This may be the easiest and shortest travel day yet. We moved twelve miles down the beach to Grayton Beach State Park. We may as well check them all out while we are in the area, right? Well, actually, it was an issue with getting a campsite on a holiday weekend during fall break for Alabama schools. The drive took us 20 minutes.
We sat outside with our coffee most of the morning. I fed Squirrel #1 some almonds. I know I am not supposed to feed the wildlife, but the little beggar has such cute, big brown eyes. I left it out of my blog yesterday.
I had a squirrel begging at our campsite yesterday. I had a handful of almonds and tossed one to Squirrel #1. It ran and buried it and came back for another. I had tossed several almonds and each one was buried. Then Squirrel #2 came in, dug up Squirrel #1’s almonds and ran off across the road with them, one at a time. Andy lamented, “There is no honor among squirrels”.
Squirrel #2 did not show up today. Squirrel #1 buried most, but ate two almonds, one of them while sitting in the tree.
We witnessed more nature drama yesterday that I neglected to put in the blog. A worm slithered out of the grass and onto our cement RV pad. Andy thought a bird would get it. We watched it for a few minutes. Then a small lizard dropped down from a high (much higher than the RV) branch. After it shook itself off and gathered its lizard wits, it jumped over and bit a mouthful off the back end of the worm. The poor worm jumped and writhed in the air. The lizard repeated the bite attacks four or five times until there was no worm left. Getting eaten alive has to be one of the worst things.
This picture did not turn out so well, but I wanted to share it because it looks as though this dragonfly had a great big, cartoon, smile. I have studied Google Images, even some that are labeled, and still can not figure out a dragonfly’s face.
Our trip was so short that we got here before the previous occupants of the campsite had left. We drove Sao to the boat ramp and had lunch at a pavilion overlooking West Lake. Then we drove to the beach parking lot at took a walk.
This tree was between the beach parking lot and the lakes.
The water was not so appealing close to shore, with loads of sea weed. A young couple we chatted with (the previous occupants of our campsite) said there was a lot of it yesterday too.
We walked to the east.
I don’t know how on earth I spotted this. I saw two crab eyes peering over the top of a clump of sand. I didn’t even see the legs until I got the picture of the computer. I was far enough away that I could use my zoom and not scare the crab into its shaft before getting the picture. I’ve named it Kilroy.
Two children were looking at this fish on the shore. It was still alive so Andy picked up up by the tail and tossed it back in the water. A few minutes later, the fish rolled back onto the sand.
When we got to the end of the park, there were a large number of people on the beach. Some of them spilled over into the park. I wonder if park personnel come and ask them to pay the entrance fee.
We walked back to the west to the beach-access boardwalk.
We only saw one bird again today. It looks like the same bird every day to me.
This cluster of flowers is growing next to the showers where we washed the sand off our feet. If I recall correctly, the color was better in real life than in my picture.
Here is Sao in our campsite. It is an extra long, pull-through site so we did not have to disconnect the car.
Dinata Misovec 