August 07th, 2024

With all the furor  over the big Storm, my planned Photo Safari Report got lost in the shuffle!  Oh dear!  I try to write those up as quickly as possible so that I don't forget to include any of the little thoughts I have while hiking.  But alas, since Joy and I hiked last Thursday, nearly a full week ago now, I probably have forgotten a thing or two that I was originally planning to say.  Drat.

BUT  I will write it up as best I can anyway.  Please Bear With Me.  I'm old, I forget things sometimes.

At any rate, as I said, Last Thursday, before we knew there would be a doggone storm, Joy and I headed out to Carlton Reserve, which is one of our favourite places to hike as it has loads of trails and we always find interesting things to snap.  We arrived nice and early, as we'd hoped, with not one other soul in sight. Which should have been our first clue.

We chose our first trail and headed on down, snapping a little of this and a little of that along the way:

And then we rounded a curve and dang, nothing but muck and water as far as our eyes could see.  We couldn't even go around it because the water pooled in every direction.  I mean, this time of year it's not unusual for there to be some trails flooded, but this was a little unexpected.  Oh well.  We turned around, headed back to where we started and set out along a different trail.  Once again, capturing a few photos as we strolled along:

Sadly we didn't get very far before we found a lot of this:

Double Dang.  "Water, Water Everywhere, Not a Drop to Drink" so sayeth I while quoting the Ancient Mariner (Samuel Coleridge).  Every direction we looked, every trail we attempted was flooded.

Now what.  Sadly, we trooped back to the car and debated what to do next.  Shall we just give up?  Or try somewhere else?  Part of the issue here is that if one preserve is flooded, odds are that the others are too.  One of the things that Florida has a lot of is water. Loads of it.  Not just ocean and gulf, but lakes, rivers, ponds, streams, creeks.  You want water baby?  Florida's got it!

We decided to at least try one other local hiking spot.  It's a small preserve and we've been there roughly a zillion times, recently!  But a hike is a hike is a hike  AND it was on the way home so why not.  Joy pointed the car to Curry Creek Preserve.

We were greeted by a guard Lizard.  We assume he was the guard.  He was the strong silent type and didn't say so,  but he had that look about him y'know?

Honestly, I did not have high hopes for doing yet another Curry Creek hike, but on the other hand, I do love being outside tramping around in the forest and I love spending time with my sister soooo what the heck, why not.  Gave myself a little attitude adjustment and was rewarded with some nice birdie shots.  Not a lot, just three or four I think:  (turns out it was five, sorry)

A number of bugs, one of which I didn't even know what was (still don't):

Much drier trails, thank goodness.  It turns out you can only bleach your socks so many times before they disintegrate. Every time we hike through muck and wet, I come home with socks that are beyond disgusting, hence the bleach.

The only water we saw stayed right where it belonged, right in the Curry Creek basin.   Excellent Job

Found a few more botannicals:

And that's about it.  It was not what we planned but it was still lovely.  A bit of a stutter-step at the start though so that's what I'll call this one, The Stutter-Step Hike.

After this big storm, we definitely won't be attempting any preserves this week so you are safe from another Photo Safari Report any time soon.  Hope you enjoyed this one tho!