A Few Plans Made

Friday January 20th 2023

After a short period of rain last night today was a little cooler than Thursday. The wind was calmer and out of a more northerly direction. The mercury climbed to the mid seventies. The rain returns tomorrow afternoon for real.

This morning I made another attempt at navigating the morass of the Florida State Park reservation software. Once again when 8AM rolled around everything went south. The new software just can not handle the rush of people trying to book a few available sites. If there is a better or more optimal way of using the interface, it sure isn’t intuitive.

I really can’t keep trying to get a reservation at Myakka River State Park for the end of December. It is the hardest park to book, so I need to book it before I book the time leading up to that reservation. Unfortunately, the longer I wait the lower the chance I can find a reservation where I want. Later this morning, I bit the bullet and change my approach. I now have reservations for the last six weeks of the year. Starting before Thanksgiving I have three two week reservations at Jetty Park on the coast, Lake Louisa State Park in the Orlando area and at Lake Manatee State Park in Bradenton. In this set, Lake Louisa State Park was the difficult park to reserve. The only two week stay I could find was a few days earlier than I wanted. The result is I’m moving on Sundays rather than a week day. This may be a problem when I try to book the next two weeks during the winter. Finding a reservation starting on Sunday December 31st, New Years Eve, may be a real challenge. That challenge starts at the end of this month.

Great Blue Heron going for a swim after trying to steal a fish from a Anhinga.

Is this the same bird? It was in the same area later in the day.

All of the research and planning took a good chunk of time out of the day. Most of the things I had considered doing today were put on hold. I still managed to get my two walks in. The first was in late morning and the second was at sunset. With the wind speed down a little the bigger water birds were back in view. I even saw a Great Blue Heron land in the water and swim for a couple of minutes. I didn’t know they did that.