It was named after George E. Sebring, a pottery manufacturer from Ohio who developed the city. 
Sebring is a city in Florida, nicknamed "The City on the Circle", in reference to Circle Drive, the center of the Sebring Downtown Historic District.  It has a  population of 10,491.

 Sebring is the home of the Sebring International Raceway, created on a former airbase, first used in 1950. It hosted the 1959 Formula One U.S. Grand Prix, but is currently best known as the host of the 12 Hours of Sebring, an annually held American Le Mans Series race.

 Nearby Highlands Hammock State Park is a popular attraction.  We have never camped there, but going through it is the shortest way to the dentist in Sebring and it is a really pretty and interesting drive.


This next bit of interesting information is for the race fans.  I am really not that big of a fan, but found the information interesting.  We have not gone to the race.  Rog says he probably will not because "12 hours!!!!"  Oh well, I must agree. 
Sebring International Raceway is a road course auto racing facility.
Sebring (pronounced "sea bring") Raceway is one of the oldest continuously-operating race tracks in the United States, its first race being run in 1950. Sebring is one of the classic race tracks in North American sports car racing, and plays host to the12 Hours of Sebring, one of the legs of the unofficial triple crown of endurance racing.
The raceway occupies a portion of Sebring Regional Airport, an active airport for private and commercial traffic that was originally built as Hendricks Army Airfield, a WW II training base for the U.S. Army Air Forces.


The first, and still the oldest, European-style endurance race in the Americas owes its genesis to a Russian-born aeronautical engineer (MIT, class of 1928) and entrepreneur named Alec Ulmann.
In the booming years after World War 2 Ulmann was in the surplus aircraft business, so he frequently dropped in at a former military airfield in central Florida where many old planes and parts were still to be found.
But Ulmann also was a car enthusiast, especially of road racing. Sebring’s long, broad runways and intricate network of access roads sparked a dream.
He realized it in 1950—barely. It was December 31st at 3 in the afternoon when a gaggle of sports car drivers executed a “Le Mans Start” by running across the rough runway cement and jumping into their cockpits for a 6-hour enduro.
Many big, fast sports cars—Allards, Aston Martins, Ferraris, Jaguars—raced into that Sunday night, but under Ulmann’s “Index of Performance” handicap formula, pure speed wasn’t necessarily the key. Tampa resident Vic Sharp had driven over in his American-made Crosley Hot Shot simply to watch the fun, but he wound up loaning his tiny, 724-cc roadster to a pair of racers named Bob Deshon and Fritz Koster. They stripped off the windshield and bumpers, drove regularly…and won!
Imagine that New Year’s Eve paddock party. 



Ulmann spent the next 15 months pulling together the first 12-hour race, which was flagged into life early in the afternoon of Saturday, March 15, 1952. A Ferrari led the early going but dropped out when its differential broke, and in the pitch blackness of 1:06 the following morning a Frazier-Nash took the victory flag.
 

 


Monday, November 26, 2012

A walk along the Peace River

We found Florida Steve out on our walk today. 
This is the path we take on our walk.  It is so relaxing and fun.
This is another kind of woodpecker than I wrote about yesterday.  It is smaller.
spotted these butterflies along the walk.  I love the pic with the sunlight on the topside of the butterfly and me on the underside.  They have such beautiful delicate see through wings.
I am amazed and not understanding how this guy can still fly with his wings all chewed up.  He was flitting around like mad going from flower to flower like nothing was amiss.
This is a palm tree with no top and is one of the home of a nest or three of the big woodpeckers I talked about yesterday.  I did not get a pic with them there yet.
This is a pic of another "Ugly Brown Bird", named by my brother, Greg.  He is so tiny and cute, the bird I mean.
 
Alligator!  This is the exact same area I took pics of people hunting for fossils in the river yesterday. 
See how close the Snowy Egret is to the alligator.  

 Now I decorated my house with lights and reindeer too, but never thought of doing this.  This is the home of a hunter, no doubt.  LOL  See, Jerry you can decorate too. 

 
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