Family in Winter Park

In Winter Park we visited with Trish’s niece Beth and her husband Daryl. Their daughter Rachel and her husband Patrick also live in town, and they have baby Oliver. Ollie is 9 months old and is Trish’s first great great nephew! We went directly to to Rachel’s and got to meet Ollie on Friday, May 24. Here are Rachel, Patrick and Trish with Ollie, and Rachel and Patrick opening up some gifts we brought along.

After Patrick cooked us a great dinner of rotisserie chicken and baked potatoes from his Green Egg grill and put together a wonderful salad we went over to Beth and Daryl’s, where we would be parking the RV for Memorial Day Weekend. Here is Trish enjoying their unusual chair. It can be quite comfortable if you don’t give yourself a ride in it.

On Saturday, Rachel and Ollie picked us up at 8:30 and we went to the Orlando Wetlands Park. Some friends of Beth had said it was a great place to see birds, so she put it on the list to do with us. When we arrived at the park one of the volunteers gave us directions for about a mile walk that included the boardwalk along the rookery. He also told us that other volunteers were giving free “tram” (actually golf carts with 8 seats) tours around the property until 3:00. We decided to do the walk first. Here come more bird pictures!

First off, we saw these sandhill cranes as we were driving up to the park – and the visitors center is still under construction, but they do have several outdoor kiosks explaining the origin of the park (more on that later) and some of the birds and wildlife that you will see.

We had been disappointed when we didn’t see any Roseate Spoonbills in Jacksonville, but we made up for that here. These are Roseate Spoonbills, with a wood stork and great egret. Then a little blue heron transitioning from the white plumage of its first year, to the blue color of its adult stage. Then there is a glossy ibis and finally another wood stork.

That’s a closeup of a great blue heron and then a flock of roseate spoonbills – with a couple of black vultures thrown in. Then there is an immature white ibis and tricolor heron.

The boardwalk went over the pond/marsh – there were catfish and of course alligators in the pond. That’s a roseate spoonbill coming in for a landing and black-bellied whistling-ducks – we were told there call is actually a whistle, though we didn’t hear it..

Wading birds, and trees full of birds!

After our walk, we had our picnic lunch – and Beth was keeping Ollie happy while Rachael ate.

Then we took the tram ride – Tim and Ted were our tour guides. They were both birders and photographers, so they had a good eye for spotting birds and and getting some good angles for photos. But before we took off, they told us about why/how the wetlands were created. In 1982 the city of Orlando needed a way to treat reduce the nitrogen concentrations of the effluent of their sewage treatment plant. By 1987, they had constructed a 17 mile long, 4 foot diameter pipe to bring the waste water to this 1,800 acre area that used to be farmland. They had dug a pond that ended up being 90 acres, and used the fill material to build over 18 miles of berm roads/trails that surround 18 different cells that naturally process the water as it flows through the park. It was planted with 2.3 million wetland plants including 200,000 trees. The plants fix/remove the nitrogen and phosphorus – so much so that the water that flows out of the wetlands and into the St Johns has lower concentrations than that in the river. But enough about how this wetlands got here – having built it the animals came – over 230 spices of birds have been spotted, as well as over 18 species of wildlife that are federally or state listed as threatened, endangered or protected.

Then we set out and saw these common gallinule with their chicks, and a limpkin.

On the left are water hemlock – it is considered to be the most deadly plant growing in North America. Tim told us that he had heard that someone died just from smelling the water hemlock. It looks a lot like Queen Anne’s Lace. On the right is an anhinga.

And below is what I think may be my best bird photo ever – five roseate spoonbills all looking in the same direction – not sure what they were looking at.

And then they flew off one by one.

That’s three baby osprey on the nest, trying to decide which one is going to fly away first – none of them did while we were there, but within a week they had all fledged. And a red-shouldered hawk just hanging around the top of a broken palm tree.

This turtle was sunning itself, and even had his hind legs stretched out. And on the right is the outflow that leads to the St John’s River. That’s a great egret sitting on a branch. I’ll leave this tour of the Orlando Wetlands with a shot of the sun through a roseate spoonbill wings. We really enjoyed our time there – even if it was hot.

