This is Florida, right?

With Nicolas and Bryce safely back home, and back to work and school, it was time for me to get back to work, too.  After 2-1/2 weeks off, it was tough to get back in the swing of early mornings and days spent on the computer, but I did it . . .

It was still very chilly down here in central Florida and, although we never had a frost or freeze, we did have to run our heat pumps in the evenings and overnight, and even the furnace a couple nights!  Everybody says it’s been a strange winter in Florida . . . the temperatures have been going up and down, and back up again!  We did finally get one afternoon warm enough to spend at the pool, but the next day we were back in the 60s again!  Oh well, it could be worse . . . no snow or sub-freezing temps here!

Last week, one of our neighbors told us about a park down the road from us that has a nice bike path, so on Friday we decided to check it out.  There’s a bike path that runs parallel to Highway 1, and we decided to take that to the park. 

Chain of Lakes Park

It’s a very nice county park, with baseball diamonds, soccer fields, and playgrounds, as well as several miles of biking/walking path around the lakes, and along the Indian River.

All of the water throughout the park attracts plenty of wildlife – we didn’t spot any alligators during our ride, but we did see plenty of birds, including this wood stork who was digging for his dinner in the ditch along the bike path.

They are very interesting birds – their heads almost look like a vulture!

We watched for a few minutes, and then he moved on.

Continuing along the bike path, there were lots of egrets, blue herons, ibis and ducks.

We followed the path around the lake, behind the hospital and down to the Indian River.

We were surprised to see how close we were to the bridge to Merritt Island and Cape Canaveral. 

All of the lakes within the park had spillways over to Indian River, so there were lots of bridges to ride over.

We continued around the bike path, stopping at the Observation Tower to climb up for a panoramic look at the surrounding area.

A nice view from up there!

It was a beautiful afternoon, and a great day for a bike ride.  By the time we got back to the RV park, we had ridden almost 8 miles.  I thought I had my runkeeper app set to not count the time when we stopped riding to take pictures and climb to the top of the tower, but I guess I didn’t – oh well.

We have two weeks left in this location, and a few more things to see in the area . . . looking forward to warmer weather this week!

So is Casey!