ARMADILLO--

We enjoyed a geocaching outing today and, while working just northwest of Sebastian, FL, saw at least a dozen of these curious critters along one county road.  They exceeded in number the total of armadillos we have seen in six plus snow-birding seasons in the Vero Beach area.

This photo was done with a cell phone by caching partner Betty (Boop) Maus who winters in our RV park.  Although, while commonly viewed as a sub-tropical animal, they have pushed their range as far north as Indiana.

Several of our team clicked away with their phone cameras and this critter, obviously aware of our presence, didn't seem to mind terribly.  I later learned they have poor eyesight, thus explaining its inclination to munch some Armadillo lunch while generally ignoring us.

POTPOURRI--

"Editor's Note:  When I changed telephones recently to a Samsung Galaxy 7, I lost the ability to download photos for use in the blog.  That problem continued when I lost that phone and replaced it with a Samsung J-3, or whatever.

Since photos are a key component of my blog entries that effectively shut down publication until I recently discovered a work-around so I will be using that in the interim to get back to the pleasure of sharing stories with you."

Square Dancing in the Florida Keys!

That's Sue and I with Homer Magnet, a popular Ohio square dance caller, and wife Susie preparing for lunch at Sloppy Joe's Bar in Key West.  Sue and I drove down to the Marathon, FL area where Homer has a snowbird calling gig and enjoyed a delightful dance with their local dance club.  The following day the four of us romped around Key West where we shared some geocaching with them

There is a cache at the southern-most tip of the US and another at the Zero "0" mile-marker for US Highway 1.  Sue and I logged both of them while Homer and Susie participated.  What a hoot!  ...and I am convinced that visit likely will be the highlight of our season.

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Geocaching near Melbourne, FL--

The clue for finding this cache was stated simply as "Palmettos".  As you can plainly see Sue and our friends Greg and Leslie are standing in the middle of forest of those plants.  We failed to see the humor in the hint but found the cache regardless.  It was a tiny container glued into a softball and lying near the roots of one of the bazillion plants represented above.  Greg was on his knees to make the find.

Local geocaching friends who own the Space Coast Geocaching Store put together the day's caching romp in Melbourne's Wickham Park.  Our caching team besides the four of us included good friends Mike and Linda from Columbus/Marion, OH and Betty, Elaine and Bev from upstate NY.  We signed the cache logs as Team OHNY.

During our hike of several miles while finding 16 caches for the day we encountered numerous Gopher Turtles.  These creatures live in sandy burrows everywhere in the state and politely endure pesky photographers, like me, doing this photo from just a couple of feet at nearly turtle eye level; with my apologies, of course.