BETTY BOOP--
Well sort'a

Sometimes a picture deserves a spot on the blog just because it is nice.  This photo came along during a recent geocaching outing on a cool day along the Stick Marsh north of Fellsmere, FL where we had just enjoyed a visit to their annual frog festival.

That's Betty Maus (aka Betty Boop in geocaching circles) who hails from Tupper Lake in the bumpy part of upstate NY and winters in our mobile home/RV park in Vero Beach.

The massive, fresh-water impoundment to the west of Betty's point of view was featured in our fishing tale Click! from last winter's sub-tropical celebration of winter's passage.

On this day she and I were beating our way through a palmetto wooded peninsula in search of a geocache with a high level of difficulty due to the fact it usually required a wading episode on the way through waters whose ownership usually was claimed by a large population of alligators.

We paid careful attention to our passage but the resident gators likely were enjoying their submerged solitude on this abnormally chilly day.  Nevertheless, we didn't brave the wade and stopped about 350 feet short of the cache's advertised location.

Maybe there will be a warm day and a kayak ride in my near future.

Our geocaching companions, my lady Sue and Ohio square dancing friends, Mike Friedman (Columbus) and Linda Adkins (Marion) chose to wait out our hike in the warm comfort of Mike's spiffy, pick-up truck; our chariot for the day.

Sue's choice was based on her trying to stay comfortable in the arctic-like (her opinion) afternoon temperature of 50 something degrees.  Linda stayed in the vehicle because of her abundant common sense and Mike sat out our adventure because of, well, let's say geriatric considerations.

I like it when Mike is in our daily crowd.

That demotes me from No 1 in the usual pecking order of most annual trips around the sun.

Curious about the resident gator population?  Take a peek here for our blog story about an airboat ride on adjacent Blue Cyprus Lake a year or so ago.

During preparation for the above event I swapped emails with Ohio square dancing and caching friend Nancy Meinzer, who, along with her hubby Mark, introduced Sue and me to geocaching.  Nancy, who would prefer to live trap rather than swat flies, was skeptical about the content of a "frog festival".

I told her the frog festival is like most other festivals but I suspected both she and a bunch of frogs would take exception to the menu.

Ain't life grand.

A PAIR OF OSPREYS--
and a gator or two

While assembling photo files from our winter in Florida I noticed a few more pics worth sharing from our airboat ride on Blue Cyprus Lake near Vero Beach.

Can you imagine listening to the sounds of the jungle as you glide through this marvelous, sub-tropical wildlife habitat?

'TILL WE MEET AGAIN--

We returned to Ohio Saturday, April 21 with mixed feelings.  It is hard to deny the fascination of sub-tropical breezes and all the pleasures unique to the Florida scene.

Yet it also is painful to be away from family and friends--especially our square dancing Johnny Appleseeds--for those four wintry months.

Now, we will enjoy rekindling our Ohio activities for the next 8 months or so and will leave the family circumstances of the Christmas season dictate our next departure date. 

Our Florida blog stories concluded with the airboat ride published April 21st.  Today we offer a little wrap-up featuring a few unpublished photos.

The pelican on the dock piling above was, itself, celebrating the arrival of morning on a piling near the Fort Pierce Causeway Bridge; that day of our recent deep sea fishing adventure.

The pelican's companion, the alligator, was found on our last visit to the Merritt Island Wildlife Refuge, just before our departure for home.  That outing celebrated the spring break visit of Sue's granddaughter Mackenna and her friend Amber from the Cleveland area.

Thank you Sunshine State for the marvelous weather these past four months and the sensational critters who blessed our experience with their presence in many of our wanderings.

We opened the story of our trip south with a portrait of a giraffe in the Jacksonville Zoo.  That was a nice picture but it is of far greater comfort to see wild animals roaming freely.

We enjoyed seagulls everywhere.

Pelicans and turtles and crabs too.

