The Nature of Eustis

The campground newsletter indicated that they were having a yard sale on Saturday from 8 am to 1 pm.  Bonnie makes beautiful pendants and earrings from beads and shell pieces and they usually set up at a few craft shows when they are in Florida.  With the yard sale going on at Southern Palms, they decided to set up a table with Bonnie's jewelry in front of their motorhome early Saturday morning.

Chuck and I decided to go ahead and get at least some of our 10,000 steps in while we walked around the campground and checked out all the stuff people had for sale at their sites.  We also walked back to see if the owl was in her nest.

I zoomed up the camera and there she was...

...a great horned owl sitting on her nest.

After walking, we sat outside and enjoyed the beautiful sunshine.  While we were sitting there, we met Bobby and Kitty Wade from Georgia.  When we told them we were from Tennessee, Kitty said she grew up in a small town in Tennessee we probably never heard of called Erin.  Not only had I heard about Erin.  I was born in Erin and Erin is where my grandparents on my mom's side lived.  She remembered my mom's maiden name, Mobley, and we both remembered a lot of the same families in Erin.  Small world!

After lunch, we sat with Ken and Bonnie during the last hour of the yard sale...

 and watched some squirrels stealing oranges from a basket hanging off the back of a camper.  This little guy stole the first orange and quickly peeled it...

...and began eating it.

Another squirrel tried to steal the orange from him but he wouldn't share it.  The second squirrel tried stealing another orange out of the basket...

...but he kept falling out of the basket without an orange.  We also heard and then saw this red-bellied woodpecker...

pecking away at the top of the telephone pole behind our camper.

Later that evening, we rode into Eustis for a late afternoon walk and sunset picnic on Lake Eustis.

We walked across several connected walkways along the edge of Lake Eustis where we saw an anhinga,

an ibis,

a common moorhen,

and this turtle trying to capture the last of the afternoon's sun rays.

We also saw several boattail grackles hopping on the lily pads.

Then, we saw this very unusual bird.  :)

It's not a bird!

It's a radio-controlled drone.

Chuck talked to the operator and found out that it flies as high as 1,000 feet.

While we were watching the drone fly way up high, we also noticed this eagle flying even higher.

As we walked further around Lake Eustis, we stopped and talked to this nice lady who was fishing along the edge of the lake.

We kept looking for gators along the edge of the lake.  We didn't see any gators (yet), but we did see these comorants drying their wings.

We also saw this eagle (not sure if it was the same one that we had seen flying overhead) sitting on top of a telephone pole.

The sun was starting to get lower in the sky...

...so we turned around and headed back to where we were going to enjoy our sunset picnic.  On the walk back, we saw a big bunny rabbit...

...and we finally saw an alligator.

We looked for just the right picnic table,

under just the right tree.

Perfect!

We enjoyed our salads...

and watched an absolutely beautiful sunset!

With the full moon rising in the east

and each team winning a game of Pinochle back at Ken and Bonnie's, it was the perfect ending to a perfect day!