The wetlands were in Christmas, FL which has a year round Christmas tree and creche set displayed in the center of time. The also have Chuck’s, which besides Italian Ice has hard ice cream too – all of us except Ollie enjoyed some.

We went out to dinner on Saturday night with some friends of Beth and Daryl. to Chayote Barrio Kitchen. They claim to take a bold culinary approach that celebrates Latin culinary traditions and reinvents the dining experience. It was good, but not as good as what we paid for it.

Sunday was a golf day – we played at the El Campion Course at the Mission Resort – about an hour from Winter Park. It was built in 1917 and is not a typical flat Florida course. There were wood storks all over the course. It was a very hot day, but at least there was some shade on the course. We both played better than we had in SC – I had a couple of pars, but really messed up on some other holes, and although Trish didn’t have any pars, she did have 5 birdies and beat me.

After some appetizers and drinks in the restaurant at the course, we were back in Winter Park in time to see the sunset over the lake behind the house, and to sit down to a great dinner that Daryl prepared.

On Memorial Day Daryl made us breakfast and then we went back to Rachel and Patrick’s to spend the afternoon in the pool. That’s Ollie and Beth getting ready for the pool. Rachel had bought this little splash pad, but even sitting on Patrick’s lap, Ollie was not happy with it.

It was a great day to be in the pool, it was warm but the pool had some shade. We took a break in the late afternoon to have burgers from the grill. It was a delightful way to spend the day.

Then is was time to say goodbye to Ollie – the next time we see him he will be walking and probably talking up a storm.

After a stop back at Beth’s to get cleaned up, we were headed to the Timucua Arts Foundation for a free performance. Beth and Daryl had been to this unique venue, that is a small (70ish seat) theater that is built in someones house! Below is my photo of the venue as we were walking up. The theater is on the right in the space that is 3 and 2 stories, the rest is the families living quarters. The other photo is from their website, showing the view from the stage. Most of the seating is on the main floor, but there are also two small balconies. We were told the acoustics in the theater can be tuned to give different sounds and they had it set up as a church in France.

Here is the description of the performers we were going to see – we didn’t have any idea of what we were going to see. See what you think before you read on.

Sonja Henderson was first up – she talked about the creation of two of her installations – one was a memorial to Martin Luther King, Jr and the other was a memorial to Mamie Till-Mobley. Both of these are in Chicago.

Here Sonja was explaining how she used the fan palm to help her with the drape of Mamie Till-Mobley’s skirt. She also talked about working with mothers who had lost their children to violence to create a memorial made of flying quilts. If you’d like to hear more about her creative process, here is a recording of her talk: https://youtu.be/nkW4WVv96dw?si=ZBQnuUTYV0zw_CIR

After a short break to change the stage it was time for Pamela Z. She was a vocal artist – but used electronic sampling and repeats to make some interesting sounds. She has had sound installations in exhibitions at the Museum of Modern Art, the Whitney Museum and many other places around the world. I made a couple of recordings, but it you watch and listen just to the beginning of the recording of her performance: https://youtu.be/GqDgw724D-E?si=10KhASm7XwhWuFtE you will get a great introduction.

On Tuesday we were off for one overnight on our way to Aiken. We stayed at the Fort McAllister State Park in Georgia. We had stayed there a few years ago when visiting Savannah and and thought there was a great spot to get a late lunch as we were driving out to the park. Well, the restaurant didn’t open until 4, and we were going by at 2:30. So we went and checked it, found our campsite, rested a little and then went to an early dinner at Fish Tales – we do recommend their Hushpuppies.

These guys were right by our campsite

We took a walk down to the river and saw this egret. The sunset wasn’t great, bu the reflection in the water made it a bit more interesting.

The next morning we sat outside to have our tea and coffee. This baby squirrel was exploring our fireplace, and there were plenty of birds around, but the only ones I could see for long enough to get a picture were this thrasher and cardinal.