TN Valley Old Time Fiddlers Convention

We really enjoyed our outing to the 44th Annual Tennessee Valley Old Time Fiddlers Convention.

I had so many pictures, I decided to pick some of them and turn them into a video.  I used music from this group in the video. . .

This is the first time I’ve made one of these, but here ya go!

Hope you enjoyed it!

Okefenokee Swamp Park

We visited Okefenokee Swamp Park on our way to Florida.  It was interesting, and I hope we get to go to another area of Okefenokee Swamp some day soon!

I’m going to start with a few pictures from the zoo-like area of the Okefenokee Swamp Park, and in the order we saw stuff.  As for the actual swamp,  I’ll do pictures of our boat ride through it in another post!

Of course, you can’t go to a southern swamp and not see gators! 

They had several alligators in an enclosure near the park entrance.

We walked around on a board walk to see the alligator pen, and they also had one lone otter. 

He (or she) kept jumping up in the air, like they were trying to see something on the other side of the fence.

It didn’t take us long to get around to more alligators. . .

They were all kind lethargic while we were there, just being still and sunning themselves.

Now, in case you didn’t know this, Okefenokee Swamp Park is in Waycross, Georgia.  That also happened to be the home of Walt Kelly, the creator of the cartoon strip, Pogo.

One building in the park had a section dedicated to his work.

Close by was another building with a few critter exhibits – some live, and some having been to a taxidermist.  It will probably come as no surprise they had some . . .

. . .BABY GATORS!

In another big enclosure, they had black bears.  It’s kind of neat because they have a big glassed in room at one end where you can sit there and watch the bears.  We could see two bears.  One was asleep in the grass, and the other one was sitting up. . .

Maybe he was watching us!

After walking around the “tamer” part of the park, we were ready to take a walk on the wild side (or in this case, a boat ride).  We headed over to the water front, and there was a gator swimming free!

I guess when we saw alligators on the loose, we could have been like this squirrel and made tracks out of there. . .

But instead, we decided to be brave and take a boat ride through the Okefenokee Swamp!

Fog

We had to drive over towards Atlanta, Georgia, yesterday.  It was fairly early when we started out and the temperatures had been rather chilly overnight, hanging down near freezing.  It was warming up fast, however, creating great conditions for fog.

I snapped these pictures through the front windshield as we were coming up to the Tennessee River:

 

Of course, the fog was also clinging to the top of hills, too.

There was some pretty impressive amounts hanging around!

There’s some pretty country in Tennessee and Georgia, but it’s hard to get good shots zipping along the interstate!

Visiting Panama City Beach And Pier

Panama City Beach – Day 2!

 

We were still getting rain our second full day at the beach, but the sky cleared off some that afternoon.

We decided to get out while the getting was good and walk along the beach.  We really stretched ourselves and walked clear down to the pier.  I rested under the pier while The Farmer walked on up to the gatehouse and asked how much it cost to go out on the pier.  Neither one of us had any money on us, so we decided we’d go back later in the afternoon.

On the walk back to the condo, we saw a guy flying a neat kite.

At first I thought it was a Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle kite, but I think it’s supposed to be a sea turtle.  Whatever kind of turtle it was, I liked it.

When we got back to the condo, we sat on the balcony and watched the scenery.  It looked like it might storm again, so there weren’t many people on the beach.  (And I think I heard The Farmer grumbling there were too many old people and not enough bikinis.)

This one couple was down under their bright umbrella, surrounded by birds.

Of course, the gulls interest wasn’t so much in the people as the food the people were throwing out to them!

There were a lot of smaller birds munching on the sea oats down below our balcony.

The sky kept getting darker, and it started raining again.

When it cleared up a little, we went back to the pier and paid to walk out on it.  I could look down and see the barnacles and stuff clinging to the supports of the pier.

But it was a looooong way down there, so the picture didn’t come out as well as I hoped.  The same was true of the little jellyfish we could see swimming by.

And once we even saw a crab swim by!

I thought that was pretty cool, because I’ve never seen one swimming before.  The only time I’d ever seen crabs were scuttling around on the beach.

There were a lot of people fishing from the pier, but I only saw one person catch anything.

I have no idea what kind of fish it is, but I suspect it was going to end up as bait for catching other fish.

It started raining again, so we decided we’d seen enough, and after one last picture of a sailboat. . .

. . . which looked bright and colorful out in all the grays of sky, rain and sea, we headed back to our home base.