Still Gravity

Heron waiting for the catch in Turtle Beach , Florida - License our images  here . Close to the sunset. The tall bird waits for food close to the fishing pole. What do we have here, opportunistic stealer or well-behaved beggar? Pick one for this dweller of the shores of the Gulf of Mexico.

Our campsite in Ross Prairie Campground - License our images  here .               Small campground operated by the Florida state parks that connects to the trails of the Cross Florida Greenway corridor. The trails are great for hiking, biking, and horse riding.  The bads of this camp? Pricing - $38 a night -, lack of privacy, the sharing of the bathhouse with the daily visitors of the recreation area, and the noisy road nearby. It's just an expensive parking lot.  The many miles of trails and forests are the only good things here. I hope they won't add a fee to them. Who knows.  

The yellow grass of the Kissimmee Prairie - License our images  here . This prairie felt like Africa, but without lions. Golden mornings and golden sunsets. Florida golden grass. Magical days in the Kissimmee Prairie.

Wood ready for the night fire - License our images  here . We came for the caverns years ago . This time was an overnight stay coming from Alabama. The campground was reconstructed after the damages caused by a hurricane. Nice and comfortable.  We went on a hike around the camp. Many trees down on the banks of the creek of the Blue Hole Spring. Then a relaxed walk to the spot where the Chipola river goes underground. Two small gators along the way. They splashed to safety at our approach.  Great warm shower and tasty food by the campfire. The moon screams rain for tomorrow. We'll see.

Old pic of C cooking with cast iron in a camp - License our images  here . Recently, we were talking about how our camping kitchen began long ago using cast iron stuff, and how we bought later into the craziness of the latest trend of utensils - call it Teflon, aluminum, titanium... And guess what! After this big detour, we returned to the simple cast iron pots from the beginnings. A full round trip of the camping cookware. What did we learn from this?  That cooking pots are just... cooking pots! Their function is cooking. Nothing else.  Cast-iron has a long history in the human kitchen since some Chinese invented it by the 5th century BC. The pots are heavy, but reliable. And we like better the flavor of the food cooked with cast iron. These utensils are more in tone with the simple and primitive atmosphere of camping. Cast iron wins. (I always remember a video of the Australian explorer Malcolm Do

We met the leaf on a trail of the Providence Canyon. This is the largest simple leaf in North America.  C standing with the mammoth-sized leaf at the canyon's bottom - License our images  here . The leaf is a product of the Bigleaf magnolia - scientific name:  Magnolia macrophyll a. "Macrophylla" in Latin means large leaves. These leaves grow over 30 inches - 76 centimeters. They look beautiful in the colors of the fall. The Bigleaf magnolia was "discovered" in North Carolina in 1795. Today, the biggest tree survives in Kentucky with a high of 108 feet (32 meters) - the average size is 40 (12 meters). The Bigleaf magnolia tree in the Providence Canyon.  These magnolias are bee killers because their flowers are traps for the insects. A wax or secretion makes the bees lethargic. On a more positive side, the Cherokees used t