July 08th, 2020

Despite the fact that it's July in Florida which means that the weather is both hot and humid, Joy and I are still insane enough to continue our weekly hikes.  Seriously, we must be certifiable. Or at least passionate enough about our photo safaris that a little unpleasantness is not enough to deter us.  And, as one or the other of us frequently points out, "an artist must suffer for the sake of their work".  I don't know if being sweaty and hot and slogging through muck truly counts as suffering or if what we do is really art, but still it's what we do.

Ready?  Let's go.

The thing that struck me the most about this hike were the flowers.  Loads of flowers, buckets of them, piles of them, fields of them in every direction everywhere we went.  It was glorious.  The fragrance was indescribable.  It didn't feel quite real. Almost like a dream sequence in some romantic movie.

It naturally follows that if you have flowers you also have bugs of all sorts.  Mostly dragonflies, but a few butterflies, a couple of gnarly spiders and the most surprising of all, a bee swarm!  Holy Cats!

We started early so there was a lot of dew on the ground and the leaves.  That early the light is so gorgeous bouncing off those dewdrops and appears as if someone sprinkled glitter everywhere.  There had been a rainstorm overnight so the water table was high which further means that we had to slog through a few puddles and jump a couple of streams.  Oh and there was  a rainbow!  That was a beautiful surprise! Totally worth it.

And birds. Of course there were birds.  Lots and lots and lots of birds.  As always we hear we more of them than we see. But we tippy-toed quietly enough that occasionally several would blast across the path in front of us, much too fast and unexpectedly to get a picture.  Still I got a few pictures here and there.  I hope you enjoy silhouette shots because for some dang reason, almost all of my bird photos from yesterday turned out to be silhouettes.  Ratz.  Oh and I swear to you, these are all different birds. Not the same bird over and over.  Although there does seem to be a disproportionate number of woodpecker photos. Sorry about that.

And there was a surprise bridge that we never saw before.  That was a "what?" moment.  It had to be new.  There is no possible way that we both would have missed seeing that before, right?  Of course, we might have been on  a new trail.  There are so many there at Carlton that each time is a completely different adventure.  And honestly, we don't use a map. We just decide at each cross road which way we feel like going, so we are all over the place. It's a wonder that we've never gotten lost.

The new bridge wasn't very long.  Of course there was no hand rail and even though it was wide enough, it was a little bouncy.  It was just unsteady-feeling enough that I was a bit trepidacious.  Joy was fine.  She played around and had fun with it.  e Of course we had to document it.

As always I have my rando photos too.  They just don't fit into any other particular category. But I still like 'em just fine. In fact, sometimes, I like them the best.

So there you have it, the most recent Photo Safari Report!  

​Hope you enjoyed. We did!