After the brutal cold weather a couple of weeks ago, it appears that spring is near. The first few days of March were limited to photographing birds as wildflowers had not started blooming in the usual nearby places.
On Sunday, March 9, 2025, the common trio of Carolina Chickadees, Tufted Titmice, and American Goldfinches were the only species observed.
And then on Tuesday, March 11, 2025, I hiked (more like strolled) the Cedar Creek Trail with good friend Dan with the objective of finding wildflowers. Fortunately, Dan had been out previously, and knew their locations. Both live and dead trees hosted fungi—mostly Turkey Tail.
And the forest floor had sparse blooms of Spring Beauties and Blood Root wildflowers, and a beautiful Cutleaf Toothwort.
Spring BeautyBloodrootSpring BeautyCutleaf Toothwort
Wildflowers are blooming late this year. In fact, a look back at photographs of wildflowers from previous springs, it appears that Spring 2025 is about 2 weeks later than usual.
We continue to play pickleball and golf, and Kay attends to her social activities. And now that basketball is finished for the school year, we have begun traveling to central Arkansas to watch Ridge play school soccer, Next fall, Harper will be playing softball, and we plan to attend as many of her games as we can.
Only one bird showed up for a portrait on Monday, March 3, 2025, and it was a Tufted Titmouse.
My shoes were taking over the bottom of our closet, necessitating workable solution. On Tuesday and Wednesday, March 4-5, 2025, respectively, a slatted shoe rack was conceptually drawn and sketches were made for cutting wooden pieces and assembly.
It’s been a struggle the last few weeks to find new subjects to photograph. So, the hunt was on.
On Saturday, March 1, 2025, the intent had been to “chase” birds with the Sony A7R5 and Sony FE 200-600mm f/5.6-6.3 G OSS + FE 1.4x Teleconverter. With the absence of birds close enough to photograph, a peaceful and relaxing walk on the Mourning Dove Trail in Hot Springs Village yielded my first Arkansas butterfly of the season, a Question Mark. It was photographed both coming and going on the mile and a half walk using the Sony A7RivA camera paired with the Sony FE 100-400mm f/4.5-5.6 GM OSS lens. That’s my “go to” lens for about 75% of shots.
Less stellar but interesting just the same were these fungi growing on trees along the trail.
Mid-February started off with cool temperatures and after only a couple of days, rain began, turning to sleet and snow. And, temperatures plunged to single digits. For four days, temperatures never exceeded freezing.
With us spending more time at home in Hot Springs Village, we are going to try and play more cards (Hand and Foot) and games. But for Hand and Foot particularly, we don’t have any of the accessories such as shuffler, “book of cards” holder, and deck tray. So, it was off to the shop to make the latter two. However, as a consequence of the brutally cold weather, only the first couple days of the reporting period (Sunday and Monday) were fit to do anything woodworking in the unheated shop. Nevertheless, 1x4x8’s were glued together, decorative edges cut, slots made, and supports attached. Sanding and application of several coats of polyurethane finished the process.
Hand and Foot accessory
Tuesday morning, February 18, 2025, I braved the dropping temperatures and the beginning of frozen precipitation to “shoot” some birds.
American Goldfinches, Carolina Chickadees, and Tufted Titmice were frequent visitors to the seed feeders, and permitted a few photos to be made.
American GoldfinchCarollina ChickadeeTufted Titmouse
A lot of reading was done on Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday during the day, and YouTube videos and a French detective series, Balthazar, were viewed in the evening. A gradual warmup began on Friday, February 21, 2025, with many of the roads and streets free enough of ice to be usable.
These are some of the photos taken on Sunday, February 23, 2025. American Goldfinches hoarded the feeders, but a Northern Cardinal and Carolina Chickadee slipped in for a seed or two.
Northern CardinalCarolina Chickadee
On Tuesday, February 25, 2025, the “regulars” returned with lots of American Goldfinches, a few Carolina Chickadees, and a Tufted Titmouse using the feeders.
Wednesday, February 26, 2025, was a warm day, and though few birds came in to the feeders, many hung out in the trees, necessitating a steady tripod to reach out and “touch” them with the camera/lens. A Brown-headed Nuthatch stole the show, but played coy with the camera and made taking its portrait quite difficult.
PERSONAL NOTE: Now that we don’t have near as many exciting adventures to relive in the blog, I have decided to change it up a bit and focus more on photos and unique activities. We will still capture our travel, and perhaps craft projects, but no more verbiage about our boring everyday life.
