Sad to Say Goodbye to Kissimmee Prairie Preserve

March 28, 2016

Friday we will hitch up the car and head down the long crushed shell road and out of the park. The weather is turning and this week the leaves popped on the live oak trees in the campground. Wildflowers are starting to bloom, and the wildlife is getting frisky! We had a spell of dry weather, but now the juicy, humid storms are starting up and the next week promises rain. We have been running the air conditioner due to the heat and humidity and BUGS! The no-see'ums are able to get through the screens at night and the mosquitoes are hatching, so with windows closed we view the prairie.

Our view with storm clouds

Last week we made the five-hour-long trek to our “home” in Green Cove Springs south of Jacksonville to vote in the primary. We took hats, water, and sunscreen since we knew we might be waiting outside in the high 80's heat. After finding our precinct we walked into the beautiful old Victorian-style Presbyterian church. A man sat outside whose job it was to graciously open the door to the fellowship hall for us. Inside we found no line. Two tables with two poll workers apiece took care of us. We immediately walked to one of the dozen or so voting booths, grabbed the attached felt tip pen, filled in the oval for one candidate, put our ballot into the box and walked out the door!

Our voting precinct

Our legal residence

Well, voting was done, so we visited our mail forwarder to pick up the mail and found a local cafe for lunch. Our return trip was broken up by a resupply stop at Trader Joe's outside of Orlando and then we finished our 13-hour round trip to vote! Neither of us regretted the long day. It was good to just set those wheels spinning for a while. North of Orlando while driving through the Ocala National Forest we spotted the Florida Trail through-hiker and his pitbull that I wrote about a few posts ago. Apparently he survived his neck deep water and lost-glasses ordeal on the prairie and was making progress towards his home in Ohio.


This week we made a quick overnight trip back to Naples to see Greg's Dad and say goodbye until the next time we are in Florida. We had a nice lunch out and the opportunity to hear him reminisce about meeting Greg's mother, and his time as captain of a troop carrier in World War II. This time instead of outrunning a storm home, we had great weather both days. We made the short drive over to the Gulf of Mexico beach before we left, just to make sure the water was still there! Our trips to Florida are always in the interior since it is too crowded and expensive to camp at the beaches.

The Naples beach scene

Our cameo appearance on the beach for the winter!

Night before last we had a violent thunderstorm. Even Ranger Chris said it was one of the worst he's seen here. He observed a lightening strike that touched off a fire, but the heavy rains put it out. All part of the natural processes that keep the prairie healthy. Being on the prairie we get the long range view of the lightening as the storms move across the state. The campground was full for Spring Break with more tenters than usual. Not a good night to be in a tent. I would have spent the night in a car!

Swallow-tail Kite returning home before the storm

Rapidly departing thunderstorm

Storm clouds over the only road out.

The animals seem to be getting more active as the weather heats up. We watched a doe and fawn passing by the ranger station. The baby must have been a newborn and was only maybe 18” tall. The six point buck from earlier in the season hasn't been spotted lately. I guess he did his job! The opossums have been visiting our site most days. They amble along looking for insects on the ground. This totally outrages the crows who have nests in the area and they make a ferocious racket. I suppose that opossums climb trees and eat their eggs. Greg heard all the racket one day and went out looking for a possum. Instead he found a diamondback rattlesnake curled under a tree behind the next campsite. The crows seemed to be concerned about it stealing their eggs, too.

Diamondback bedded down for a nice nap

 A short while later an old, slow opossum waddled behind our site and we watched it work its way down to where the rattlesnake was lying. It stopped two feet in front of it and took a nap! Rattlesnake venom doesn't affect possums, but we can't figure out why it chose to sleep so close by. Needless to say, the crows were quite agitated!

Long-suffering possum - suspected egg thief

Very vocal crow who bosses our neighborhood

The little green tree frogs have discovered our rig. We found one inside the driver's side door. Somehow he managed to squeeze through the crack and find a quiet spot inside. Greg tried to shoo him out, but we never saw for sure that he jumped in that direction. He hasn't appeared again, so hopefully he found a more suitable outside location!

One bedtime before the weather had gotten too hot, Greg went to close our skylight. He pushed the screen back and lowered the plastic cover. Just as he latched it we saw that there was a small green tree frog suctioned to the underside, so, now actually inside the rig. Greg opened the roof again and tried to coax it out. It “unsuctioned”, but we didn't see where it went. I didn't notice it fall inside and neither of us saw it go out. After much searching around inside the cab, Greg decided that it must have gone out and got ready to climb into the cabover bed. I asked him to wait and let me check the bedding since, oddly enough, we have tree frog green sheets! I fluffed up the sheets and shone a light around. Hmmm... no frog. Then I glanced up on the wall above Greg's pillow and there he was, suctioned to the wall! This time we managed to coax him out a side window. So glad we got him out! The idea of waking in the night to a frog glued to either of our foreheads was creepy. Greg said it would have caught any stray mosquitoes before they bit us.


