12 Oakdale

I now understand why people wear pajamas: getting into a bed with cold sheets is not fun with bare legs. At home, we turn on the electric mattress pad. Here, at Silver Springs State Park near Ocala and when we were in Utah, it was pjs for me. Even with the heat on at a comfortable 66°, the sheets were chilly and took a while with body heat to warm up. One more thing I never knew in South Florida. We spent 4 days with our cabin camping crew. This is our first time at this park. The 2-bedroom cabins have huge rooms and wraparound screen porches, which would be lovely in warmer weather. Their shaded seating wasn’t for us this trip. The mornings were in the high 30’s; the days were sunny 60’s.  We took the hour and a half glass bottomed boat ride and saw 17 species of birds and some of the macaque monkeys that are descendants from a group released over a hundred years ago. A few years ago, the state tried to remove them all since they are nonnative and do much harm, but the brouhaha th...

One of the stops to pick up riders on our way from Banff to Jasper was the Chateau Lake Louse. I was there 50 years ago when we traveled home from our Alaska trip. (The slides are in the garage.) The Victoria Glacier has retreated since then, however the view is still spectacular.  Along the way, we saw 4 black bears, including a mom with  cub. Memories of going to the Smokey Mountains and bear jams, where everyone would stop their cars and get out to gawk at bears. Even feed them. The rangers have put the kibosh on the latter, but we still all stop and look. We also saw 2 moose, but far away on the other side of a wide marshy area. The Rocky Mountaineer’s info said lunch would be a box lunch, but in fact it was a delightful buffet at the ice field’s headquarters. Halfway through the line I discovered all the dishes were labeled by cards in the overhead covers. Before that, assumptions were made. Peg ended up with egg salad which she thought was mustard potato salad. I took my...