Kay and I have been RVing pretty much since we got together—25 years. Now that the RV is gone, and there is not one in the future, what will we do next? First and foremost, we’ll stay home in Hot Springs Village more, enjoying our house and lakefront lot. We will continue to play golf and pickleball. And Kay will likely fill up her social calendar while I’ll ramp up photography experiences. If my back will tolerate it, I would like to do some yard work and gardening, particularly for pollinators. And time will be made for even a bit of woodworking now that the absence of a third car frees up a portion of the garage. Maybe, even car/tent camp. And, we will continue to travel—just not for extended times, likely three weeks or less at a time.We still have several places to go on our life list: Switzerland, Ireland, New Zealand, more of the Pacific Northwest, northern Arizona and southern Utah, and maybe even Africa. Whereas financial aspects used to be the limiting factor, now it is health and wellness, or lack thereof, so we’ll see.
Now, for this reporting period. Because of lots of rain, conditions in the Village have been wet so no pickleball and no golf. We’ve both done a bit of cooking and baking, and I have made a couple of things in the “shop”. Our shoes—golf shoes, outdoor shoes, gardening shoes, swimming shoes, etc.— were seemingly everywhere in the garage. So, a shoe bench seemed like a good idea. And, we had a cushion left over from “our” first house (actually Kay’s house). Made with a “trout and fly fishing” fabric that I wanted to use. Consequently, that set the dimensions of length, width, and height. Cheap lumber was used, i.e. #2 pine; it was of very poor quality, but “good enough”. So, after a bunch of sawdust, measurement errors, and wrong screws, the bench was finished. It’s not something to be proud of, but is serves it’s purpose quite well pattern.
And then, a coat and cap rack was necessary to hold all the umbrellas, rain jackets, work coats, and caps and hats. If it’s length were the same as the bench’s, the two would look quite matched. A couple of rare pieces of clear 1 x 4 x 8 pine had been purchased previously from Lowe’s and one was used for the coat and cap rack. It was a simple design and build: cut to length, edges routed with a decorative pattern, sanded, a finish applied, and the coat and cap hooks installed.
I did manage to snap a few photos of birds the last couple of weeks, though they are the same species that have been hanging around all winter.
We finally did it. We sold the motor home and the “old” Honda CR V. This was the third time we had put it up for sale; Kay backed out the first time, I backed out the second time, and this time we both bit our lips and said goodbye—it was time! At some point in the future, I’ll post a blog on the various places we traveled/stayed in the coach.
As we consummated the sale on Friday, February 7, we both had a feeling of melancholy, though not necessarily sad, but for me, like admitting defeat (Kay doesn’t agree) due to health/age. I am not physically able to prepare to travel, nor am I able to drive for more than an hour or two without back pain and sciatica. We both knew it was time though I will profoundly miss the lifestyle. If only… We are comfortable that the new owners will immensely appreciate and enjoy the motorhome and tow vehicle.
We keep moving our departure date forward, finally opting for Sunday, January 26. The weather in central Florida, i.e. The Villages, has not been real conducive to outdoor activities. The Villages of Florida offer just about any activity one might be interested in pursuing. The grounds are wonderfully landscaped and kept immaculate. It is definitely a golfing community and the well-groomed courses were extensively used, though we were almost always able to get a tee time even if was late in the afternoon. It is difficult to complain about life in The Villages, except it is crowded, traffic is horrible, and the weather, for the most part, was cold, wet, and windy. Kay and I were just a bit overwhelmed by it all. While the people were not unfriendly, there was little social interaction except for cards, golf, and dinner with the Starr’s and early on the Graham’s. Our neighborhood or “village” was socially sterile. But, we were temporary renters, and not owners. We, therefore, have no regrets in leaving early, except we will miss socializing with the Starr’s.
We keep moving our departure date forward, finally opting for Sunday, January 26. The weather in central Florida, i.e. The Villages, has not been real conducive to outdoor activities.
We played a lot of golf, albeit on “executive” courses or “pitch and putt” courses. On Saturday, January 18, we played the Bogart executive course with the Starrs. Photos were taken by Kay and me.
And then on Tuesday, we played the Richmond Pitch and Putt course. It was windy and cool. We returned to play the Richmond Pitch and Putt course on Thursday, and again it was windy and cool, but not as bad as on Tuesday. Photos were taken by both Kay and me.
