Here’s a few more of Blue Spring State Park, with better weather. Some manatees were in the spring run the last day we visited. (Photo by zanna.)

The water has a much different character in the sunlight. (Photo by quoderat.)

This was one of the neatest state parks that we’ve been to so far. The only access to the park is by your own boat or a very short ferry ride.

“In 1955, a dragline operation recovered a large wooden owl carving from the St. Johns River in the vicinity of the parking lot of Hontoon Island State Park near a burial ground that had been established more than 3,300 years ago.” [Florida State Parks] The Timucua owl totem that was uncovered “is the largest pre-Colombian wood carving found in Florida, and the only totem of its kind in the eastern United States.” [wiki] Replicas of this and a second totem are near the visitors center. (by zanna)

We watched and heard several hawks, woodpeckers and flitty birds. This pileated woodpecker landed somewhat close by. (by zanna)

The nature trail along the west side of the park mostly stays in stands of palm with occasional huge old oaks, all covered in mosses and lichens (both by quoderat)

Before the nature trail ascends a shell midden, a wide hill created by shells discarded by Native Americans which the forest has now grown over the top of, the trail provides a view of the Hontoon Dead River. (by zanna)

It remained fairly cold for this region all day, but this lone gemmed satyr hid in a palm frond near us briefly. (by quoderat)

The weather lately has been rainy and a bit cool, so we haven’t been spending quite as much time outside.

This is Blue Spring State Park. (Photo by quoderat.)

The land on which this park sits has had many uses over the past few thousand years: a native American settlement; a steamboat stop; a private residence; a railroad stop; a tourist destination and even an orange grove. Now the palms and oaks have initiated their revanche. (Photo by quoderat.)

Today we visited Ellie Schiller Homosassa Springs Wildlife State Park. The park is zoo-like, but not quite a zoo. It contains an odd mix of truly wild/uncaged and captive animals. Many of the wild animals are Florida natives or regular migratory visitors lured in by free food and the relative safety of the enclosures, while other parts of the park have cages with red wolves, birds in an aviary, and even a hippopotamus.

One of our favorite parts of the park was the underwater viewing area that just teems with fish. These are wild, non-captive fish that swim up into the spring. (Photo by quoderat.)

The day was grey and it rained a little as we were leaving. This is a shot of the Homosassa River. (Photo by zanna.)

The park had a flock of flamingoes with other birds flamingling in. (Photo by quoderat.)

And here’s Lu the hippopotamus. (Photo by zanna.)

Apparently the pelicans feel safe enough here to make a small rookery. It’s the first time we’ve ever seen a brown pelican chick. (Photo by quoderat.)

We saw a caracara. (Photo by quoderat.)

And a burrowing owl. (Photo by quoderat.)

This bobcat was pacing its cage. (Photo by quoderat.)

These wood ducks (female and male) are migratory visitors and are not caged. (Photo by quoderat.)

We’ve by no means become experts at this long-term travelling thing, but now that we’ve been at it two weeks or so, it is starting to feel more like a journey instead of just a vacation. The coolest part may just be getting out and walking in quiet places each day. We don’t have a routine to follow, and we’re usually not in a hurry. In order to not burn out, and also to match our preferred rambling pace, we aren’t trying to see too many things in a day. There are so many interesting looking spots that we aren’t getting to visit, but we can generally stay as long as we like at the places we do choose. Most every location is new to us, and we’re enjoying seeing the different scenery as we move from place to place. If there’s a convenient country highway, we’ve been taking that instead of the interstate.

Without a routine though, there is a lot of research and decision making to do each day. We don’t have any convenient fallbacks to save time or energy, unless you count McDonald’s sweet tea and fries. We’re making extensive use of, and also wishing for improvements in, google maps and navigation, and also trip advisor. Where is the nearest post office on a route we might take? Do any of these small town restaurants have decent reviews or will we be served rotting tomatoes on our salad, despite decent reviews? (true story) Do any of our next couple of lodgings provide onsite laundry, or do we need to find a laundromat?

Sorting through photos is also taking up quite a bit of time (we both take a lot of photos). This was true for our weekend adventures in our previous life, but now we have new pictures to process almost every day. I now understand why photographers need assistants. Between all of this, we’re ending up with surprisingly little down time. We’ve started intentionally making time for management of the trip instead of just slipping it in here and there.

This weekend, we swung by our storage unit for a planned exchange of items, now that we have a somewhat better sense of what we actually want with us. We forgot a couple of things, but mainly we put gear back into storage. It was really convenient that our particular path wound down Florida and then back up so that we could easily include a return visit. Opening our storage unit door now, it looks like so much stuff, despite having gotten rid of almost all of our furniture and a good chunk of the rest of our belongings. We’re now much more aware of what it takes to carry what we have with us in and out of each place we stay at. While we’re nowhere near ultralight, we’ve slimmed down to things that have a planned purpose, nothing obnoxiously bulky (full-sized Scrabble) or that we have multiple versions of (five USB 3 cables?!). We also didn’t leave ourselves any time to pack our traveling gear properly when we were busy moving out of our previous home. Hopefully now we’re better organized, with our less frequently used items stashed out of the way.

So, we agree with all of the travel advice, bring only the the things you need, and you probably need way less than you think you do.