Wild time in Florida

We did not need to be in central Florida for the first show until Monday but we left early so that we could camp along the way and do extra flea markets. We love to find city, state and national parks. On the way down, we ate lunch at a city park surrounded by beautiful old gnarly oak trees and old frontier building. Coming through Mayo we saw goats and sheep and cows. When we make it to the state park, we check in and the first thing that we saw was a man on a bike almost get hit by a deer running across the road. Then, we set up and headed out for a hike at dusk. A European couple was coming out of river with a canoe and said that they had seen two crocodiles. Mark hated to tell them that it was not a crocodile anywhere in this area. This is gator country. We saw squirrel, deer, black ducks and the most armadillo that we have ever seen. We also heard and saw sand hill crane flying in formation, heading back north. The next morning we took another hike. This time we hiked through the prairie. I did not even know that Florida had a prairie. We went up the watch tower and saw wild horses and herd of bison in the distance. They bison came toward the tower and then turned. We decided to go on the prairie trail. Right after going through cattle fence, we saw the the bison, right in front of us, very close. We did not move and neither did they. We watched each other for a while and then the lead bison took off running through the prairie and scared up a herd of deer who ran in front of them until they were all out of sight. It was surreal. We just stood there and watched, then, Mark said, you don't see that every day in Moultrie. We left camp and started working the next day. We worked hard setting up booths, buying and selling for 12 days. We decided to stay an extra week after all of our planned shows, because so many of our new friends told us of two great shows further south. We did not know which one to choose, so we went by both. Neither one of them had electrical hook up, so, we decided to just find a state park. The first thing we saw at the campsite was a cat on a leash being taken for a walk. We took a little walk. grilled a steak, washed clothes, sat around camp fire and chilled. The next morning we took a long hike. We followed a river that must have been spring fed because it was crystal clear and we could see the fish. Next, we came up on a hawk sitting on a branch. Soon after that we saw an owl sitting in a tree above our head staring at us. I asked her what she was doing out this morning and she just gave me one more look and flew away. We heard a loud noise just to our right and saw a herd of black wild hogs running through the woods. I had never seen that before. We had seen where they had been rooting around. Mark said they are called piney wood rooters. Next we decided to go to the beach in Honeymoon state park near Tampa. We had a picnic as a sea fog rolled in. It got colder and you could hardly see the water. We walked on the beach for a little while with sun, sand, seaweed, seashells and swim suits, and it is still winter. We fought heavy traffic going through Clearwater and Tampa and was ready to get back to the woods. So, we found a very remote campsite than was for people with horses. It was late and we are tired so, we found the ranger and payed and stayed. Mark called up a bobwhite quail by whistling and saw bats flying around while making a fire. I cooked fish and grits. We sat by the fire and listen to night noises, wind in the trees, crickets, frogs, the cracking of the fire and felt the stress of the day in traffic melt away. The next morning we had our last picnic breakfast. We saw a rare red headed woodpecker that is own the endangered species list. While on our last Florida hike we had a very large buck run across our path. We walked on an easy path for a while going down hill. Later, it became a very sandy horse path going up hill, very hard to walk, but you just have to keep going until you reach your goal. For us, the goal was to get camp for showers and water and food. We had a wild time in Florida with wildlife and nature.