We played our last round of golf at The Villages with the Starrs on Saturday, January 25, playing the Mickylee Pitch and Putt course. Afterwards we ate at Cody’s, but it wasn’t quite as good as the previous times we ate there, and it was crowded as was the entire Sumter Landing area, such that it was difficult to find a parking place.
Also on Saturday, January 25, we packed up our toys and clothing, and pre-positioned the bags near the garage door for loading on Sunday.
As per schedule, we packed the car, fulfilled the requirements for leaving the AirBnB (regarding dishes, towels, bed linens, trash, etc.) and departed The Villages at 8:10 AM on Sunday, January 26. We were both ready to go home. The day’s drive took us north through Gainesville, then west through Tallahassee, and much of Florida’s panhandle, north northwest through Montgomery and Birmingham, Alabama, and finally northwest in the rain and semidarkness to Tupelo, Mississippi, where we overnighted. The hotel, rated 4.5/5.0 was not great nor even good. It was clean and basic, and had a cleaning odor that prohibited me from sleeping much, though Kay slept fine.
After the unrestful night, we departed at approximately 7:30 AM on Monday morning driving through Memphis and then westward to home, stopping for groceries. The leg from Memphis to home seemingly took forever as we were stopped on I-40 for about 45 minutes because of an accident. Regardless, we arrived home about 1:00 PM, and exhaled a long sigh of relief. We unpacked, began filling the hot tub, filled the bird feeders, set up the computer for photo editing, and enjoyed being in our house. Did I say we really like where we live!
Tuesday, January 28, was spent unpacking and stowing clothes and getting things organized in the house and garage; Kay did a bit of grocery shopping and picked up “held” mail. Of course, we both reconnected with friends.
And then on Wednesday, January 29, I got a haircut for what little hair I have left, and we both played the new pickleball ladder at Diamante. It’s so good to be home.
Both Thursday and Friday were quiet, and we continued enjoying being back in our house, though I did manage to photograph an American Goldfinch.
One of the key items on our “TO DO” list for this winter was to see the manatees in Florida. Earlier this week, Kay found that the Crystal River area had great manatee tours, and was only 1+ hour west of The Villages. A quick check on Trip Advisor revealed a number of tours, including snorkeling, kayaking, or just viewing from a boat. We opted for the last one, and reservations were made for 2 o’clock PM Friday, January 25.
Crystal River, named for the river which flows through the area, sits on Kings Bay near the Gulf of Mexico (Or is that Gulf of America? What a buffoon). Kings Bay, in turn is fed by over seventy springs and as many as forty more seeps that feed 600 million gallons of freshwater a day into this incredible body of freshwater sitting only six miles from the Gulf of Mexico. It is a leading winter refuge for the Florida Manatee. Consequently, there were many places to see and things to do in the Crystal River area, but a late start hampered our ability to partake. We ended up touring the Crystal River State Archeological Park, one of the longest continually occupied sites in Florida. It is a National Historic Landmark comprised of 61-acres; it is a six mound, pre-contact, Native American site with burial mounds, temple platform mounds, a plaza area and a substantial midden. For more than 1,900 years, this site on Crystal River in Citrus County, Florida, with access to the Gulf of Mexico, served as a ceremonial center. The real reason we visited this site was to photograph birds, which proved to be somewhat unsuccessful except for an Osprey and Red-headed Woodpecker.
OspreyRed-headed Woodpecker
After the archeological park, we ventured to Pete’s Pier to await the Crystal River Manatee Viewing Cruise. Florida manatees are large, aquatic mammals that are native to Florida. Adult manatees are typically 9-10 feet long from snout to tail and weigh around 1,000 pounds; however, they may grow to over 13 feet long and weigh more than 3,500 pounds. They can only tolerate a very narrow temperature range; Manatees need access to water warmer than 68 degrees to survive prolonged cold weather. At 2 o’clock PM sharp, Captain Chris motored through the pier area to one of the springs areas where we joined many other tourists anxious to see our first manatee.
Protected areaDarkk shapes are manateesSnorkelers getting up close and personal. Manatees are dark shapes in backgroundManatees near surfaceManatees near surface
Regretfully, attempts to video the large animals with a GoPro underwater failed. Most of the following photos were taken by Kay.
After the neat manatee viewing cruise, we ate seafood at one of the local restaurants and returned to The Villages.
