Sunday November 5th 2023

The change back to standard time overnight cause the usual confusion this morning. The clock in the bedroom was still on daylight savings time, so that adds to the dilemma. Do I get up now or wait until it is really my usual time to get up? I rolled over and tried to go back to sleep, but I was only able to split the difference. So did my day begin a half an hour early or half an hour late?

I ended up taking the classic Sunday drive this afternoon. I set out without any real destination in mind. About 150 miles later I was back home after making a big loop to the south and east. There was a lot of other people out on the roads today. Some of them may have been traveling as aimlessly as me. At one point I decided to turn around and head back the way I came, but between traffic, the narrow road and absoultely nothing along the road but grass and a ditch made it difficult. The first opportunity to turn around was also my first opportunity to turn north. I was in the interestingly named town of Yeehaw Junction.

Don’t let anyone tell you that Florida is all development. Once you get away from the main routes and the established communities there is an awful lot of open land. Today I traveled trough miles of ranch land and some swampy land near the Kissimmee river. That is not to say there isn’t plenty of development. New housing is going up along the main roads going south and east from the Orlando area. Every year it is much further out from the current population centers. You can almost judge the state of competition by the distance from the cities.

The sun was starting to set as I neared home this afternoon. The early sunset is another part of the return to standard time that I will take a few days to get used to. I was greeted at my site by one of the resident pairs of Sandhill cranes. They reluctantly moved so I could park, but hung out just across the street and watched me get out of my car. I turned on my camera and took a few pictures of them for which they seemed to willingly pose.