Travel – Page 18 – Birding Boomers

Guilty Pleasures in Florida

August 7, 2015joannie65354 Comments

Last month’s post on our visit to Fairbanks (here) put me in mind of a couple places we visited in Florida last winter that I think of as “guilty pleasures”. You know the kind of place I’m talking about – places you do not necessarily tell your friends you’re going to visit but you go anyway just because it’s fun or quirky and, what can I say, it’s American.

Now, I’m not including the Fairbanks stops in that category….just meant that writing the blog reminded me of the places in Florida.

So, I’m not talking about museums or historical sites or places of cultural significance that are “good” for you. I’m talking about all the other places we humans tend to love so much. Think about it. These are the places that lure you in with a thousand and one roadside signs and billboards tell you that you absolutely must stop and see them when you’re on the road.

On the one hand, if you have traveled at all in the south, you will have had to have seen a few barns painted with “See Rock City” on the side (or roof) and you know you wanted to go. Admit it.

But Rock City is actually a very lovely garden on the top of Lookout Mountain near Chattanooga in Tennessee and you really should go there…and you don’t have to feel the least bit guilty…there are scenic views and geology and flowers and birds and nature and history….nothing chintzy at all (at least when I was there about 30 years ago).

But let’s take it down one level – remember the last time you traveled down Interstate 95 between North Carolina and South Carolina. Yep, you guessed it – South of the Border!

Some years ago, I used to run that route regularly on my way home to Georgia and every time, I’d see those signs…for miles I’d see those signs telling me I just had to stop at South of the Border. They really must put those signs up at least fifty miles in advance of the place because you cannot possibly miss them. If you’ve been on 95, then you’ve passed South of the Border.

And the signs were all “Mexico”. You couldn’t be any further away from Mexico (physically or culturally) but you’d have thought you were right there getting ready to cross the Rio Grande in Texas. And it would be a totally kitschy Mexico. Now, every time I’d get taken in by those signs and I’d promise myself that one day I was gonna take that exit and I was going to see what all the hubbub was about there just over the South Carolina line. And, so I did. And, it was just exactly what I’d expected…giant souvenir shops and a couple restaurants all decorated very badly with plastic cacti and lots of sombreros. I bought a bunch of tacky things (made in Japan at that time but probably Malaysia these days) with a southwest motif. I also ate a few bad tacos and just about had a good time. It might have been a little better if there at actually been something real there to see…..you know a museum or a battlefield or something…but there wasn’t (at that time). But, you can bet that, when I got back home, I told everyone all about my trip down south but somehow never quite mentioned that little foray “South of the Border”. It’s just the way it is with guilty pleasures…you do it, you enjoy it for what it is and forget about what it isn’t.

Now, you know the truth. I’m easy prey (like many others I’m betting) for any of these places – roadside petting zoos, giant balls of twine, fake dinosaurs, huge rocking chairs, big rocks with names painted on them…..you name it, I’ve probably found myself heading in that direction. At least I did when I was younger and looked for such wonderful quirky things at every bend in the road. Now, I’m older and I am much more sophisticated and I go only to the best places and spend most of my time pondering the mysteries of the universe and gazing thoughtfully at works of art at only the best museums. Right?

Wrong! I’m still a sucker for a little kitsch now and then.

So, last winter, I had a long list of places to visit while we were in Florida sweating out the days until it stopped snowing back home. My list mostly included preserves and refuges and wetlands where the birding would be awesome and I’d, no doubt, see amazing birds and I would learn so much about wildlife and all things natural in Florida. But right smack dab in the middle of my list were a couple of places that just didn’t quite fit into the category of “learning experiences” or “nature excursions”. These were my guilty pleasures of the trip.

The first place involved birds so I can take a little bit of credit. It did involve us “seeing” the birds so I suppose I could call it “bird watching” but I’d never get away with calling it “birding”. And it involved this beautiful pink bird that is native to Florida….well, sorta.

If you want to see flamingos in the wild, you might have to go to South America or Cuba and do a bit of roughing it in Eco-lodges……at least you’d stay in places a tad bit more rustic than Sarasota…which is where we were going to see flamingos. Yes, I know there are some wild flamingos in Florida and I intend to go looking for them the next time I visit the state but, that would have to wait. I had other plans related to flamingos. I mean, seriously, why wait? You cannot just go anywhere and feed the flamingos, can you? Well, yes you can…..if you go to Sarasota Jungle Gardens.

