Wanderung 1

Key West or Bust

Holts Take Time in Toyota Truck to Tramp Together in Tepid Temperatures!

January-February 2003

Monday, January 13, 2003
It rained rather heavily during the night, but fortunately it started only after we went to bed and stopped by the time we arose in the morning. We were happy to find that our tent was still watertight, especially as we had the electric heater going full blast and I didn’t want to mix electricity and water! As it was, we were “toasty warm and cozy” as my mother used to say. After a shower and breakfast, we packed up everything but the tent and drove across the street to take the Volksmarch in the park.

The Little Talbot Island Volksmarch mainly uses a trail that circles the park. The first part of the trail leads north among the dunes while the return leg is along the beach along the Atlantic Ocean. The dunes contained a veritable forest with really large live oaks that had branches almost as thick as trunks spreading horizontally over 25 feet. Between the oaks, cedars, and saw palmettos, it showed how impenetrable this country must have been to the original settlers. We were also surprised that you couldn’t tell whether you were a 100 feet or a mile from the beach. They had a marker for a “sparkleberry” bush that was related to the blueberry and had leaves very much the same. The marker said that birds ate the berries but didn’t clarify if they were edible for humans, much to my disappointment.

When we finally walked across the dunes to the beach, it was remarkable how difficult it was to walk in the loose sand—it kind of exercised all of the muscles down your leg and we later could feel the stretching that resulted from this walk. Walking down the beach was fun—it was an ideal place for anyone looking for shells, especially because it was low tide and no one else had walked that way. We walked along the high tide mark and looked for unusual shells. I found a couple of sand dollars and Monika found a torpedo-shaped shell and a spiral shell that were different from the usual run of clamshells, of which there was almost an overabundance. Altho it was overcast and cold, we had a great time and would recommend this walk to anyone who likes dunes, beaches, and shells.

We stamped our books—remarkably difficult with numb fingers—and drove back to the campsite to pack the tent, which was only slightly wet by this time. As usual, it was harder to roll and pack a wet tent but it all fit easily into the car top carrier I installed in the back of the truck’s bed. It was really nice to have all that space for the camping gear rather than trying to stuff it into every nook and cranny on a small automobile. After packing we drove back over to I-95 and then south to Daytona Beach before turning west on I-4 for about 17 miles to get to the Blue Springs Campground. They had campsite 15 available for 2 nights and we called into the reservation service to get it for the following 2 nights, so we could walk the trails in this area in a leisurely fashion.

We set up our campsite and decided to take a walk around as we still had some time before dinner. So we wandered down a trail to the Blue Springs just for fun. When we arrived at the run flowing from the spring, we were very surprised to see manatees, lots and lots of manatees. I got busy taking pictures of the singles, pairs and what looked like pods or small family groupings of the critters. The signs around the spring said that the manatee’s nearest living relative is the elephant, but the manatee is adapted to grazing in a marine environment and certainly ends up looking different than an elephant! They moved so slowly and gracefully that we found it very relaxing just to watch them kind of flowing along and breathing every 3-4 minutes—that’s life in the slow lane! After that nice surprise we returned to camp for a dinner and quiet evening of writing (me) and crocheting (Monika) before going to bed.

I saw two animals during the evening. The first time I heard some rustling in the underbrush and saw an armadillo—he was busy nosing among the underbrush and seemed totally unconcerned and unaware about me or our campsite. Later a raccoon came around who was clearly investigating us, but I told him to “git” and he disappeared into the underbrush. But during the night we heard some rather loud thuds and bumping from the bed of the truck, and when I went out with the flashlight I saw two bright eyes near a box of Kashi cereal in the underbrush. I figured that was our cereal box because doggoned few people would be camping with a new box of Kashi multi-grain cereal and I rushed in to retrieve it. The raccoon was quicker than I, however, and he got the plastic bag of the cereal and disappeared into the underbrush while I was left with the empty box. Score 1 for the raccoon.

I checked our food boxes in the hopes of preventing a recurrence and was surprised to find that the lid was still on the food box and secured by the bungee cord in the middle. But looking carefully I saw that the latch at one end was open and from the paw prints I deduced that the raccoon had released the latch, pried up one end, and fished out the box of cereal that was lying flat on top. Clearly this was an experienced, not to say expert, raccoon. So I put the food box in the car top carrier and latched it with the combination locks, figuring that picking a combination lock is beyond even a smart raccoon’s capabilities. The smaller food box we put in the cab of the pickup and sure enough, the raccoon did not do any more damage during the night. Experience is usually a dear teacher, but this time I learned about securing our food supply in raccoon territory, and all it cost me was a $3 box of Kashi, so I figured I learned this lesson rather cheaply.

Copyright 2002 by Robert W. Holt
Prolog
January 2003
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