There are lots of alligators in the Everglades, just ask Alex!

This sawgrass prairie was called the "River of Grass" by Marjorie Douglas.

We have been busy. Arrived in Ft. Myers on March 22 to enjoy the company of Mom and Dad Woods and Frank and Brian Woods. Brian left that day but not before we enjoyed some conversation with another of the great Woods grandchildren. We stored our motorhome at Siesta Bay Resort and stayed at the Davidson/Woods condominium at Hertiage Cove. We relaxed and enjoyed more than a week there. We found a few year birds and even one life bird, a brown booby of all things, while there.

So it took us seven weeks to drive from Pennsylvania to Ft. Myers, the motor home doesn’t go that fast. The last piece of this long journey, from Sebring to Heritage Cove, was uneventful except showers. The rain was welcome here where the last year has been a dry one. The current weather results from a storm forming along the cold front that swept across the peninsula the day before yesterday. It reached down to the Florida Keys and there stalled. Cold fronts seldom cross the Florida Straights in late March!

Yesterday we visited the Kennedy Space Center. The admission fee is high, but NASA provides a good show. Many of the exhibits including a “rocket garden” are at the main visitor center. Buses take you past the famous vehicle assembly building, to a viewing station for the shuttle launch pads, and to the moon rocket museum that has the various units of a Saturn V rocket mounted horizontally overhead. This exhibit makes the building very long indeed.

The first bird we saw take off over the Merritt Island National Wildlife Refuge left with a flash. We stood on the bank of the Indian River at Marina Park with another hundred or so people at 2:28 this morning. We could see many more people standing along a causeway south of us. Traffic had remained steady on U.S. Highway No. 1 until a few minutes before. Now everyone was quiet and still. Then came a flash and the light flickered momentarily before a ball of fire slowly rose into view, accelerated quickly, and vanished after about ten seconds into a low cloud bank.

Another species of insectivorous plant, Utricularia, catches small insects under the water.