I had heard all about this place and I had checked it out on the internet and I figured it was a tourist trap if ever there was one. And, it does attract quite a few visitors every year. Now, normally, we do not go to gardens or parks or zoos where animals and birds are caged…just cannot take the thought of all those beautiful creatures that are no longer free to live out their lives in their native habitat. And, no, an artificial habitat is not an animal’s native home no matter how much it is prettified up to be or how big (by zoo standards) it seems to be. A three hundred square foot enclosure is never ever gonna be the Pantanal in Africa…no arguing about it…never gonna happen.

But, I had heard that this garden had flamingos and that the birds roamed around the garden (relatively freely) and for a small fee, you could buy a bag of food and you could actually feed the flamingos. That’s right, you walk up and hold out your hand and the birds would walk right up and eat out of your hands. And, of course, you could take pictures to your little heart’s content getting extreme close ups of the birds after you fed them. So, even if you got to see a flamingo in the wild, chances are you would not get a great photo without some serious glass (birders lingo for scopes, binoculars, and camera lens….see, I do pretend to be a serious birder sometimes and I use the language when I think I might sound more impressive).

You know I had to go. And so we locked the address into the GPS and we headed into downtown Sarasota and circled the block until we found the place and traffic let up enough that we could make that left-hand turn into the parking lot and then we were there…..just like traveling in the wilds of South America.

Now, I have to admit, I was excited and ready to feed some flamingos. But Jerry was pretty cool. He’s not the type to succumb to guilty pleasures on vacation like I am and he really doesn’t like to see birds caged up but he was going to do it for me because he knew that I was totally stoked at the thought of getting that close to flamingos.

So he wasn’t going to participate when I bought the bags of food….and he wasn’t going to participate as we walked through the gardens (actually pretty nice) noting the macaws in cages and the iguana laying on the attendant’s shoulders….

…..and he wasn’t going to participate as we went looking for the flamingos…..and he wasn’t going to participate when we found the birds and I started feeding the flamingos or, as they surrounded me and queued up for the food…….

…..and he wasn’t going to participate as I took photos of them sleeping standing up or, as I talked to the birds and tried to pet them (they drew the line at my trying to pat them on the head, etc.)…..and he wasn’t going to participate almost up until I was just about out of food…

…..then, he shrugged and said, “what the heck”, gave into the urge and said that maybe he might just feed a bird or two….you know, as long as he was there anyway.

So, I shared some food from the last bag and we spent some peaceful and happy moments in the warm Florida sunshine surrounded by pink flamingos (and a few white ibises) nibbling at the food from our hands not caring one iota that this was touristy and somewhat tacky and not in the least up to the “standards” for seeing and appreciating birds in the wild. It wasn’t superb or marvelous or educational….it was just plain fun.

Fun… like my second guilty pleasure of the trip. This one would be the last place we visited in Florida and involved orange groves and a swamp buggy.

Like everyone else in the US, I have consumed gallons of orange juice and eaten a many an orange in my time and most of them came from Florida. Since I grew up in Georgia, and, while we could certainly get oranges from California, most of the ones we bought came (and still come) from Florida. When I had visited Florida in the past, we had driven past orange groves and I thought it would be nice to just leave the road and drive off down through the groves, just meander thought the fields and check things out…maybe pick an orange or two and enjoy the good Lord’s bounty in a garden.

But you cannot just go free wheeling down through someone’s farm without violating some property laws and maybe even getting yourself shot at by some farmer who just might not understand your need to meander and see where the oranges are grown.

Now, on to the swamp buggies. Down near the Everglades, back in the day (who’s day I am not sure but it was way before my time and maybe around the time they started building the Tamiami Trail), a mode of transportation was developed for riding through and working in the Everglades. The vehicle they came up with sort of looks like a jeep with big, big wheels – humungous wheels….you know, tall enough and thick enough for driving through the tall sawgrass and swampwater in the ‘Glades (aren’t you now impressed with that?…just picking up the local slang). So I had seen these behemoths and I wanted to ride one of them. It was right up there on my list with riding on one of those flat john-boats with the big fans on the back that Jerry now tells me are more properly called airboats.

So, in my research and planning, I had found a place on the internet (Farmer John’s Showcase of Citrus) that offered swamp buggy rides through citrus groves. See, I could kill two birds with one stone or, at least, see two birds in one bush or something like that. Of course, you know the place was right outside Orlando and catered to all those folks who just couldn’t spend another day with Disney and were looking for something different to do. Farmer John’s was the place. You gotta know that I knew this place was not going to be a visit to a working organic farm where you could pick your own oranges (although you can if the season is right and the oranges are ripe) and work the earth and end your vacation feeling that you had given a few hours labor that somehow contributed to the gross national product and the economy of Florida. Nope, it was gonna be and, in fact, is another tourist trap…..and it was right there at the top of my list.

