Finally Florida

Yippee.  We finally have Florida weather.  Warm (65 deg) and sunny yesterday.

Cats basking in the sun on Chuck's steps

We took advantage of the weather to tour around the town of Cedar Key.  It's a funky, old Florida gulf town of about 1000 full-time residents set amid bays and bayous of the Gulf of Mexico.  Unlike much of Florida, it's relatively low-glitz, low-rise and pretty calm.  It was once the home of  the Eagle Pencil Company, which took advantage of the many cedar trees to manufacture pencils.  Once the trees were depleted and a hurricane damaged the plant the pencil factory left and the town became a fishing village.  Now its major industry is clam farming.  As we drove around canals and bays appeared everywhere.

One of many canals

At least one well-known Wisconsin person spent some time here.  Although California tries to claim him, we all know John Muir started in Wisconsin and apparently walked 1000 miles to Cedar Key.  Interesting to see how connected we are.

Downtown Cedar Key is fun with artists' coops and this neat mosaic fishing sculpture.

We've found good food here too, with some inventive chefs doing interesting stuff with local ingredients.  This has been a really nice stop.

The day before our Cedar Key tour, we went into the nearest "big" town, Chiefland, FL where I got a belated Christmas present.

Nothing warms the cockles of my heart like a brand new sewer hose!

On the way home from Chiefland, we stopped at Manatee Springs State Park, where, alas, there were no manatees in the spring on that day.  Nor were there any of these visible...

and none of these

and very few of these disease carriers (yes, that's a mirror on the left).

There were lots of these...

Turkey vultures-I happen to like and respect these scavengers.

But the big thrill of the day was when Robin spotted this rare and elusive bird.

Pileated Woodpecker

That was really fun.  I've known since my biology-major days that they exist even in Wisconsin, but had never seen one.  This guy hung around and showed off for us for at least 5 minutes.  It was a thrill.

Tomorrow we move on to camp with Mickey at Walt Disney World.  I'm sure there will be stories from there.  In the meantime we're still on the lookout for manatees.  We'll keep you posted.