We are still trying to adjust to the cool weather and life in The Villages of Florida. Fortunately, we have been able to play Hand-and-Foot cards and golf with the Starr’s which make it a bit less difficult.
On Sunday, January 12, we drove to the Lake Panasoffkee WMA west of The Villages with lots of optimism, photographing a Pied-billed Grebe aloe the way, only to find that the WMA was open for hunting on THAT day and we were strongly discouraged from walking any of the trails—another wasted trip!
After again researching eBird, I drove to Hogeye Preserve in The Villages on Monday to walk the 2.8-mile Hogeye Preserve Pathway. This proved to be a decent walk even though it bordered a golf course much of its length, and yielded several good photo ops.
Pine WarblerGreat EgretTurkey VultureWilson’s SnipeLimkinBlack-bellied Whistling ducksEastern PhoebeAmerican Kestrel
Kay and I ventured out to walk the short Fenney Springs Nature Trail on Tuesday. Despite it’s short length, I was able to take a few photos.
Wilson’s SnipeEastern PhoebeSnowy EgretGreat Blue Heron
After the photo walk, we decided to try one of The Villages’ Pitch and Putt golf courses. With holes ranging from 40-110 yards in length, these courses focus on shots around the greens. With holes ranging from 40-110 yards in length, this course is shorter than championship courses which are 300-400 yards in length, and is a focused on shots around the greens. We played Marsh View Pitch and Putt Golf Course and it was loads of fun.
I suppose it’s been obvious from the previous post that “pickleball” has not been mentioned. I played twice and enjoyed both times; however, it’s not the same as the great group at Diamante. It was competitive enough, and the players were friendly (even though the first “old” lady I played with instructed me on how to play the game). But, it just wasn’t the same and there were no warm fuzzy feelings.
Also, it’s been difficult to find birds, etc. for photo ops, though I’ve worked really hard and walked a bunch of trails towards that end. And, it’s been cold here by Texas and Arizona winter standards, with afternoon winds making it feel even colder. (Note to self: Could it be that I’m homesick? Who knows, but it is the first winter I’ve ever felt like this. Maybe that’s a good thing.) Anyway.
Kay had a cut and color on Wednesday, January 8, and was not too shocked that the price was almost double what it was in Hot Springs Village—it’s expensive in this part of Florida.
After tons of research in eBird, we took a day trip on Friday,, January 10, trying to find somewhere to find something to photograph. We ended up at Emeralda Marsh, east of The Villages. The Emeralda Marsh Conservation Area (EMCA) is a 7,089-acre conservation area administered by the St. Johns River Water Management District, In December 1974, it was designated a National Natural Landmark Our objective was to explore via the EMCA wildlife drive. When we got there, the gate was locked as the drive is only open seasonally. Nevertheless, we opted to walk the drive, and immediately upon starting, Kay spotted a Zebra Heliconia butterfly.
Zebra Heliconia butterfly
As the drive continued, it became obvious that there weren’t many birds, but there were several blooming marsh plants.
And then, a few birds were flitting about among the adjacent trees. An American Robin, Palm Warbler, and Gray Gnatcatcher were photographed.
American RobinPalm WarblerGray Gnatcatcher
And a Gulf Fritillary was nectaring on a far away shrub.
Gulf Fritillary
We met another person on the trail that mentioned more robins further along the drive, and that he had seen a mama black bear and two cubs. We were not so fortunate. We asked him about places to observe birds, and indicated that there was another area of the Marsh just north of us that offered shorebirds. Kay and I drove to that area and were immediately rewarded with birds. We immediately saw a Red-shouldered Hawk and an Osprey, the latter with a fish in its talons.
Red-shouldered HawkOsprey
And then we saw Anhingas, Glossy Ibises, and Snowy Egrets. There were also several other bird species but they were too far to photograph.
AnhingaGlossy IbisSnowy Egret
From Emeralda Marsh, we drove to the Fred Funk Butterfly Garden(s) at the Lady Lake Seventh-Day Adventist Church, and were a bit surprised to see several nectaring Monarchs.
Monarch
Also, a small Cassius Blue butterfly (?) stopped long enough for a photograph.
Collection of trails and greenway quotes, terms, acronyms, tools as well as trail publications and presentations and 100s of photos from my bicycle and hiking adventures. .
This journal was begun several years ago, and reflects an accurate record of each day fished. Please enjoy it, and remember that fish are too valuable to be caught just once, and the places they live are too valuable to be mistreated.
Dunngone's Photos and Blog 