Well, the “tour” turned out to be just as expected. The swamp buggy turned out to be more like an old school bus on gigantic wheels…which was just as cool as a jeep in its own way. The farm was a real working cattle farm with citrus groves and we did, indeed, get to ride out through the orchards and see hundreds of trees, some of which still had fruit from the last season waiting to be harvested, and some of which were blooming and smelled wonderful.

And to make it educational, the ride came with a tour guide who entertained us with a history of the family-owned farm and what color oranges really are in their native land (green) and a few bad jokes like, “Orange you glad we didn’t get stuck in the swamp and have to walk through the water back past that big ole hungry alligator?”

Yes, there was a nice wide creek/swampy area right in the middle of the property complete with its own resident alligator that we rode through slowly swaying from side to side as the tires cut through the mud and got stuck (momentarily) in holes here and there along the way.

But it wasn’t my birthday and I didn’t get to drive the buggy through the fields like the one lady did because it was, in fact, her birthday. But you had better believe that next time anyone asks me on a tour if it is my birthday, I’m gonna say, “Yes, why yes it is”, loudly and strongly just in case it might mean I get to drive a tractor or swamp buggy.

But this time I didn’t so next time I’ll know….if you go to a tourist trap and you want the full experience, you should volunteer. Now, you might end up on stage doing something totally embarrassing but, then again, you might just get to drive a really cool swamp buggy. Okay, let me change my plan on that – if I’m outside in or on a cool vehicle like a tractor, I’ll volunteer; if I’m inside and there’s a stage, then I’ll just keep my hands down and my mouth shut……but I’ll keep my memories about my all those guilty pleasures.

Return to Alaska (Part 1)

July 10, 2015joannie65354 Comments

It is hot…..and humid….and buggy……and I’m outside weeding in a flower bed filled with weeds and plants I love that have gotten totally out of control. I really don’t like to garden in July. It is just way too hot and I can come up with about two dozen good reasons not to be out there up to my elbows in dirt and weeds. Of course, I have one big reason to be there….the weeds are taking over the flower beds and I haven’t spent any quality time lately with my flowers. So I’m there and I’m getting it done, at least some of it, but my mind is elsewhere. My thoughts drift back a few weeks to Alaska where it is cool….well, it was downright cold some days and I shivered my way through that but, right now, sitting here sweating and scratching, I’m thinking how nice it was to be somewhere cool.

I have to admit, it was buggy up in Alaska too. Our favorite of all the bug jokes was the one about us coming to Alaska because we heard they had the world’s biggest mojitos only to find out they meant mosquitos. (It is always good to get a joke in somewhere in the blog…getting it in right at the beginning sort of takes the pressure off……now back to the trip.)

We had been thinking about going to Alaska for some time and it was certainly on the old bucket list so when it floated up to the top, we figured we might as well get to it. I have to say that any delays in planning the trip were of my own doing since I had way too many ideas on what we should do and how we should make the trip. You see, I had been there before and this would be a return trip for me and there were some things I missed seeing the first time I was there so I wanted to make sure I got to them on this trip. (That’s right – it is all about me!)

It is 1978 and I had been traveling for about eighteen hours with a five year old and I was dead tired and not in much mood for anything but a good meal and a soft bed. But it was getting close to midnight and I wasn’t there yet. I had merely made it to Fairbanks. Little did I know when my husband (then) picked me up at the airport that I had roughly another hundred miles of bad road to go before arriving at Delta Junction which is a junction – a wide spot in the road per some folks.

The town is known for being the terminus of the Alaska-Canadian (ALCAN) highway unless you side with the good folks of Fairbanks who say the road ends there. Delta Junction is also known for its location on the Tanana River and another river whose name I cannot recall. Finally, Delta Junction is the home of Fort Greely which is why I was there.

Before I go further down memory lane, let me take a short break to share something I did not learn the first time I went to Alaska. Okay, I might have learned it but somewhere along the line, I promptly forgot it. “Na” is an aboriginal (Athabascan?) word meaning “river” so adding “na” to the end of a word like “Tana” becomes “Tanana” which means Tana River (more or less). So the Chena is the Che River and the Nenana is the Nena River (again, more or less since I am not really schooled in native languages of Alaska). So, when I say, “Tanana River”, I am being totally redundant and saying, “Tana River River” but had I simply said, “Delta Junction is on the Tanana”, you might not have understood I was talking about a big ole river and you might actually have gone off in another direction and maybe thought it was a mountain or railroad or something.

