Rhinos Get the Right of Way

We woke up at 7 a.m. Bought some eggs and bacon from the Walmart. I made up some coffee using my French press. Again, it was nice to use the curb as kitchen and breakfast went great.  Off we went. We set off toward Lion Country Safari.

We went through West Palm Beach and Jeff found this amazing coffee shop. It had cold brew coffee among lots of interesting choices. The shop had multiple lounge rooms with sofas and bookshelves full of art books and puzzle games.We wish we could stay longer but we stayed for coffee and charging JJ's phone. Lion Country Safari is open 10 to 4 and we had some miles to cover.

We got there around 12:30. I was starting to get nervous that it was going to rain the whole Safari since the East Coast had a big shower. However, it was sunny when we rolled up..

Since my car does not have air conditioning, I rented one of the Safari Vans for $10. Pretty good bargain. They let us use a CD that had an audio tour that went with the Safari.

The Safari was great! Other than the Lions, (Obviously <through I heard that when the Park first opened, the Lions had no enclosure too>) all the other animals roamed in huge sweeping enclosures.

We took video and snapped lots of pictures. J.J. captured some neat footage of ostriches' mating dances and some kind of creepy footage of a chimpanzee walking to the stream with a cup, using the cup into the river, and with his cup of water, climbing up to his house to relax with it. Maybe I'm biased. I'm not a big fan of chimpanzees but it was cool to see it. After turning in the van, we explored the day park. Even though it was geared for children,  it did have some nice animal exhibits.

Cool thing too is that Lion Country Safari was close to Lake Okeechobee and our camp. I would like to say that before that in the whole drive from the coast was farmland for all the my eyes can see. The towns were tiny and far between.

We took a road that toward the side of the lake but I forgot that there's an actual dirt boundary between. Noticed a few cars were up there and found a park nearby.We went up way up on an incline to the rim and parked our car. Then we walked down the sharp decline to the water.

The lake was so big that it had a fair amount tidal waves. I watched for gators. I saw a dead one along the road that day. I touched the warm waves and collected a wet rock.

Looking at the map, I noticed that we were really close to camp and that we should find the store to get some camping supplies. If we're even allowed into the camp... Granted, earlier that morning, I did e-permit for this camp but you're supposed to allow them more time. Kind of figured no one would be there, so either way we'd find a place to stay.

We roll up to the "town" that's nearest to the camp. It wasn't much ofa town. It had houses, one convenience store and a post office. We parked at the convenience store and I asked the clerk if where the closest grocery store was. She responded that the nearest grocery store was two towns away, back where we came from. I grabbed some beer and some ice, paid for it, and walked back to the car. It wasn't a problem because I have lots of food in the car just in case we couldn't find anything. It was kind of funny telling J.J. that we would have to go 2 towns over if you want anything good.

When I was driving through all that farmland, I was praying to everyone that we wouldn't break down. There wouldn't be any help anywhere. We were lucky though and we got through it. Anyway, back to the story.

We left the lake and went up the road. Farms subsided a little for some woods. We found the Dupuis Water Management Visitor Center and pulled in. I just wanted to check in and see if our reservation went though. Nobody was there. It's funny, when we are walking back to the car, I was casing the nature walks for a good space the camp just in case. As we were leaving, we saw a couple people right by a car. We stopped to ask if they work there. They said no but they camp here a lot. They said to pull into the Family Camp and enter the code in the email I got. I thought in dismay that J.J.'s phone didn't did not have a PDF reader but she did a combination picture gesture with her hand, giving me hope I could crack it. That or just throw the gear over the rickety old wood fence and leave the car out there.

We drove up to the gate. It was a combination. I got out, sat down and started breaking it. You know when you start with one-one-one-one and you have to go all the way you know what after that it's a long process but it it's doable if you have the time and no pressure. J.J.'s job was to somehow find service and maybe download a pdf reader so we can get the code from the email. There wasn't much signal to begin with it so he had a hard time. Luckily after about 7 to 10 minutes, someone pulled up. I explained to the man our plight, then he offered to let us in and do the code for us. I was happy I thanked him a few times.

So we get inside. We make sure we were both have the code just in case. We drive down a dirt road and after a mile of road, it opened up to this big field with a lake in the middle. The road went around a big circle and every there were fire rings and picnic tables littered. There was even a compost potty at the top of the circle so we pulled to the right.  I found a nice shady spot. We set up camp and then we started with dinner. Whipped up some bismati riceand some baked beans. Quick and easy! J.J. started to get the camp fire going as I cleaned up and got our desserts ready. I brought up the bag of marshmallows, they were the jumbo size. However, after days on the road, they were melted. The bag was pretty much one big marshmallow but we separated a few.

I forgot how sugary marshmallows really were. I can only handle 1-2 and that was it, I was done. Just wanted the experience of being alone with J.J., roasting marshmallows over a real fire. It was threatening the rain so J.J. snuffed out the fire Sundown happened, though mosquitoes appeared and hovered. We had bug spray on so they didn't bite, but oh my god, hordes of mosquitoes hovering by my ear. NOPE..  It was definitely enough to retreat to the tent. I turned on the solar lantern after we were safe inside and you could actually hear the bugs bumping into the tent to try to get in. Big suckers too. More than an inch, these guys were humongous.

 There was two more sets of campers. But they were far enough away that we weren't bothered. After a while, we still up and reading and playing card games when we heard a camper yell at something to shoo it. I took all the precautions with food so I know we shouldn't have a problem. Only woke up once that night. Really early in the morning, we heard a pack of coyotes singing to each other and some owls.