My friend Kristine Reed was here for 3 days this past week. It was wonderful to spend time with her and we did a lot of fun things. There are photos
here and video
here and
here.
We spent one afternoon kayaking at Cedar Keys, a group of islands on the Gulf Coast; most of the small islands there can only be reached by boat. It was a great adventure, we even saw dolphins. There were at least 3 dolphins and they kept surfacing all around our kayaks. Of course, since they surfaced randomly and quickly, I couldn't get any decent pictures. We were very ambitious with our plans, speculating on visiting several islands. But then after just one island, I was starting to get worn out. We even had a bit of a stressful time getting back to port since the tide was coming in. But it was a wonderful time.
We spent Thursday afternoon at the Jacksonville Zoo. Kristine and I met several years ago as volunteers at the Los Angeles Zoo and worked together doing Enrichment for the chimpanzee group there. Kristine is currently doing a observational project on the bonobos at the San Diego Wild Animal Park. Therefore, we were very excited to see the bonobos and chimpanzees in Jacksonville. Overall, it was a nice zoo. They have lots of room for their hoofstock. Some of the other highlights included a
baby mandrill, fruit bats,
a black jaguar (I never knew the black ones had spots!),
jaguar vocalization, a close look at a
sloth, and
a giant anteater.
Friday afternoon we went kayaking again. This time, we went to Ichetucknee Springs, a wonderful trip that I have done several times before. The water is
crystal clear and the scenery is just beautiful. It's a nice little float trip; a shuttle service drops you off at the head of the river, you float/paddle downstream for 4 miles and then the shuttle service picks you up and drives you back to your car. It's a great way to spend an afternoon. Florida has 33 so-called "first magnitude springs", meaning that they discharge more than 100 cubic feet per second, including the Ichetucknee. There is one little cove where you can paddle right over one of the spring vents and see the water welling up. You can see it as the light blue area in the third clip of this
video.
Sheba continues to do well. Tonight I took her to one of the local public parks with an "off-leash" area. It was so cute when she realized that she could run around as much and as fast as she wanted. She definately wore herself out! I'm starting to learn some of her personality quirks. Whenever an emergency vehicle passes us with its siren on, she howls at it. And she often tries to take one of her toys with us on our walks. Yesterday we saw someone dressed up in a plush alligator suit and it really freaked her out. On our lunchtime walks, she always like to find a shady patch of clover and roll around on her back - she makes it look very appealing.
As the title says, there's not much new going on here. This is just a quick post to say hi. I'm staying busy with work and with my pets. Speaking of the pets, here is a rare opportunity - all 100 pounds of pet within range of a single photo.