We enjoyed the dolphins who often enhanced our mealtime views along the waterfronts.

I enjoyed the hammerhead shark who prowled about our fishing boat, reminding us of a human's real place in nature's food chain.

And then, this; on our last weekend...

...A Fairy Festival at the McKee Botanical Gardens (think Kingwood with a very tropical flavor) where lots and lots of little lads and lasses romped the grounds in the make-believe world of angel's wings and magic wands and pirate's cardboard cutlasses for the lads.

Some older princesses got into the spirit of the day too like the lady above with her colorful arrangement of garden cuttings serving as her angel's wings while she tends to her photography chores.

Yes, thank you Florida.

The camper's modest storage fee is paid and it will rest on our spiffy lot until we next grapple with the thorny question of abandoning Ohio's usual winter discomfort and, alas, our Ohio families and friends for our third season of snow-birding in the sunny south.

SUE DID WHAT!!

Folks who know my lady realize she tends to get seasick while watching sunlight sparkle through an aquarium.

As you can plainly see above she and good friend Dee Weeks (left) are boarding an airboat of all things.  The event was on Blue Cyprus Lake, a 6,500 acre body of fresh water near Vero Beach.  It is the origin of the St. John's River which flows north from the lake to Jacksonville, FL where it dumps into the Atlantic.

The event was launched when my daughter TJ bought us a Christmas gift certificate of two rides with the Florida Cracker Airboat Ride folks.

How could Sue balk at that generosity?

Actually, she did quite well; better than I expected.  The only casualty was my left leg where her grip dug into my leg muscles in direct proportion to the boat's velocity.  I expect a quick recovery.

Alligators, lots of alligators, were the featured attraction of the ride.
 
This handsome fellow chose to do a bit of formation swimming with us before great respect and a strong sense of self preservation caused us to do a discrete course change away from his basking territory.

Our very capable boat captain, Lawrence Kyzer, explained the alligators depend on environmental factors to regulate their body temperature; basking in the sun to maintain their favored 82 degrees of body temperature, allowing them also to digest their food.  When the water temperature reaches 82 degrees they usually stay submerged to enjoy that thermal benefit.

He estimated the gator in the small photo was 10 to 11 feet long.

I thought the one swimming with us was at least twice that size, but most males do not grow much over 13 feet.

Kyzer's 20 foot vessel was powered by a 400+ horsepower Lycoming aircraft engine capable of propelling it, lightly loaded, 60 to 70 mph.  His dad taught him to operate an airboat when he was 5 years old and he's been doing it ever since; owning his own business the past 7 years.

His vast experience was quite obvious as we glided some 6 to 8 miles across the lake and its system of canal-laced wetlands.

We were treated to close peeks at several Ospreys (above) and saw one nice group of very colorful, Purple Gallinules (next lower).

This marvelous event took place April 13th; just days before our scheduled return to Ohio.  There is some chance we will be square dancing in Ohio by the time you read this.

BANANA SPIDERS cont.--
and a new blog schedule

The colorful, large spider above is the female.  That's her male consort upper right.  Not hard to guess who rules that household.

*          *          *

When I started the blog five years ago this past January it was published daily for most of its first year.  That schedule then was relaxed to several times weekly.  Now, as retirement rolls along, it is time to relax our publishing schedule a wee bit more.

We are hoping to do one feature story weekly.  With any luck it will arrive every Saturday, likely in a photo-story format just as it has been over these years.

Additional postings will be made during the week as noteworthy events present themselves.  Don't be alarmed if that does not happen too often.  In those instances, we likely took another week's vacation--in our ongoing celebration of retirement.

< Smile >

We'll do our best.  Photography has been a passion I've enjoyed most of my life.

That passion remains.

The ORCA story Saturday was the first in our new, weekly format.

Stories under production at this very moment include the Jupiter, FL lighthouse, an airboat ride, a spring-training baseball game with the NY Mets who do their annual, tune-up in nearby Port St. Lucie and, a deep sea fishing outing.