We now have one lone male turkey who must be young. He hasn't been too successful at attracting the females. Every time he displays his beautiful feathers for them, they just stroll away. Then he deflates them and if one briefly glances back, he gets all fluffed up again for a few seconds, until she turns away again. He gives it a few tries and then wanders off dejected. Poor guy...

Female Turkeys

Young Tom Turkey being ignored

Tom turkey suddenly noticed Kathleen was too close for comfort.

I was working in the office this week when word came over the preserve radio from the field. The three staffers who are tasked with trying to locate endangered Florida Grasshopper Sparrows heard one call and it responded to their recorded call. Then one was spotted. They won't know for sure until July when they are able to find fledglings and band them whether or not it was the Florida Grasshopper Sparrow, who spends its whole life here on the Preserve, or the migratory Grasshopper Sparrow. Everyone is hopeful that it will prove to be the former. It's numbers are so small that it has been put into a captive breeding program in hopes of saving it. Outside the ranger station is a statue of the extinct Carolina Parakeet, whose last known nest was on this property. It is a constant reminder of the need to do everything possible to keep the Florida Grasshopper Sparrow from suffering the same fate.

Our only view of the endangered Florida Grasshopper Sparrow

Parade of newly hatched grasshoppers - food for sparrows?

Greg is trying to pull as much of the invasive sida bushes as he can before we leave, and doing a survey of what's left to leave with the rangers. Ranger Chris is interested in him returning to drive and narrate swamp buggy tours next winter. If we come back I have asked Chris about doing interpretive work, giving talks about the preserve and whatever else would be appropriate, instead of office work. I have definitely enjoyed the educational aspect of my job the most.

We also enjoy our quiet neighbors...

This past weekend was noisy and busy in both campgrounds which is unusual since most campers are here to chill in the quiet and enjoy the prairie. We had a bunch of horses and owners camped in our campground for the weekend. Today (Monday) is very quiet and is a foretaste of the coming slow summer season. The campers will be sparse and the rangers can go about the work of this huge preserve.

Our quiet campsite on the edge of the prairie

Gopher tortoise encountered on a bike ride

Turkey vulture drying his wings after a storm

We will miss our new friends. The rangers and staff are a unique bunch of men and women who love this prairie and their life here, and are committed to restore and preserve this last public stand of 54,000 acres of Florida dry prairie. It can never be built up the way so much of the rest of the state is. When we took the swamp buggy tour we were able to gaze many miles across the longest undeveloped vista in Florida.

Looking from one hammock to the next across the dry prairie

Bromeliads and moss in an isolated hammock

 
We have enjoyed the other volunteers who have committed themselves to making this park run, and giving our visitors the opportunity to visit and overnight here. So many campers are thrilled to see the amazing stars in the sky of our International Dark Sky park. I am surprised by the number of people planning to visit the park, who call up and ask where they have to go at night on the preserve to see the stars. I tell them to just look up! For those who never see stars in the suburban and urban areas due to all the light pollution, they can't imagine that they don't have to go to a special spot. They just can't imagine how dark it is out here!


Unfortunately, now that we are leaving, we are just getting to know some of the newer volunteers. Doreen shares the Equestrian campground with us as camphost. She and her two little dogs have been fun to get to know. Bob and Lorene are camphosts for the Family Campground and had us over last night for a rollicking game of Mexican Train Dominoes and adult beverages! This week we received in the mail, wonderful poems from a former camphost Michelle. I had no idea she was a fellow creative! I'm sorry that we didn't get to discuss that while she was here. This workcamper life is netting us interesting new friends that we would never have met any other way!

Mexican Train Dominoes

Well, Friday we'll head to Ocala to have a short visit with Amazon Camperforce friends Lynda and Lyle, and then the wheels roll north to family. Mid-May finds us in Virginia at our next paid workcamping job at a huge camping resort in what they call Rivah Country on the Rappahannock River at the Chesapeake Bay. I'll try to post a couple times before then, so check back. Then, I'm sure I'll have lots of interesting tales to tell this summer. Oh, and this week we signed our contracts for the Amazon Camperforce starting in October. Back to the regimented life of warehouses and timeclocks! For now I will savor our last few days of peace and quiet on the prairie...