Now, getting back to Fort Greely, it is situated such that you have beautiful views of Brooks Range (which are mountains and not rivers, of course) and the view from the kitchen of our lovely government quarters was of those beautiful mountains. And the view of the mountains was something I wanted to see again.

As you will surmise, I have digressed again. So, back to 1978, it is midnight and there is no midnight sun because it is February. In February in Alaska, you just get midnight dark for the most part….and cold. You get lots of cold in Alaska in February. I think it was something like 20 below that night and I had on way too few layers (I’m not sure I even knew about dressing in layers then) and my coat was way too small. I remember telling myself, “I have got to get a better coat or I will never survive this tour.” I remember that long drive to Delta Junction and I remember the northern lights dancing like some magical swaying curtain across the night sky. I particularly remember the lights dancing over the newly built Alaska Pipeline where it was shining silver steel ribbon suspended across the Tanana all sparkling color and silver reflected back from the frozen river below. I remember that it was breathtakingly beautiful.

It was this kind of experience I wanted again and that I wanted to share with my (now) husband. So I had lots of ideas about going to Alaska again and what to see and do. But Alaska is HUGE…I mean really BIG. They say you can set Alaska inside the continental US (i.e., lower 48) and Alaska will reach from the Atlantic to the Pacific. (Okay, that’s tip to tip if you lay it sideways and include all the islands. It would be difficult to do…. so just trust me that this was said to give you an idea of how big the 49^th state really is.)

The more I planned and budgeted and ciphered and figured and planned some more, the more I realized that maybe I couldn’t possibly do everything in one trip. It may be a once in a lifetime trip but you just have to whittle down the options available and do what you can. Now, isn’t that the way it is with most vacations? Ultimately, we settled on taking a cruise and land tour which would hit most of the items on my list in about 15 days. It wouldn’t get it all but it would cover a nice mix of things I (we) wanted to see and do.

Up front, I realized that we’d not be doing too much birding although I’d heard so many stories about all the birds to see in Alaska. But birding Alaska was going to need more thought and planning specifically to take advantage of the locations where birding is best….and off the main tourist routes, as it were. So, we decided to go with the basic tour this time and maybe plan a birding trip later in the future…..if possible. Of course, that wouldn’t stop us from looking for birds along the way anyway….which we did.

But I definitely had a few things in mind I definitely wanted to see and do.

ONE: I wanted to see Mount McKinley, or as it was always known to the natives, Denali, “the great one”.

In the two plus years I’d spent at Fort Greely, I had missed the opportunity to get to Denali National Park and to see Mount McKinley. Well, I actually got to see the mountain briefly from the air on a business trip from Anchorage to Fairbanks but I hadn’t gotten to see it “for real”. I mean a brief flyover really doesn’t give you time to really experience the moment. I’m not sure why I never got to Denali back in the 70’s. It was quite a distance to drive but no further than we drove on other trips we took while we lived there. We did get to the Yukon and to Matanuska Valley and to Anchorage and to Seward and to Valdez but for whatever reason we did not get to the area between Fairbanks and Anchorage or drive down the Parks Highway. If I had to guess at this point, we just ran out of time. The Army sent orders and the tour was over. It is the way it always is when you are stationed somewhere with the military…..you spend your time working and living there and get to be a tourist when you can slip a trip in here and there. It was the same in Germany. How do you spend over three years in Germany and not get to Paris? It happens. And it gives you plenty of reasons to try again someday.

So I was going back and I really wanted to see that mountain. I had some concerns about seeing Denali because it is summer and less than 30% of the people who visit Alaska in the summer get to see the mountain. It is just too high and is cloud covered most of the time. Winter is a different story – I’ve heard the view is clear as a bell and cold as well…..heck in the winter time. But, then again, not too many people (tourists, that is) visit Alaska in the winter time.

This time, I thought, I am going to see Denali. And I’m going to visit that National Park. Done. Discussion over. No doubt about it. It was going to happen. And it did. We were delighted with the views and amazed at the beauty of the mountain. We even took a helicopter ride (my first except for a medivac ride that I was told did not count as being a real helicopter ride) and so I got views of the mountain from the ground and, again, from the air. It was amazing. I might have said that already. I took tons of photos….and, like everyone else, said “oh, my gosh” and “awesome” and “cool” way too many times. The mountain was enormous and beautiful and, well, just amazing.

