Sunday March 5th 2023

The wind was down and the temperature was up today. The clear sky and bright sun allowed the temperature to climb above the midpoint of the eighties. Some areas in Florida are flirting with record highs again. This area is probably not one of them, but it is going to be warmer.

My day started out with a little more luck than the last few mornings. I was successful booking a reservation for next winter in a Florida State Park. It is for February 5 to 19, so I have three weeks from the middle of January to fill. I plan to try the Army Corp of Engineers Parks when they become available for booking in July. If that fails I’ll work on finding a commercial campground reservation.

The campground didn’t seem to empty out very quickly this morning. I was beginning to believe the end of weekend exodus wasn’t going to happen, but I was wrong. Starting a few minutes before the 1PM checkout time there was a rush for the exit. I would guess that close to a third of the sites emptied out. By evening the sites were filled with new arrivals.

For today’s exercise I drove east of the Tamiami trail to the Marsh trail in the Ten Thousand Island National Wildlife Refuge. It is a convenient place with lots of birds to keep my attention. Most days I also see lots of people and an alligator or two. Today I didn’t see any alligators, but there were still plenty of people.