We enjoyed our final week in Florida. Here are the girls at school on a lovely Monday morning at Silver River State Park:
Before leaving that park on Tuesday, we took a long lunch to do some canoeing:
As much as I loved the airboat ride several weeks ago, it wasn’t exactly a peaceful encounter with nature. This was.
The big pay-off of the canoe trip, however, was seeing the monkeys:
That’s right: monkeys. Back in the 1930s, a local tour boat operator released rhesus monkeys along the Silver River to enhance the scenery for his tour boat patrons, and the colony survives to this day.
We traveled west through the northern part of Florida most of the afternoon on Tuesday. Amy drove, and it was homework and work for the rest of us.
We first arrived in Florida a week before Christmas, and here were are finally seeing a new state on Saturday:
Despite the sunny weather, the temperatures were COLD! After enjoying shorts and T-shirts for the last month, we were into jeans and light jackets by the end of the week. Then this weekend, it was hats and gloves!
This is Amy’s group of running buddies she found near Mobile, AL for a run this morning. She’s gotten pretty good at finding and connecting with local running groups and making fast friends. (Get it?…”fast friends”?)
While driving through Mobile, we caught a glimpse of the crippled Carnival Cruise ship that you might have been hearing about in the news lately:
Continuing our westward trek, we knocked out two more states today:
Much of downtown New Orleans looked pretty rough from the overpasses; it’s hard to tell what is just simply run down and what might be remnants of Katrina. It was cool to see the Super Dome, though.
We’re camped at Bayou Segnette State Park for the week, just a few miles from downtown. Being in such a culturally rich part of the country, we have much to see and do this week in “N’awlins.”