A Little Further South

I woke up during the night around 4 am and looked outside to see if the moon was still up and it was.  I went back to bed but woke up again a little after 6 and when I looked outside this time, the lunar eclipse had begun.  I grabbed my camera and was able to shoot some pictures as the moon got darker,

and darker,

and darker.

And then, it turned almost a "blood" color which I guess is why they call this lunar eclipse the "blood moon."

So cool!  Unfortunately, the moon set before the eclispe finished.  Still, I was so excited I had got to see at least part of it!

We left Alliance Coach around 9 am and since we only had about a 50 mile easy drive (east on Hwy 44 and south on Hwy 27) to Thousand Trails Orlando, we drove separately instead of towing the car. 

When I went into the office to check us in, they helped me to pick out a site on their huge campground map board.  After we got to our site, we realized that the passenger side (awning side) would be facing the west and we wouldn't have any shade in the evening.  We called the office and were able to move to a little better site that would give us more shade in the evening plus it had a little more "side yard."  

After eating some lunch and getting all set up, we went to Wal-mart for groceries which took a while because we were out of just about everything!  And Wal-mart didn't have everything we needed so we had to go to Publix too.  After getting all the groceries put away, we were going to sit outside for a little while and were surprised to have some company.

I think this is a sandhill crane and here he is with his wife.

A little while later, about 6 or 7 of them came walking down the road behind the camper.

What's funny is I think this is the same kind of bird we saw last summer way up in the Bighorn Mountains.  I spotted these two cranes way up on the mountain while Chuck was fly-fishing last summer in the Bighorn Mountains.

Flyfishing in the Bighorns

When I looked at the Range Map on www.whatbird.com, I found that while the sandhill crane does live in Florida year-round, they go to parts of the western US (like Wyoming) as well as northern Canada and Alaska for the summer and breeding season.

Maybe these were the same two we saw up in the Bighorn Mountains last summer and they just were stopping by to say hi?    :)