We also enjoyed our time at the National Park and saw all the things you’re supposed to see – Grizzlies, Dall Sheep, Moose, Ptarmigans, Caribou – all except wolves. Okay, we didn’t see wolves but, we saw plenty of Bald Eagles and Golden Eagles and lots of wildflowers. But we didn’t really enjoy going 50+ miles in a converted school bus…really, National Parks Service……if you’re going to make everyone ride your bus through the park, at least get a decent one and wash the windows each morning! (You ride an NPS bus so they can limit the number of visitors and vehicles in the park in order to protect the wilderness and animals. It is a good thing to do….I’m just saying, get a better more comfortable bus.)

TWO: I wanted to go to Glacier Bay National Park.

Pretty much the only way to do this is to do the cruise (take your pick, Princess, Holland, Carnival, etc.). Okay, I’m thinking you can fly or boat or maybe even try to hike into the park but that is going to take more time and more roughing it than I care to do so the cruise it is. You can always drive through Canada and over the mountains into Skagway and then get on a boat to see the Bay…but, again, more time and effort. I have to say the cruise lines have a bit of a monopoly going in making it easy to see Glacier Bay. The only problem is that I get seasick.

When I came back from Alaska in 1980, we took the Alaska Ferry. Great Ferry system and I loved the trip…but hated getting seasick. So, I spent about five days getting sick every time that ferry went through open waters. As long as we were in the inland waterways, I was fine but open water and ground swells laid me out. So I knew I would have some issues with this trip and I packed the Dramamine but I never expected gale force winds on our first day out as the ship crossed Alaska Bay and open waters.

The land tour had gone very well (another blog on another day) but the first twenty-four hours of the cruise were excruciating for me. And, being pill-phobic, I put off taking the Dramamine until it was too late. Ultimately, it hit and I got sick…..well, I had been queasy and nauseated the whole time but full force sea sickness did not hit until evening. I dare not gross you out with the details but I have to tell you about the HAZMAT team that came in to clean up the cabin. All my “sickness” had been in the bathroom but the cleaning team (gloves, masks, and the whole shebang) wiped down the whole cabin. Anything I might have touched had to be cleaned and disinfected. And, just to make sure it was all done properly, they did it again the next day. Of course, the next day, the ship was in the inland waters so there were no white caps or winds or rolling seas and I was perfectly fine but, no matter, the hazmat boys came back and wiped it all down again.

One more little note on my seasickness – we called room service for ginger ale and some saltines. I guess they just could not even consider just bringing a couple packs of crackers….they brought a tray with a plate filled with crackers……and utensils because I couldn’t possibly eat crackers without a fork, spoon, and knife!

But, at least the hazmat boys didn’t quarantine us and we were able to fully enjoy the trip through Glacier Bay and we got to see glaciers and more glaciers and scenery like you wouldn’t believe even existed.

And the glaciers were beautiful and way bigger than life and, well, dare I say it again, just amazing? I could have stayed there for several more hours watching Marjorie Glacier…..it wasn’t doing much, calving now and then, but even so, I could have sat there watching this blue wall of ice until past dark if I could have. (And we did get midnight sun here so dark would have been a good long time coming.)

THREE: I was determined, in spite of the potential for another bout of seasickness, to go whale watching.

And, what can I say but it turned out to be marvelous? We took the boat out of Juneau and had a great afternoon. We spent the morning at Mendenhall Glacier in what we thought was never ending rain. But, by afternoon and the time for the whale watching, the rain was mostly gone except for scattered showers. But the whales didn’t care about the rain so why should we? We were able to see Humpback Whales and Sea Lions and Dall’s Porpoises (no relation to the sheep), and Bald Eagles. And I did not get even a whimper of nausea.

And I would have liked for the boat to have gone on chasing those whales for hours but time ran out way too quickly. Just as an aside, the best way to find whales is to look for other whale watching boats…they seem to congregate once a whale or two is spotted. (Or, maybe that is how whales find humans when they go out human-watching.) We got one last “whale tale” before the boat turned and headed back into shore.

Mountains, whales, bears, moose…..we got a good sampling on our trip. And, yes, I will tell you more in later blogs. And, yes, I will admit that getting a second taste of Alaska does make me want to go back again. And, finally, yes, if I go back again, I would like to stay longer and do more roaming around on my own exploring the wilderness and looking for some of those birds I missed on this trip. I’d want to do it all……..as long as I can find places to stay with running water and hot showers and electricity and a warm comfortable bed to sleep in once my roaming is done each day.