Who knows what else will turn up.  Or when.  That's the fun of it.

Please stay tuned.

  

 

Three very muscular, 275 horsepower outboards will propel this coast guard vessel with an inflatable hull (foreground) at nearly 46 knots in its law enforcement and search and rescue duties with the US Coast Guard station in Marblehead, OH.

COAST GUARD STATION MARBLEHEAD
...and lots of service memories

Pleasure bombards the soul when good memories are rekindled.

I had that thrill recently when I visited a US Coast Guard facility for the first time since my discharge from active duty nearly 50 years ago.

During life time seems to dissolve. It was apparent that morning at the Marblehead Coast Guard station when the young guardsman who met Sue and me at the door asked when I started my service. “1958,” I admitted casually.

His startled look turned into a knowing smile when he admitted that was 50 years before he joined.

My trip through nautical nostalgia that day actually began a year or so ago when a few of us coast guard veterans assembled ourselves and formed a body that grew to be known as the Buckeye Coasties.

On a recent weekend we and our ladies reassembled ourselves—almost 40 strong—in Port Clinton where nostalgia was trumped only by laughter from an occasional tall tale.

After a Friday night mixer at the motel the meat of the visit began with a guided tour of the Marblehead Lighthouse that next morning. It is the oldest lighthouse in continuous operation on the Great Lakes and has guided sailors safely along the rocky shores of Marblehead Peninsula since 1822.

From there it was on to Coast Guard Station Marblehead, a very modern facility built in 1981, which traces its history to being one of the first 7 ever built on the Great Lakes in 1876.

As we toured, my memory drifted those 50 years to the old, wooden lifeboat station in Charlevoix, Michigan where I began my service.

I remember standing in the watch tower up there as the search and rescue operation for the oar boat Carl D. Bradley played out in the constant squawk of radio traffic. She was 630 feet long and broke in half—and sank—in a monstrous storm just 12 miles southwest of nearby South Fox Island.

I watched the morbid process of bodies being delivered to the temporary morgue in our station’s garage as I manned that radio and kept the official log of the horrific event.

That was just days after my arrival there from boot camp and a prompt lesson in the power of the sea and the mission of my service’s sometimes somber duty.

The names of the two survivors out of the 35 man crew of that oar boat are forever burned in my memory; Elmer Fleming and Frank Mays. I hope their lives have treated them kindly ever since.

I remembered standing on the heaving deck of the CG buoy tender White Lupine as we pounded our way through storms on Lake Ontario to provide maintenance service to its giant buoys.

I remembered ice on the interior bulkheads of our berthing compartment when we were frozen to the dock in the long winters of Ogdensburg, NY on the St. Lawrence Seaway.

I remembered taking the Jeep from my duty station in Oswego, NY where I was serving as the group’s yeoman and searching the shoreline toward Sodus Point for a barge that had broken from its tow in a storm the previous night on that same lake—and finding it, complete with its surviving crewmember who was really happy to see me as his ride beat itself against the shoreline rocks in the cold morning’s light.

Thanks Buckeye Coasties. And, thanks to you modern coasties for your service to our country. May you one day enjoy the warm fuzzies of your very own-even sometimes tragic-memories.
_____________________
A self-righting, 47 foot cutter of 40,000 pounds displacement is pictured to the right rear in the lead photo. It is the primary vessel for the overall mission of the Marblehead CG station and is well adapted to heavy weather operations common on this shallow lake.

In the small photo a 20’ airboat is pictured at the ready in the station’s boat house. It is handy in the marshes of the station’s operating area and was the boat used in the ice-floe rescue of several hundred folks drifting off shore near Oak Harbor in February 2009.

The group photo shows some of the nearly 40 coast guard veterans and ladies of the Buckeye Coasties organization on tour at the Marblehead CG Station with three very professional station personnel flanking the group in blue uniform, jump suits.